What to Do in a Toxic Relationship?
It is very crucial to be willing to accept who your partner is as they are. They likewise need to accept you for who you are. But there are a few things that a person should never consider irrelevant in a relationship. Your relationship is getting toxic if your partner lies, cheats, humiliates you, depreciates you, belittles you, is over dependent on you, exploits you for money or other resources, emotionally or physically abuses you or mentally, emotionally and physically harm you. If your partner causes you pain mentally, emotionally or physically and does not hold themselves accountable, put an end to the relationship.
Below are quite a few things you can do whenever you are in a toxic relationship:
1. Admit the relationship is toxic and it is not of any benefit to you
Your choices here are limited and accepting you are in a relationship with a toxic person is always the best choice. You can judge and criticize the toxic partner, but that will probably make you feel tensed, angry, frustrated and lonely.
You could also man up and accept the fact that you will never be able to get along with them, which will make you feel stressed, frustrated and sad. You can deny their existence by choosing to count them as irrelevant entities or pretend that they are not bothering you.
These are all strategies of resistance, and they will not protect you. Ironically, these strategies will allow the other person to further embed themselves into your head, emotions and soul.
What does work is to accept that your relationship with them is not beneficial to you and it can also cause harm or damage you physically, emotionally and mentally.
Acceptance does not mean that you are miserable, or that the situation will never get better. Maybe it will—and maybe it won’t depending on the attitude you put towards it. Accepting that a relationship is toxic makes us soften and this softening will open the door to your own compassion and wisdom.
2. Come out clean to your toxic partner
When you start lying to your partner probably not to hurt their feelings or upset them, you become complicit in the creation and maintenance of the toxic partner’s reality, which is poisonous and damaging to you. Lying is stressful for human beings, maybe the most stressful thing. Even Lie detectors detect not a lie itself, but rather the subconscious stress and fear that lying causes. This will not make the relationship less toxic.
So, instead of telling lies to cover up lies, tell your partner the plain truth. Be sure to tell them the truth about your situation. Tell them your truth instead of your judgment, or what you imagine to be true for other people.
It takes courage to tell the truth about relationships, because often it makes people upset. But they will probably be mad at you anyway, no matter what you try to do. They will not like hearing the truth from you so they will probably end up avoiding you.
3. Detox
As we all know, letting go of someone you care about is definitely a difficult thing to do. But you are being toxic if you somehow think you will be able to still keep a casual or over the phone relationship with your ex-toxic partner. As a sign of toxic people, they have a way of manipulating and getting others to feel sorry for them. If you keep contacting them, then you enable you’re the toxic individual to continue to work by making you feel sorry for them so as to draw you back towards them.
The only thing to do is to cut all modes of contact with them and move on. Do not be the dog that returns to its own vomit.
If you are in a toxic relationship, know that you have the strength to get yourself out of it and move on.
4. Pursue self-development and self-growth.
You are not going to get over your ex toxic partner instantly. It’s a gradual process as change is not instant. You have to take all of the time you spend trying to understand your toxic partner better, or to fix the fallen relationship, and use it to develop yourself emotionally, mentally and physically. Make use your energy to pursue self-growth.
Make a declaration that today starts the healing process. From now on, you will work toward living the awesome and amazing life you have always dreamt about. Engage your body and mind in journaling, reading self-help books, and taking up weekly psychotherapy.
5. Move on
Because, you have had a relationship with a toxic partner does not mean there is no Mr. or Ms. Right for you. You should dwell on past experiences but rather move on. There is a billion and one right person for you.
When you move on and decide to date, thoughtfully consider the personalities of you have dated before, and work to engage in new and different types of personalities. As it is said, Humans can thrive well in Isolation.
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Rachael Pace is a noted relationship writer associated with Marriage.com. She provides inspiration, support, and empowerment in the form of motivational articles and essays. Rachael enjoys studying the evolution of loving partnerships and is passionate about writing on them. She believes that everyone should make room for love in their lives and encourages couples to work on overcoming their challenges together.
