That’s an excellent question.
When situations are disagreeable, then the serenity prayer kicks in. What can I change? What must I accept?
When I consider the difficulties that the change might bring about, I have answer number one to why I ‘put up with this crap’.
When situations are beyond disagreeable and are insufferable, there is always a way to exit the situation. Now, the exit has a cost. Sometimes the cost is terrible insecurity, financial uncertainty, having to look far and wide for people or organisations to help, or a myriad other things.
Here we have answer number two: the mere thought of investigating and implementing those is indeed daunting. It’s easier to remain with the status quo, blame it, and complain.
When something is insufferable but I’m suffering it, it’s because what I speculate to be the alternative appears, to me, to be even more insufferable.
What’s interesting is how often, when I do exit relationships or situations, it turns out to have been much more possible and much quicker than I had anticipated in the abstract.
What is required is a constructive attitude, where I start from the assumption that I can expel the person from my life or, myself, leave, and then set about asking God (Step Eleven) what I might to today to start the process of bringing that about.
That’s the nettle that has to be grasped.
If it really is God’s will that I stay, then God, again, in Step Eleven is the answer: To be shown through the Al-Anon literature the means of accepting the situation cheerfully and gracefully, because, after all, complaining changes nothing and is no fun.