To make matters worse, corp dev people are absolutely aware of the dynamics --- they're more aware of them than you are, because this is their entire job, where you might engage with it once or twice in a whole career --- and are selected for their expertise at manipulating the dynamic. They will, if they're seriously targeting you, deliberately bait a hook and keep you on the line long enough for walking away from a deal to be especially painful.
I think Paul Graham pretty much has this topic locked up and can't see how you'd express it better.
I investigated divorce months before marrying and we made sure that if it had to happen, like to 55% of mariages around us, we d make it as painless as possible rather than total chaotic surprise. I suppose there must be a corporate equivalent ?
Like if somebody goes from working hard on a marriage to seriously investigating divorce. Even if they decide divorce was too expensive or whatever, they're never getting back to even the problematic state they were in before they called a lawyer.