Do you use 'twist someone's arm' to talk about relationship?

  1. He didn’t want to force himself to keep the bad relationship.

  2. He didn’t want to twist his arm to keep the bad relationship.

In the dictionary, twist someone's arm means to try to force someone to do something.

Is the second example sentence okay to mean 'force himself'? I'm curious if it's okay to use it to talk about relationship.


To twist someone's arm means, metaphorically, to use physical force to make them do something. You can't make yourself do anything by twisting your own arm, so the metaphor is not appropriate when speaking of forcing yourself to do something unpleasant.