7 Things To Remember If You’re Struggling To Leave A Toxic Relationship
You deserve to be loved fully, not in bits and pieces. If this person is a wonderful partner ninety percent of the time – but is cruel and disrespectful the other ten percent, you deserve better. Every relationship is going to have arguments and bad days, but your person should never scare you. They should never make you feel uneasy in their presence. You deserve a relationship where you feel comfortable one hundred percent of the time, whether you’re on good terms or not.
Leaving is risky, but staying is risky too. Deciding to end the relationship and step into the unknown is scary because you don’t know what’s going to happen – but you don’t know what’s going to happen if you stay either. You don’t know how your partner is going to treat you tomorrow or the next day. You don’t know which side of them you’re going to get. You’re already living in uncertainty, so you might as well choose the path that leads you away from their torment.
It’s not your fault that this happened to you. Please don’t stay to punish yourself. Don’t stay because you feel like it’s too late to change course. Don’t stay because you feel some sense of obligation. It’s not your fault this happened to you, but it’s your responsibility to get yourself out of there. No one else is going to take the steps for you. You need to make this move yourself – but you can always ask for help.
No one else understands what you’re going through like you do. You can tell your loved ones details about what’s happening to you, but they are never going to understand your experience unless they’ve lived through a similar one. That means it doesn’t matter if they disapprove of you leaving. It doesn’t matter if they think you should stick it out or try to make it work. You’ve already tried those things. Now it’s time to try something else. It’s time to go.
If you’re having these thoughts now, you’ll have them later. Do your future self a favor and get out now so you’re not having this same internal debate in another year or two or ten. The sooner you get out, the sooner you can work toward healing and creating a better life for yourself. The sooner you can start breathing easy again.
You have what it takes to survive leaving. Maybe you’ve tried to leave before, then changed your mind. That’s okay. Just because you stopped yourself in the past doesn’t mean you can’t make the move now. Leaving is never easy, and things might not be easy for a while, but it will be so much better down the line. You owe it to yourself to go. You deserve to be free.
Leaving takes strength – and you should be so damn proud of yourself for it. It’s brave to leave a relationship that isn’t working, especially when you might feel pressured to stay by your partner, your family, and society as a whole. But you can’t worry about disappointing anyone else. The people who really love you would be the most disappointed if you stayed for the wrong reasons – and they would be proud of you for doing what will make you happiest in the end.