Why I always ran away - and how I’m now learning to stay.
When conflict shows up—especially the kind that presses close to the heart—my body still wants to move. Fast. Out. Away. This instinct isn’t theoretical. It’s deeply lived. I’ve spent years of my life turning that urge into action. Walking out of rooms. Avoiding hard conversations. Starting over before things could get real enough to hurt. It was easier, for a long time, to call this clarity. To say I just “knew” when it was time to go. But that wasn’t truth. It was fear dressed up as instinct.
That fear used to be a noise that followed me everywhere. It coloured my relationships, my choices, my rhythms. But over time, with work, I’ve managed to turn it down. It doesn’t run the show anymore. That said, it hasn’t vanished. It’s just become sharper. More concentrated. These days, I see it show up in one particular place: arguments with my wife. And this needs context, because I love my wife. I adore her. Our relationship isn’t volatile, dramatic, or unstable. It’s grounded, committed, and real. And part of being in a real relationship is having disagreements. That’s not a weakness — it’s a sign of presence. Of care. Of showing up. The fear shows up not because something is wrong between us, but because this relationship matters so much to me. The value I place on it is immense. And fear knows that. It sees the high stakes and tries to protect me in the only way it knows how: by trying to pull me away.
It doesn’t matter how grounded I feel that week, how dialled in I am with routine, training, work. If we argue, especially about something vulnerable or layered, I feel it. That urge. That spike. That script that fires off in my head: I’ll start again. I’m better on my own. The value of my S*elf (*in the Assagioli sense — the deeper, integrated self that holds meaning and direction) and the meaning of our relationship plummets, It’s madness, of course. But in the moment, it feels like a good enough reason.
The real work lives here now. It’s what I’ve learned so recently from doing the work. Not in staying sober. Not in building habits. That part is largely in place. This is something deeper. Slower. Harder to measure. It’s about emotional presence. About staying in the room when my nervous system wants out. About holding eye contact when my ego wants to defend. About breathing through the moment where I used to leave. This is the edge I’m training at now.
Ironically real running plays a huge part in this. But not as an escape. As a regulator. As structure. As something I choose to do, not something I fall into. It’s become a way to process, not avoid. I think about people like Hercules—the ambassador for Represent 247—whose daily runs feel less like content and more like personal testimony. He doesn’t just run for content. He runs because it keeps him sane. It keeps him present. There’s something in his pace, his solitude, his grit that talks to me and creates a story of a man in motion because stillness hurts more than the miles. It resonates. Deeply.
Another hero Elliud Kipchoge—the greatest marathoner the world has ever seen. First to run a sub-two-hour marathon. A man who smiles at mile 20, when most would fold. That smile isn’t bravado. It’s philosophy. It’s presence. He once said, “Only the disciplined ones are free.” I think about that often. Because discipline, to me, now means choosing to stay. Choosing not to run when running feels easier.
But lets be clear this isn’t about perfection. I still get it very wrong. I still shut down sometimes. I still say the wrong thing or withdraw when I wish I’d leaned in. But the difference now is I come back. I apologise. I unpack it. I try again. And slowly, pattern by pattern, I become someone who stays. I do the work on repeat — run by run, stride by stride.
If you recognise yourself in any of this—the urge to run, the stories you tell to justify avoidance, the way conflict spikes old panic—you’re not alone. You’re not broken. But you do have work to do. And that work won’t be loud or fast or glamorous. It will be daily. Repetitive. Intentional. You will train it like a muscle. And over time, the things that once triggered your escape will become opportunities to anchor.
This is the distance I’m running now. The gear I’m living in. Day after day.
