It is a good thing to be in a relationship with someone who loves and respects you. It is sweet to have someone by your side that you can count on when the chips are down.
It is equally beautiful to be in a relationship where you and your partner complement each other and make life easy for you both. Being in a relationship should make your life easy not complicated.
But in their quest to be loved and accepted, some people are trapped in toxic and dysfunctional relationships. Some women are not free to be themselves with men who claim to love them.
They are forbidden from having friends, relating with neighbours and family members. They don’t even have the right to pursue their dreams or have a means of livelihood. What a way to be in slavery at this time and age!
It is sad that some men are trapped in relationships with crazy, insecure, jealous and violent women. They are afraid for their lives whenever these women start displaying their madness. These men can’t talk to the opposite sex on the phone without explaining away their destinies to the abusive women they are in relationships with.
It is a bad thing to be trapped in a loveless and abusive relationship. It is terrible to be together with someone not because you love them and want to spend the rest of your life with them but because you are trapped. You don’t want to provoke them to avoid being physically hurt. You are even afraid of their silence.
People should know that toxic relationships damage people and destroy families. The sad aspect of being trapped in a toxic relationship is that it can happen to anybody. Men and women can be victims of toxic relationships.
It is not necessarily the territory of the weak, downtrodden or insecure. Strong, healthy, independent people can find themselves stuck in toxic relationships too. If you are not alert, toxicity can take over your life when you least expect it especially if you are a very loving person.
A toxic relationship contaminates your self-esteem, happiness and the way you see yourself and the world. A toxic person will float through life with a trail of broken hearts, broken relationships and broken people behind them, but toxic relationships don’t necessarily end up that way because the person you fell for turned out to be a toxic one.
Relationships can start healthy, but bad feelings, bad history, or long-term unmet needs can fester, polluting the relationship and changing the people in it. It can happen easily and quickly, and it can happen to the strongest people.
Last week, I heard the story of a guy who fell in love with a lady in the university. They dated for a while even though the relationship was fraught with verbal abuse and the domineering attitude of the lady he fell in love with.
He was gentle, loving and hardworking young man. When he met this beautiful, intelligent and outspoken young lady, he thought he had found the love of his life and the mother of his children. He treated her like a queen but it looked like nothing he did for this lady was ever enough.
She would stalk him, abuse him, threaten him, and fight his female friends. One day, she called his cousin and accused her of trying to come between them. She said many unprintable things to her because she thought this cousin was her boyfriend’s lover.
What I don’t understand is why this guy went ahead to marry a woman who was insecure and unstable as this lady. Being in a relationship doesn’t mean you should lose yourself and allow another human being treat you like garbage. I was angry after listening to that story.
What made me angry was that after everything this lady put this guy through while they were dating, he married her and had children with her. But when it dawned on him that he could no longer cope with his wife, he asked for a divorce.
That was where the matter got complicated. His wife woke him up a day after he asked her for a divorce and told him that she won’t grant his wish because they are stuck for life. She said she believes in ‘for better, for worse’ till death parts them.
Uncle became afraid. He knew that it was a subtle threat. He informed his family members about the latest development and they advised him to leave her. But he was afraid for his life and that of his children. Right now, he’s still living with her.
Leaving a marriage is not easy, but staying for too long in a toxic relationship will sap you of peace, strength, courage and confidence in yourself until you are down to nothing. Once that happens, you are stuck like the brother whose story I just shared. Some relationships are life traps. Once you get in, you can’t get out.
When you are in a toxic relationship, you avoid saying what you need because there’s just no point. People have important needs in relationships. Some of the big ones are connection, validation, appreciation, love, sex, and affection. When those needs are ignored or waved aside, the emptiness of that unmet need will fester.
If your attempts to talk about what you need end in a fight, an empty promise, accusations of neediness, insecurity, jealousy or madness you will either bury the need or resent that it keeps being overlooked. Either way, it’s toxic.
And when you cannot leave a toxic partner for fear of what might happen to you, you are trapped and that is not the best way to live life. You shouldn’t end up in a dysfunctional relationship because you want to be loved.
If all the work, love, compromise comes from you, you are trapped in a toxic relationship. You cannot make a relationship work when you are the only one doing the work. It’s a sad, lonely and exhausting place to be in life as someone who craves love.
If you are not able to leave the relationship, give what you need to give but don’t give any more than that. Let go of the fantasy that you can make things better if you try hard enough, work hard enough, say enough, do enough. Just stop. You are enough. Stop giving so much of yourself who doesn’t appreciate you.
Another sign of a toxic relationship is that nothing gets resolved. Every relationship has its issues and these issues are resolved amicably while both parties work together to make their relationship better.
In toxic relationships, issues don’t get resolved because conflicts often end in arguments. There is no trust that the other person will have the capacity to deal with the issue in a way that preserves the connection. When this happens, needs get buried and unmet needs always feeds resentment.
If you are trapped in a toxic relationship, step out of denial. Stop telling yourself that things will change. Stop listening to people who tell you that relationships are trial and error and you should continue to endure nonsense.
Stop making excuses for your partner’s toxic and abusive behaviour. Stop waiting for them to change. You are hurting yourself. Move on with your life. Don’t look back!
