Toxic Relationships and Why You Stay

Here are the facts, in my opinion.

1. You're addicted (to that person) and the idea of love.
2. You choose to see the person as the image you created in your head; you are blinded by love.
3. You justify their actions instead of using judgment and holding them accountable for their actions. You also justify your misguided loyalty by saying "true love is sticking by someone through the storm," or "love is still choosing that person no matter what or how bad things get." Yeah, there is a line; please, have standards.
4. You are so stressed out and emotionally tired that the thought of putting yourself through more stress and heartbreak (breaking up) that you stay and ignore the problem.
5. You want the person hurting you to fix things so you hold out and hope and wait for a drop of the affection you have been craving.
6. You think they will change. That they will randomly wake up one morning and have all these realizations and finally appreciate you as much as you feel you deserve.
7. You are being mislead, given false hope, and take it because you want things to work out so bad, even though you know you are with a toxic person and you may even know that it is straight up is false hope.
8. You do not want to be alone. You are already hurting from the verbal, emotional, and mental abuse, you rather put up with the bad and savor the good moments because you are depending on the other person to heal you—what they've caused you.
9. You maybe lacking some self-esteem as a result of your toxic relationship.
10. You sometimes blame yourself for the other person's behavior.

We know that we deserve better, but don't care. We bluff hoping to scare them and see/feel like the person cares if they lose you, but they don't and you still stay anyways. We forgive when we should be judging. We hope when we should be moving forward. We make up excuses so we can feel like what's being done is not personal, and it's a result of external factors. We let ourselves be human punching bags. We know we are taking all this crap and somehow can't stop loving the person.

We need help and we are so desperate for love that we will take what we can get instead of holding our dignity.

Going through a breakup is so difficult because it really is life-altering. It is a HUGE change that is so rapid that our heads spin so fast it makes us sick to our stomach and fill us with anxiety. I'm kidding, but not really. Seriously though, it is a very fast change, a big change. We don't know what to do at first because we're having to break habits that we have had for a long time. It is uncomfortable and we feel so alone that we forget we have other people that love us. It's not good enough, you want your ex's love, it's just not the same. Other times, we just don't accept it, pretend everything is okay, and tell ourselves that things will go back to normal in a couple days and that they will come back. Think that they don't mean it and it's just an episode.

Breakups are a part of life, we know all the cliches, and with age, we see that they are true, but it does not change how we feel. You could give totally sound advice, but you know you will not take and apply it to your life. That is how bad we are at knowing we what we need/should do, but we don't and we find reasons to be okay with that.

It is an addiction.

—L