We stay in toxic relationships mostly because we are not aware we are in a toxic relationship at all. We tend to be oblivious of what our toxic partner does to us and our emotional states, often finding excuses in love just to stay a bit longer.
What we need to understand is staying and believing something will eventually change is just too naive and we keep hurting ourselves by doing so.
The thing with toxic relationships is that they are addictive since they make you feel like you have someone to rely on.
They are challenging because you think you can make it work and you think you have to work really hard to be happy in a relationship, when in fact toxic relationships are all about fear.
You are captured in toxic relationships because you’re made to believe you’re better off staying in a dysfunctional relationship than being alone.
When you are in a toxic relationship you have this scorecard where you keep track of who did what to whom.
You keep arguing about who is the one that is giving more to this relationship, and you keep being blamed for everything that bad that happened in your relationship.
Everything that happened is written somewhere and your toxic partner is just waiting for an opportunity to play that card.
When you are in a toxic relationship your partner is ‘dropping hints’ and doing other passive-aggressive things.
He (or she) is unable to communicate with you on a ‘normal human level’ and instead, to clearly state the desire, you are pushed with hints towards the direction where your partner wants you to be.
Instead of telling you what’s actually upsetting him, he chooses to piss you off and then he has a legit excuse to behave like a jerk towards you and say out loud what he wanted to say at first.
When you are in a toxic relationship it feels like you’re held hostage because at every minor hiccup, there is this talk about a breakup.
Whenever something is not suitable for your partner, he says he can’t stay in such a relationship. Instead of asking you why are you being cold, he chooses to say, “I can’t be with someone who’s cold to me all the time”.
When you are in a toxic relationship you are to blame for your partner’s emotions.
If your partner had a bad day but didn’t mention it to you and you decide to go out or watch a movie instead of staying in and hugging and comforting your partner, you get accused of being insensitive and self-centered.
You’re actually expected to ‘babysit’ his emotions and be attuned to what’s going on with your partner all the time.
But eventually, you’ll break free from a toxic relationship.
You’ll allow yourself not to tie your life to such person and life will reward you with a good guy at some point— a ‘right’ relationship which you haven’t gotten a chance to see often in your life.
At first, you won’t be aware you’re in the right place because everything will be new to you.
You will have space to learn and you will have support for who you really are. There will be no efforts to change you and there will be no complaining about your character.
You will be accepted for who you are and you will be loved as such. Eventually, you’ll start remembering what you really wanted your life to be because you definitely didn’t want to spend your life pleasing someone who could never actually be pleased. You’ll get to be who you truly are.
You’ll overthink constantly and you’ll be thinking five, ten or even twenty steps ahead.
You’ll try to make a script out of every single date of yours, but everything will come up way better than you imagine because you’re expecting the same story you’ve lived once already, but you’ll get something totally different.
You’ll keep thinking it’s just too good to be true and you’ll keep waiting for something to happen to prove you’re right. The feeling that something bad will happen any moment will follow you constantly, but you need to understand he’s not waiting for a ‘perfect storm’.
It might be that in your previous relationships, fights came out of nowhere, but you need to remember you’ve broken free from those chains a long time ago.
It might be that in your previous relationships, fights came out of nowhere, but you need to remember you’ve broken free from those chains a long time ago.
So, eventually, you’ll start trusting your partner.
You’ll start doing things you (both) enjoy. No more doing things only for him; your day is not going to be spinning around anybody else but you. You’ll discover things you both enjoy and you’ll spend time doing those things.
After a fight, you won’t feel like your whole world is falling apart and that you’re the one to blame for it. Your experience tells you that only toxic relationships have fights, but that’s not true.
Every relationship has some hiccups, but where the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ relationships differ are the outcomes of the fights.
In the ‘right’ relationship, you won’t be feeling like a sh*t after a fight because that was not the initial idea of your partner.
You and your partner will be looking for a solution to the problem and the very roots of where it all started, so you could destroy it in the very beginning instead of putting the whole blame on you.
You’ll do everything to get over the problem because you want to stay together, you don’t want to break up.
People will enjoy seeing you together because a healthy relationship is glowing—and I mean literally glowing.
You’ll walk close to each other and you’ll hold hands in public. You’ll smile often and the happiness and love you two feel for being together will just reflect on the outside as well.
You won’t be afraid to disagree because once you accept you have a guy who’s there because he loves you, not because he’s afraid of being alone or because he needs somebody, anybody to function, you’ll find space to speak your mind without fear.
You’ll be able to say out loud what it is that you want and don’t want and what it is that you like or dislike instead of constantly compromising and doing things your partner wants.
You will share a passion for the future together. There will be no threats to break up and you won’t have this fear you could lose him any moment now.
Instead, you’ll be able to plan your future together and you’ll walk together towards your destination.
You’ll enjoy doing mundane tasks together like grocery shopping or cooking lunch and it will be fun. You won’t be the one doing all the work and not getting any recognition for it, but instead, you’ll do it together and you’ll be looking forward to it.
You’ll know you can function without your partner, but you’ll refuse to go through life without him. The catch is you won’t feel addicted to him nor anxious to leave him.
You’ll choose him to walk together through your life because that’s what the ‘right’ relationships make you do. They make you feel like you’ve found your ‘forever’ person and you’ll want to hold on to that.
The difference between the toxic relationship and the ‘right’ one will be mirrored in your happiness.
You’ll start feeling like a decent human being and this is something you forgot for a while. That’s what toxic relationships do to us.
You’ll enjoy your time with people you love without the fear that it might cause you problems afterwards.
You won’t need to justify your actions and you’ll be able to make something out of your life because you won’t have anybody to hold you down. You’ll feel good. Like you haven’t felt in a million years.
You’ll feel loved and appreciated, you’ll feel needed and you’ll feel like you’re in the right place and your eyes will shed tears.
When you finally accept the love you actually deserve over the one you think you deserve, you’ll see that you were only going through a lesson in life and you’ll thank God for that toxic relationship because it taught you never to settle for less and to know the difference between the ‘right’ guy and the ‘wrong’ one when you meet him.
