this was originally published on august 7, 2012.

a reader writes:

i don’t know if this is normal or not, but i’m having some workplace separation anxiety! here’s the situation: i have been desperate to leave my job for some time now. i haven’t been happy here, i’m always frustrated, i disagree with the structure (or lack thereof) and my bosses’ ethics. yesterday i went on my second interview for a new job within a huge company, and its going well. it is a great opportunity, especially since i’m working toward my mba. i’m very excited.

and very scared.

i’ve been at my current job for nearly a decade. i love my small group of coworkers, and value my relationships with them. i have this desk that i sit at every day and business cards with my name on them. i have customers that i enjoy talking to and have built relationships with. i get to wear jeans and t-shirts everyday. i have a lot of freedoms here.

but, i’ve been unhappy for a reason, right? i don’t feel like i’m going to get anywhere further than where i already am — we haven’t had raises in years and hours often get cut when we’re slow. oh and my boss … he’s a peice of work. he micromanages everyone. he lies about what he’s doing. we never know when and if he’ll show up for work. he has been caught extorting money from the company. his personal relationships are toxic and he allows them to influence how he runs the company. he makes poor financial decisions and is beyond disrespectful to his partner and his employees.

so why do i feel so attached to this place and why am i suddenly reluctant to leave? when i started to get my act together to look for jobs, it changed my attitude here. i became more positive and i became a lot nicer to my coworkers than i have in a long time. i began to appreciate them more, particularly because we are all in the same boat. but i don’t want that to be my reason for staying here when i should be leaving. i have a golden opportunity to move into a position with guaranteed room for advancement, education assistance, a stellar benefits package, and documented stability. it would be a big gold star on my resume. and most likely i’d leave behind the emotional rollercoaster of my current position, and the harbored resentment toward my boss.

it’s a no brainer, right? so why do i feel so torn? is this normal?!

it’s so, so normal.

i don’t think i’ve ever left a job without feeling at least a little sad, even when i was dying to leave and knew the place was really dysfunctional. it’s hard to leave somewhere where you have a lot of history. as bad as a job might be, there are still usually some things that you like or at least feel really comfortable with — even if it’s just the physical space you work in or your routine of getting a coffee and and a cookie from the deli downstairs every afternoon.

plus, leaving the familiar and going somewhere new can be hard — it’s the unknown, you don’t have a routine there, and it can be daunting.

there are people who leave jobs with nothing but glee, but i think for people who really care about their work, there’s usually at least some anxiety and missing-it-before-you-leave.

(the good news is that it usually goes away within hours or days after you actually make the break and leave.)

the key is just not to let it get in the way of your making good decisions for yourself. it sounds like you have plenty of reasons to leave, and you know that. don’t let comfort and familiarity loom so large in your mind that they prevent you from moving forward.

by the way, i think you nailed a really common phenomenon when you described how your attitude changed once you started to seriously look for another job. when you stop feeling stuck and start realizing you have options, you start feeling more in control of the situation, which in turn will improve your attitude. you don’t even have to be looking for another job for this to happen; it can happen just from realizing that you’re choosing to be in your job for the time being (because you prefer it to the alternatives, because you value the short commute or the money, or whatever your reason might be). feeling that you’ve made a deliberate choice after weighing all your options, and that you’re not simply stuck, is generally pretty good for your state of mind.