The Grass Is Greener Over The Septic Tank

It starts innocently enough. You’re at a volunteer event, a work conference, or a friend’s barbecue. You meet someone. They laugh at your jokes, they listen intently when you talk about your niche hobbies, and the air between you feels electric. It’s been years since you felt that specific kind of voltage.

You go home to your partner of three years. They are wearing the same oversized t-shirt they’ve worn for three days. They are complaining about the dishwasher loading strategy again. They are tired. You are tired.

Suddenly, you’re doing the mental math. You’re comparing the five hours of curated, high-dopamine bliss you just spent with the Shiny New Person against the three years of bills, chores, and repetitive arguments you have with your current partner. You think, maybe I settled. Maybe this new person is actually The One.

You aren’t falling in love. You’re falling for an optical illusion. And before you blow up your life for a patch of vibrant, lush lawn, you need to understand why that grass looks so much better than yours: it’s standing directly over a septic tank.

You Are Bad at Math

There is a brutally simple economic theory to relationships that most people ignore until it’s too late. It’s called the 80/20 rule.

In a solid, long-term relationship, you get about 80 percent of what you need. You get trust, history, shared finances, someone who knows how you take your coffee, and someone who will pick you up from the hospital. That is the heavy lifting of love. It is valuable. It is also, occasionally, boring.

What you are missing is the 20 percent. The mystery. The chase. The validation of a stranger finding you attractive. The unchecked sexual tension.

When you meet the Shiny New Person, they represent that missing 20 percent entirely. Because you don’t know them, they are pure mystery. Because they aren’t tired from working two jobs to pay a mortgage with you, they are pure excitement.

The mistake you make is thinking the Shiny New Person is offering you 100 percent. They aren’t. They are offering you the 20 percent you currently lack, and because you are starving for it, you are ready to trade your stable 80 percent just to get a taste. You are essentially trading a paid-off house for a lottery ticket because you like the color of the paper.

The Vacuum of the “Five-Hour Date”

In the story of your life, your current partner is a documentary. It’s raw, it’s real, and sometimes the lighting is unflattering. You have seen them with the flu. You have seen them irrational with grief. You have navigated the death of pets and the stress of tax season together.

The Shiny New Person is a movie trailer.

You spent five hours with this person. Of course they seemed amazing. It is incredibly easy to be charming, attentive, and sexy for five hours. A sociopath can be an angel for five hours. A toddler can be well-behaved for five hours.

You aren’t seeing a person; you are seeing a performance. You met them in a vacuum, devoid of context or responsibility. You didn’t have to discuss whose family you’re visiting for Thanksgiving. You didn’t have to negotiate who cleans the toilet.

When you compare your partner’s “Tuesday Night Exhaustion” face to the Stranger’s “First Date Best Behavior” face, your partner will lose every time. That isn’t a sign of incompatibility. It’s a sign that you have mistaken a vacation for real life.

The Septic Tank Reality

Let’s go back to the grass. We’ve all heard the cliché: The grass is greener where you water it. It’s a nice sentiment, but it implies that if you just tried harder, your current relationship would be as exciting as an affair. That’s false. Long-term love is rarely as adrenaline-fueled as a new crush.

The darker truth is that the grass is greener on the other side because it’s fertilized with bullshit.

The reason the new lawn looks so lush is that you haven’t had to dig into the soil yet. You don’t see the weeds. You don’t smell the waste. You assume this new person is perfect because you haven’t been around long enough to discover that they chew with their mouth open, possess a jealous streak that borders on controlling, or handle conflict by shutting down completely.

Every lawn has a septic tank underneath it. Your current partner’s tank is exposed; you know exactly where the crap is buried. The new person’s tank is hidden under that vibrant green turf. But make no mistake: if you move over there and start building a house, the pipes will eventually back up.

The Cowardice of “Just Friends”

The most dangerous lie you tell yourself in this moment is, “I just want to be friends with them.”

You don’t want to be friends. You want a safety net. You want to keep the dopamine drip going while maintaining the security of your relationship. You are monkey-branching—holding onto one support beam while swinging toward the next, terrified to let go of the first until you have a firm grip on the second.

It is a profound act of disrespect to both people. You are disrespecting your partner by emotionally outsourcing your intimacy, and you are disrespecting the new person by presenting yourself as available when you are actually just bored.

If you are unhappy, leave. Pack your bags, break the lease, and go. But do it because the relationship is over, not because you think you found a shortcut to happiness with a stranger you had drinks with once.

Stop staring at the neighbor’s lawn. It’s artificial turf, and it smells like plastic.