Are You In A Toxic Relationship?
If you have been fully immersed in the voracious whirlpool of a toxic relationship, you will surely understand what we are going to share in this article. First of all, we are going to try to define what a toxic relationship is and what it implies in the lives of those who suffer from it.
Of course, toxic relationships are not only the responsibility of a couple relationship, but they can also be in the relationship we have with a family member or friend. But in this article we are going to limit the fence and reduce it to toxic relationships.
A toxic relationship always has “something that compensates us”
It is that type of union that we have with someone and from which we are not able to get out. It is a very strong, intense and at the same time very destructive union. We lose ourselves in it. We become someone we are not. We morbidly seek to be there even when it means suffering the greatest damage and worse still, the loss of our self-esteem.
Logically, if we are involved in it, it is because there is a large compensation or at least it contains something that we are not willing to give up. A compensation powerful enough that the ties of the relationship are not broken. However, if we were able to look at it from the perspective that allows us to contemplate the entire forest, we would be able to conclude that the toxicity that this relationship is having in our lives deserves that we modify that relationship or end it.
Behind this type of relationship lies the same mechanism that sustains an addiction. That is why it is so difficult to get out of it, and the more time of our life we are investing in this relationship, the more it will cost us to get out of it. Now we may not contemplate it, but it is possible and gratifying for oneself to get out of it, just like getting out of addiction to tobacco or cocaine.
I too can regain my lost responsibility and act accordingly
Usually we tend to blame our partner. “He is the toxic one! She is the toxic one, not me! ”,“ I have already given her many opportunities and she is unable to change, I don’t know what else to do ”. Well, maybe there is nothing to do … perhaps the healthiest, most beneficial and loving option for yourself is to end that relationship. Do not insist on reviving a relationship that no longer beats, a heart that no longer sends blood with oxygen.
Popular wisdom already says: “Don’t ask the elm for pears.” We cannot pretend that someone is who they are not. Enough time has passed to know. How much time of our life do we have to waste in this effort so damaging to our mental and emotional health ?! How many opportunities given are enough to find out? “Maybe I should wait longer, he needs more time …”
And while on the road, we fork from ourselves. We lose ourselves. We stop loving ourselves. We are offering our lives to that kind of parenthesis in which the other undoes his knots and until he undoes them we do not give up on our task. And what about what one deserves. What about our needs?
Getting out of a toxic relationship takes a titanic effort
That is why leaving a relationship of this caliber has superhuman merit. First, because one recognizes that he has no power over the other (a very common belief in many people: “I’m going to change him”).
Second, because he becomes aware of the amount of effort he was wasting on an impossible mission and turns it into effort to love and care for himself enough not to fall once again into a relationship destined for failure (personal and as a couple) .
Blaming the other is useless if we continue with him
We cannot spend a lifetime blaming the other person for being the way they are when we are choosing that person over and over again as our partner. (We are talking about a TOXIC relationship, not a healthy relationship that, like all others, has its shadows and its lights).
We are talking about taking responsibility for our decisions and choices. If we know that someone is harmful to our health, we have to get away from that person. Like the child who knows he has an allergy to peanuts, because eating them makes him sick.
Self-love begins with honest listening
Something similar happens in a toxic relationship. But sometimes we have our radar, our inner guidance, so stunted that we are unable to see beyond how exciting and almost mystical this love is. The child gets sick but… us? You have to listen carefully and become aware of the situations in which you live in order to perceive the damage.
To the extent that I am aware of my share of responsibility and choose to flee from what hurts me, I gain power over myself. I give back a little more of that power that I granted to the other. I finally recover. I choose myself.
Image courtesy of Sara Herranz
