Breaking Promises to a Toxic Person

I was sitting outside Starbucks with my soon to be ex-husband. He was infuriated I was leaving the marriage, and he knew just how to get me. Looking at me with cold eyes, he said “You promised. You made a vow. I guess your word means nothing to you.”

This was about 14 years ago but I remember the day clearly, probably because I thought about it endlessly until I found a way to resolve a huge dichotomy within myself. You see, like most targets of toxic abuse, I am high in “supertraits” (see link) such as loyalty, responsibility, forgiveness, honesty, etc. etc. I am not generally down with breaking promises or not keeping my word.

And yet, in this case, it had come to the point where it felt like him or me. It felt like I had tried every possible way to make the marriage work, but the truth was, I was more and more miserable every day. According to him I was the reason nothing worked in his life and I was getting very tired of bearing the brunt of his blame, anger and untreated depression (and yes, I tried to convince him to get help, to no avail).

And yet, I worried what would happen to him if I left. I felt like my love and care and attention was to some degree the glue that was holding him together (yeah, classic rescuer role, I know). And there were those rare but tender moments when he told me how down he felt and that he knew it was having a negative impact on the family. How could I leave him when he was so depressed and unhappy? What kind of person does that? As hard as it was, the answer was me, I guess.

How did I resolve the dichotomy of seeing myself as loyal and yet leaving this marriage? The first level of my understanding was that I needed to break my word to him in order to keep a bigger commitment to myself. If I was indeed “abandoning” him, it was simply in order to no longer abandon myself, which I had been doing for much of my 14-year marriage. I’d cheerfully put his needs and his emotions first, let him grump and rage and blame, and kept trying to be a loving partner. Until I simply couldn’t any longer.

The second level of my understanding was that a marriage is simply the form of something, not the essence. It’s a legal agreement that formalizes a relationship. The relationship is what is core. And the core, the essence, was not that I had (in my soul) promised to be with him forever. The core was that I had promised to love him. And I had come to the point that I could no longer love him and live with him. I needed to find myself again and have some distance.

And for many years, I did not love him — at all. I was frightened of him. I felt at odds and on edge if I had to deal with him (he was not particularly easy). But time, as they say, is a healer. I have, over the years, found my way back to a compassionate form of love. I don’t wish to be around him, but I don’t wish him ill. I can now sincerely hope he finds the healing he needs.

And so, even though it took a while, I feel I have actually kept my word. When I said “I do” so many years ago, the essence was that I promised to love. Not to be locked to the form of a relationship that was unhealthy and toxic. And even if I hadn’t come to this point, a promise that makes us abandon ourselves is not a promise that should ever be honored. Period.

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This post was previously published on But Now I Know Your Name and is republished on Medium.

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