If you're in a bad relationship (romantic, platonic, professional, some other fourth type and beyond) and keep thinking of reasons to not leave, or have left one and found yourself second-guessing your decision to do so, this song is for you.

This was the first original song I ever played in public, and I wrote it about three years after ending a relationship that was only hurting my now ex-wife and I. It was an open letter to that version of myself during that relationship, it really helped me heal from the damage I did to myself (and inflicted by and upon parties attached to that relationship), and if you find yourself in a situation like this, I hope it helps you too.

Go to my Ko-Fi shop to buy DRM-free downloads or find it at your local retailer of streaming music for your listening pleasure!

"You Don't Have To Stay" is an original composition and is released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA-4.0 license.

No generative AI was used in the making of this work. Use of this work to train generative AI is not permitted under any circumstances aside from those that cannot be excluded under the above CC license.