Letting Go Of A Toxic Relationship

J

joseph23

Banned
Letting go of any relationship is difficult. Letting go of a toxic relationship is even more difficult. One never expects to get into a toxic relationship, and when you realize that you’re in a toxic relationship, it usually catches you by surprise.
The problem is, while we recognize a relationship as toxic, it is still quite difficult to convince ourselves to let go. One of the first things you need to remind yourself when you let go of a toxic relationship is that you are not weak for wanting to let go of the relationship. The signs of a toxic relationship can vary at times.

Sometimes they’re clear cut: you might be experiencing emotional and physical abuse, lying, and cheating. However, there may be times when you might not be sure if you are in a toxic relationship, but you do find yourself feeling something off about your whole relationship. This might be characterized by feeling lonely, despite being in a relationship, a feeling of not wanting to see your partner, or the feeling of a lack of intimacy between the both of you.

It is difficult to leave a relationship, even a toxic one, because of the fear that one might end up alone and unloved. However, once you have come to terms with the fact that you are in a toxic relationship, and have made the decision to leave, this gives you the strength to change your life with your own two hands for the better.

Sometimes being selfish is exactly what you need out of your life, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. You cannot keep living with the mentality that if you love your partner enough, they will be willing to change for you. If they were really willing to change themselves, they would have done so a long time ago.

If the relationship makes you feel bad, then it might be a bad relationship. Fight for your relationship if it’s still worth it, but if you find there’s no point, then allow yourself to let go. Sometimes our lives are not better by the people we keep in our lives, but by those we choose to let go to improve our lives.

Have you ever been in a toxic relationship? What advice can you give about getting over it? Send me a message, or leave a comment below, and we’ll talk about it!
 
Are you yourself struggling with reconciling having to let go of a toxic relationship? Or are you something like a therapist, offering help? (It occured to me, because you write in a very matter of fact tone. )
 
Hi joseph23,

I agree that letting go of a toxic relationship is very difficult. First of all, it is hard to realize that a relationship is toxic. There is for example sunk costs fallacy that gets in the way of seeing things clearly. It takes a lot of strength to leave a toxic relationship, but the person who needs to do the leaving is probably not feeling at all strong.

Anyway those are my initial thoughts.
Sincerely,
Kevin T.
 
There's no such thing as a toxic relationship or a toxic person. People feel poisonous to us when we respond to aspects of the person and the relationship that exist with us, aspects that we ourselves are wrestling with. Nobody can assert their "toxicity" on anyone who is not receptive and no one partner creates a "bad" relationship. People never, ever, ever change when we continually point out their shortcomings because the problem is not who they are, but how we are. The only time anyone changes in a relationship is when the other backs off and focuses on what he, himself is bringing to the table, which takes quite a bit of maturity and support and what many people would call "selfishness." Relationships feel "toxic" because we participate in toxic ways ourselves. If you are indeed a therapist, I hope you'd broaden your perspective and take the focus off of blaming the "toxic" person to help your clients not just move on, but improve emotionally so that they can become better at developing intimacy. Nobody ever falls into our lives by accident, they always reflect what's going on inside ourselves at the time.
 
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FallenAngelina said:
There's no such thing as a toxic relationship or a toxic person.

Nobody can assert their "toxicity" on anyone who is not receptive and no one partner creates a "bad" relationship.

Relationships feel "toxic" because we participate in toxic ways ourselves.

Nobody ever falls into our lives by accident, they always reflect what's going on inside ourselves at the time.
Click to expand...

Do you also tell people in abusive relationships that they can get out at any time and they're the cause of the abuse / they brought it on themselves? What about people who were on the receiving end of bullying? They did something to provoke the bully?

From the words you're saying, it's obvious you have never experienced a toxic or abusive relationship, and I'm glad, but to then say that victims "had it coming" is absurd. A lot of the worst manipulative and abusive relationships rely on messing with a person's sense of reality coupled with isolation, and by the time the person realizes what is happening they're often in pretty deep, making it harder to get out.

So many people see women and men seemingly stuck in abusive relationships and say "leave" and it's "their fault for putting themselves in that situation" but it's not always that easy and sometimes it can be difficult to fully understand if you've never experienced it yourself.

Also I will hazard to point out that trying to make patterns out of otherwise random occurrences (ex: "nobody ever falls into our lives by accident") is magical thinking.
 
LOL spam alert
 
We gave the OP the benefit of the doubt, but the (now deleted) post immediately before MeeraReed's post was undeniably spam. The OP has now been banned, but as a conversation has started in this thread I've left the rest of it intact.
 
Victims

In defence of what FallenAngelina said - although it's hard to make that point without sounding like you're victim blaming, it is true that you can't change others, you can only change yourself.

I'm a prior 'victim', and found that I naturally attracted 'toxic' people due to certain characteristics developed from childhood relationships. However I've come to realise that it's only by strengthening my boundaries and working on myself that I can break this cycle.

It is hard to break a pattern of learned behaviour though, I'm still a work in progress :)
 
Learner, you capture the spirit of my comments - well said. It is often the people who have been through the most harrowing relationships that come to understand that we all have real power to form and re-form our lives in ways of our own choosing. This is the foundational principle of all 12 Step programs and, in my view, any good therapist. As for my own story, I've shared it here a few times. I only know what I know because my good life of today has been far from handed to me on a silver platter. I made it happen and I'm all the richer for knowing that I can change anything about my life that doesn't serve in a positive way. Having experimented many times the other way, I know from vast experience that it's never about the other guy, it's always about what I have going on inside myself.
 
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It is easy when a relationship is clearly "toxic". Most of the times, there are no clear cut lines. Some things work well, specific areas can be horrendous and it is hard to know whether the good parts are worth suffering the bad ones for.

Depending on how things are in the moment, you become aware of the fact that nobody is perfect and we all have our flaws and that love matters, or the other fact that abuse often alternates with very considerate behavior. Both are true, but which is the larger truth for the relationship?

I agree with Angelina to the extent that our responses are part of the situation and can be functional or dysfunctional. Sometimes we act in counterproductive ways and frustrate ourselves into a rut.
 
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