A recent episode of This Past Weekend with Theo Von and Chris Hemsworth stuck with me long after it ended. In a surprisingly grounded conversation—amid stories of Australian childhoods, family health battles, and Hollywood longevity experiments—Hemsworth dropped a line that landed like a quiet truth bomb:
"There's a safety net in carrying on with what you know. Even though it's exhausting."
Theo riffed on it beautifully, talking about leaving room for "something else to bloom where that dead plant used to be." Don't rush to replant the same thing, or force a new one just to cover the bare patch. Let the soil rest.
Let the unknown work its slow magic.
That idea has been rolling around in my head ever since, especially when I think about how we handle suffering—particularly the kind that shows up in relationships.
We often stay in situations far longer than logic suggests we should. Not because they're good, but because they're known. The arguments follow a predictable script. The emotional labor becomes routine. A partner's quirks that seemed odd turn into more of a background noise. You learn to ignore the noise, but to your own detriment.
You learn the triggers, the loops, the ways to keep peace. And instead of enforcing a boundary for clear deal-breakers, you stay. It's exhausting —but it's familiar. And familiarity feels like safety when the alternative is stepping into uncertainty. Read that carefully. It FEELS like safety. It's not safety, but for humans, uncertainty is often scarier than familiarity.
I had a recent girlfriend of nearly four years and I had a front row seat to a very toxic dynamic. In this relationship, every disagreement circled back to processing old wounds, where family members (siblings, parents, in-laws) were systematically cut off and framed as the problem. One sibling remained unblocked, perhaps because they never quite fit the villain role the narrative required. The rest? Gone. The isolation preserved her story:
"I'm the one who's wronged, and the world proves it by staying away."
Staying with her for four years sort of felt "safe" in the same way Hemsworth described. I knew the exhaustion. I knew the eggshells. I was able to brace for it. That is how I was handling it. Instead of quietly enforcing my own boundaries through the myriad of deal breakers she offered, I stayed. For WAY TOO LONG.
Why? Because ending it means facing the void—the loneliness, the quiet evenings, the absence of built-in routine and companionship. The brain recoils from that drop. Better the devil you know, right? It's scary to come home to an empty place. It is unknown. It is unfamiliar. But I can liken it to being that baseball player stuck between bases in a "pickle." Just trying to get to a base that is "safe" while the other team (girlfriend in this case) tries to trap you.
But here's where the podcast really hit home to me. There is a void that is left when a relationship ends. And I have two choices. I could rush to "fix" it by finding a new girlfriend, a new distraction to take my mind off of the suffering of lonliness. This would be the "answer" to the problem. Find someone else. Problem solved.
But Hemsworth encourages the audience to live in the "questions" and not the "answers". Because in the unknown, growth takes place.
It's like having a plant. That plant represents the relationship that dies. So, we get rid of the plant. Instead of rushing out to find a new plant, we can give the soil time to rest and reset. Doing this leaves space for a new plant to blossom when the season is right.
During the time of rest, I am asking myself these questions.
- What do I actually need in connection?
- What did this last chapter teach me about boundaries I won't ignore again?
- Who am I when no one else's narrative is filling the space?
- What might emerge if I let the emptiness be, without forcing it to bloom on my timeline?
As I ask these, I don't actually know the answers. But I think that's the point. It's precisely the not-knowing that is the magic. Because I don't have the answers, I am more curious. Because there is more to search for. More to learn.
Loneliness isn't an emergency to fix—it's a season. It can spike in quiet moments (weekends, evenings, seeing couples out), but it also softens when you stop treating it like a problem to solve. The soil settles. Something else—maybe deeper self-awareness, new friendships, solo pursuits, or eventually a healthier relationship—has space to take root.
Hemsworth and Theo weren't prescribing easy steps; they were pointing to a posture: curiosity over certainty, openness over avoidance. It's not about glorifying pain—it's about refusing to let fear of the unknown keep us tethered to what's draining us.
If you've ever stayed too long in something familiar but fatiguing, or felt the pull to quickly patch a fresh void, know this: the safety net is real, but so is the freedom on the other side. Sometimes the bravest thing isn't finding the next answer—it's learning to sit comfortably with the question.
What questions are lingering for you right now? And what might bloom if you give them room?