First, let’s get this out of the way:
Stop trying so hard to fight a battle when you’ll never win the war.
Sounds cryptic, eh?
There are a lot of situations where losing the battle to win the war is a piece of fantastic advice. But not a downright toxic relationship.
I keep telling people that there’s a clear-cut difference between putting in all possible efforts to make a relationship work and losing one’s self in a relationship.
There’s logically no reason to lose one’s self in a relationship to the extent of giving up one’s right to be treated with respect and decency.
It’s not optimistic or wise to sit back and hope things will get better someday while you keep justifying, accommodating, and compromising when you shouldn’t have been in the relationship in the first place.
It makes no sense at all.
Yet, a lot of people can’t help but give up their rights to be treated with respect and decency in the following ways:
1. Staying with partners that mostly make them unhappy
It has gotten to the point that by just observing someone, I can guess if they’re deeply unhappy in their romantic relationship or not. Most times, all it just takes is to pay attention to how they communicate with or talk about their partners.
These days, a lot of people are consistently more unhappy with their partners than they are happy.
Sure, relationships aren’t meant to be a bed of roses that’ll never cause one some levels of pain and unhappiness. But a lot of people simply choose to stick to partners that chisel away at their confidence, make them feel worse than shit, and make their lives nothing better than miserable. Tell me how cool and sweet your partner can be at times and I’ll know they’re something else most times.
Many people hold onto relationships that are obviously wrong and unhealthy for a lot of wrong reasons.
It doesn’t matter how much of a jerk or asshole their partners are, they’ll still stick around so long staying with such a partner somehow satisfies their insatiable needs for validation or advances their social standings.
Hell, it doesn’t even matter how much their partners feed off their insecurities, tear them down, and place them on pedestals, their insecurities will often leave them prisoned in the relationship out of their feelings of worthlessness.
This is what happens when people internalize the unfriendly songs of society that fill everyone’s ears with a reminder of how we aren’t enough — how we aren’t smart enough, how we aren’t tall enough, how we aren’t earning enough money, how we aren’t perfect enough, etc.
The repercussions?
It reduces their self-esteem and increases their insecurities up to the level that they settle for the less even in their choices of romantic partners. Telling themselves that they can’t do any better. That they don’t deserve the best. That they deserve and have to endure every unfriendly situation they find themselves in. And so on.
If you can’t bring yourself to make the crucial decision to leave a partner that brings you more pain than joy, well, my friend, you’re only giving up your right to be treated with decency. It’s certainly not easy to walk away from a toxic relationship but staying in one doesn’t make life easier either.
“If you’re in a relationship and all you do is cry, you need to stop and ask yourself, are you dating a human or an onion?” ― Karen Salmansohn
2. Settling for what they’ll certainly advise someone against
Kristin Neff, an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin, once stressed the typical inclination of people to be empathetic toward everyone but themselves. I’m not here to preach about self-compassion, but it’s important to understand that most of us aren’t always nice to ourselves.
In the context of this post, we often find ourselves in relationships we would normally caution someone else about.
When a friend or someone we care about is in some kind of toxic situationship, it’s easier for us to be compassionate, supportive, and kind enough to advise them even against such relationships.
See, it can be difficult to see and think clearly in an unhealthy and even toxic relationship, sometimes, to most people around you, it can feel like you’re blind or something else for staying in one.
And to be honest, if you happen to meet someone else in such type of relationship, you won’t just want to advise them, you’ll likely think the same of them while your self-esteem, limiting beliefs, or baggage from the past are holding you captive in a sometimes, even worse situationship.
If you’ll excuse me, this point is related to the prior one, so allow me to elaborate. Sometimes, leaving a toxic relationship can feel confusing, overwhelming, or downright impossible because of a few ridiculous reasons.
If your self-esteem has been brutally damaged by the toxic and incessant belittlings of a terrible partner, you’ll more or less feel like you don’t deserve better than them hence, a “solid” reason to stay back.
If you’ve taken on the part-time job of an understanding and unconditionally loving partner who accepts a toxic partner for who they are, leaving them will never seem like an option.
Worse, when you believe your love can change them or that you’ve invested so much to let “everything” go, it won’t be a surprise for you to be stuck in it for a lifetime.
The bottom line? Don’t be inclined to stay in a relationship you’ll certainly want to advise a friend, sibling, or someone you care about against.
It’s important, to be honest, and compassionate to yourself to leave a relationship you’d equally tell someone that “it isn’t worth it” if they happen to be in your shoes.
Be gentle, loving, and kind to yourself and you’ll find that there are other meaningful things to do with your life than trying to endure a painstaking relationship.
“Don’t light yourself on fire trying to brighten someone else’s existence.” ― Charlotte Eriksson
3. Deliberately going against their core values
An old friend of mine recently came whining about how her boyfriend treats her. According to her, sometimes he’s cool and sweet, other times, he’s something else.
Well, apart from the fact that she’s dating a dickhead, here are a few other things I noticed from her story:
- She thinks way less of herself than others see her
- She often compromises her values and herself to make things work
- She gives up herself to create a new whole
- She’s fond of justifying, accommodating, and compromising excessively to ensure things work out
I’m not trying to judge, but I believe that thinking, believing, and acting in ways that reek of low self-esteem is the easiest way to make one’s self susceptible to toxic relationships and partners.
It’s the easiest way to trade your right to be treated with respect and decency.
I’ve once made the mistake of compromising, tolerating and sacrificing excessively even at the expense of my self-value, self-worth, and self-esteem.
It was even worse because I was practically trying too hard to prove my worth to her and prove that I’m worth her affection possibly more than other guys she’s involved with.
Shameful, yes, I know, but I chose to be treated worse than yesterday’s trash that I constantly felt degraded, assaulted, and everything but happy. But I’d never again in my life, do that. I now know that there are few things worst than putting up behaviors that are nothing more than a lack of knowledge of my worth and value.
A classic thought of someone who’s given up their rights to decent treatments in this sense is… “it’s all my fault for not being loving, nice, and kind enough.” And they’ll commit even more to being more loving, nice, kind, and better partners to people who are nothing more than terrible partners.
Again, nothing can save them from even more brutal, cruel, and inhumane treatments from their toxic partners.
“No partner in a loving relationship… should feel that he has to give up an essential part of himself to make it viable.” ― May Sarton
4. Being unanswerable to their needs
As much as I know that being selfless and caring improves relationships since it shows how much we value our relationships and our partners, I no longer try to be overly selfless and caring up to the extent where I can be easily used, manipulated, or mistreated by a needy and abusive person. I now believe in prioritizing my wants, needs, and feelings as much as I prioritize that of others.
I gave up my right to decent treatments in the past, but not anymore.
When you think of self-care as a taboo that you completely sweep your wants and needs under the rug for that of your partner, sadness and unhappiness will be your second nature.
Because you might end up being a puppet to needy and controlling people who’ll make things seem as though failing to meet their needs proves that you’re selfish and uncaring.
It’s something I used to do. Out of a strong urge to avoid appearing or seeming selfish, I used to neglect self-care which is a necessary element if you do want to love and care for others well.
And the truth is if you don’t love and care for yourself, doing so for others will always drain you and you might not get enough in return.
So what’s the way forward?
What’s one to do about any or all of these? One answer though: Choose happiness. Stop trying to right a wrong relationship. Start looking out for signs of one from the onset and ball out once it’s obvious that the relationship will be a toxic one. Try as hard as you can to be a good partner and to make the relationship work, but be willing to walk away as soon as respect and decent treatments are no longer served.
Work on yourself. Enhance your self-worth and self-esteem. Rewrite your beliefs if need be. Because if you’re mostly unhappy than happy in your relationships, perhaps it’s because your belief systems, self-esteem, and self-worth are doing you a disservice. If your relationships are nothing but sources of pain and sadness, what’s the point of being in them?
If you can imagine yourself regretting all the years you stayed back in a relationship, something’s wrong. If you find yourself mostly unhappy about your partner or putting up with treatments you know you shouldn’t, something is wrong if you think the best thing you can do, is holding unto the relationship.
Because that’s what it means to give up your right to be treated with respect and decency. I know, it might sound cliche, but you should always have one option in an unhappy and painstaking situationship: Walking away.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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 The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer |
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Photo credit: iStockPhoto.com
