When my son was born, it was just the two of us. Her mum came for a month to help, then left. My mother has narcolepsy and cataplexy, so relying on her wasn't an option. Not because she doesn't care, but because her body doesn't cooperate. So it was us.

I helped where I could but if I'm honest it wasn't much. She did most of the cooking. I did some housework, she did the rest. I did some grocery shopping, she did the rest. It was lopsided and it was building.

Then our son started teething. She went four nights in a row without real sleep, holding him in her arms because he'd cry the moment she put him down. Four nights of that and she was on the edge of cracking.

And then it came. Thirty minutes. Everything that was wrong with me, delivered without a filter. Some of it was right. Some of it definitely wasn't. She threw every word she had at me and didn't stop until she was done.

I took all of it.

Not because I agreed with everything. Because I could see what was actually happening. She wasn't angry at me. She was exhausted beyond what a person can hold, and I was the only one in the room. Four nights of sleeplessness, weeks of carrying more than her share, and the fear that none of it was going to get easier.

If I'd fought back, I'd have been right about some of it. And it would have broken something that didn't need breaking.

She never apologized for it. She didn't need to. We both knew what that was.

At nineteen I got out of a car because a friend was driving recklessly and wouldn't stop when I asked. That was clear. Leaving was the right call. I didn't think twice. Standing in that kitchen was the opposite situation, and it required the same thing. Seeing what's actually happening instead of reacting to what it feels like.

In the car, the feeling matched the reality. Danger was danger. In the kitchen, the feeling was attack but the reality was collapse.

Here's the mechanism that makes this so hard in the moment. Your body doesn't distinguish between being attacked and being near someone who's falling apart. The signals are identical. Raised voice, harsh words, accusation. Your system reads threat and fires the defence. Fight back, walk out, shut down. All of those responses make sense if you're actually under attack. None of them make sense if the person in front of you is drowning and you're the nearest object to grab.

The reaction arrives before the understanding. And because the reaction feels so certain, so justified, so physically real, you trust it. You defend yourself against someone who wasn't fighting you. Or you leave someone who needed you to stay. Not because you're cruel. Because your body made the call before your mind caught up.

That's the skill nobody talks about. Everyone talks about boundaries. Know your limits. Walk away from what doesn't serve you. That's real. But staying is a different skill entirely. Staying when someone you love is falling apart and the shrapnel is hitting you. Not because you're afraid to leave, but because you can see that what looks like a fight is actually a collapse.

Most people are good at one or the other. The ones who only leave build clean boundaries and wonder why nothing deepens. The ones who only stay absorb everything and lose themselves. The real work is telling the difference. And you don't get to figure that out in advance. You figure it out standing in it.

The move I use now when someone comes at me and my chest tightens is to buy three seconds before responding. Not deep breathing, not a technique. Just three seconds where I ask one thing: is this person attacking me, or is this person breaking down in front of me? The answer changes everything. If it's an attack, I respond. If it's a collapse, I absorb. Getting it wrong in either direction costs something real. But those three seconds are usually enough to tell the difference between someone who wants to hurt you and someone who's hurting near you.