A friend of mine was telling me about the guy she was with before she met her now husband.
“He was fixing a door in our apartment. I was standing behind him holding a hammer, thinking about how I wanted to smash him over the head with it. That’s how bad it was!” she said, laughing.
“How long were you together?” I asked.
“Four years. Everything moved too fast. We moved in together right away. But then the relationship felt hard. After we broke up, I met my husband. It just felt so easy. And we took things slow. Our relationship is work, but it doesn’t feel hard.”
The beginning of a toxic relationship can be intense and feel exhilarating. We may become all-consumed with the other person, and things tend to move quickly. But over time as the infatuation wears off, the relationship becomes tumultuous. The highs may be very high, but the lows are very low.
Toxic relationships often don’t begin with a firm foundation. We are high on infatuation. But since it takes times to really get to know someone, we begin to fall in love with a fantasy. We project the image of our ideal partner onto the other person, and we put them on a pedestal. We fall in love with the idea of the person, not with the actual person.
Once we begin to see the true colors of the other person, they fall off the pedestal. The relationship becomes a roller coaster ride.
The emotional reactivity is high. The fights are brutal. The words are threatening. The treatment is poor. The behaviors are punitive. The pain cuts deep. True remorse is rare.
But we stay. We keep trying to put the other person back on the pedestal, believing that one day they will change back into the person we fell in love with.
The problem is, they never were that person to begin with.
The Dynamics of a Toxic Relationship
Toxic relationships often are intense and move quickly because each person loves the way the other person makes them feel. During the initial stage of the relationship, there is much adoration and admiration. You may feel like you are truly seen, and you have finally found someone who really understands you.
This can feel like a sweet salve to unrecognized and unhealed emotional wounds. But once the butterflies wear off and each person’s human flaws are revealed, things can turn very sour.
A key sign that a relationship is toxic is that behaviors are inconsistent. A partner may sometimes be affectionate and loving, but other times they are withdrawn, distant, neglectful, disrespectful, selfish, and possibly abusive.
These relationships may also have a lot of issues related to jealously.
Toxic relationships often involve a partner with an anxious attachment style and a partner with an avoidant attachment style. The anxious partner may be codependent, and the avoidant partner may have narcissistic tendencies, although that’s not always the case. More women tend to be anxious and more men tend to be avoidant, but there are anxious men and avoidant women. A small percentage of people are both anxious and avoidant.
The anxious person craves closeness and intimacy, and the avoidant person fears closeness and intimacy. Once the avoidant partner begins to feel too close to the anxious partner, the avoidant partner pulls away. This triggers the anxious partner’s insecurities, and they start chasing the avoidant partner in an attempt to get closer to them. This triggers the avoidant partner, and they pull away even more.
One partner usually starts a fight. Instead of addressing the real issues, the partners attack each other. This kind of toxic fighting is very harmful and destroys trust and safety in the relationship.
Eventually the partners reconcile and everything seems great. Until it isn’t, and the cycle begins all over again.
People stay stuck in these patterns and relationships because they are hooked on the inconsistencies. Both the anxious and avoidant partner typically have low self-esteem. The anxious partner fears abandonment while the avoidant partner fears engulfment.
The avoidant partner is emotionally unavailable and wants to get their needs met without regard for the needs of the other person. Although they may be in a committed relationship, they are not fully emotionally committed to the other person.
The anxious partner is hyper-focused on the relationship and is too emotionally dependent on the avoidant partner. When the anxious partner chases after the avoidant partner, they are often seeking attention and validation.
They’re both using each other, even though they may not realize it, and even though they may believe they’re in love. But these kinds of behaviors are not healthy, and they are not love. Love cannot exist without respect, and a key trait in toxic relationships is a lack of respect.
How the Brain Keeps Us Addicted to Toxic Relationships
The inconsistent behaviors of a toxic relationship produce a potent cocktail of addictive hormones.
Oxytocin is the bonding hormone and is released during cuddling and sex.
Dopamine is the happy hormone. It is released when someone receives attention and affection, or when they anticipate receiving attention and affection.
Adrenaline is an addictive stimulant and is released when we’re unsure if we’re going to receive our dopamine hit of attention and affection.
Cortisol is the stress hormone and is released during periods of conflict with a partner and during periods of withdrawal.
The release of oxytocin during intimate activities creates feelings of attachment to another person, regardless of whether this person is a healthy or unhealthy match. When conflict occurs or one person withdrawals and cortisol is released, the brain craves its soothing hit of dopamine from attention and affection. Adrenaline is released due to the uncertainty of receiving the feel good dopamine.
This combination of hormones is very addictive and causes people to seek out their “love hits.” When they’re not getting what they crave, the brain releases cortisol, and they’re in pain. Once they receive the hit, they feel soothed, happy, safe, and loved.
Even though the relationship is riddled with conflict and poor treatment, the partners are addicted to the cycle and crave the highs. They may be focused on their partners potential and be holding out hope that the other person will change and one day the relationship will remain in the high state.
When one partner is abusive, the inconsistent cycle creates a traumatic bond, which is an intense addition to the intermittent cycle of reward and punishment. It can be inconceivable to outsiders why someone would continue to put up with terrible treatment and stay in an abusive relationship, but due to the trauma bond, it is much more difficult to leave an abusive relationship than a healthy relationship.
Cognitive dissonance also plays a major role. The brain struggles to hold two conflicting beliefs at the same time. A person in a toxic relationship can’t reconcile that the same person who is loving sometimes is hurtful other times. Therefore, they often cannot accept how terribly they are being treated, and they rationalize the other person’s actions and make excuses for them.
They also cling desperately to false hope. The other person may be making promises of change. And then when everything is going well in the relationship, the partner may believe that the other has truly changed and that this is the time the relationship will stay good. This hope is toxic and not based on reality.
People with toxic behavior patterns, and especially abusive people, can be very charming and appear to be very loving initially, but it’s a façade. The other partner keeps waiting for the person they knew at the beginning of the relationship to return.
The sad reality is that person is never coming back. They can’t. They never existed.
Ways to Let Go of a Toxic Relationship
There are several steps to go through when trying to break free from a toxic relationship.
Accept reality
You need to accept and understand that you are not in love with a real person. You are in love with the person who you want them to be. And you are addicted to the chemicals your brain is releasing.
Someone who only treats you well sometimes is not a loving person. You need to work through the cognitive dissonance and look at the sum of all of their actions. Write down all of the hurtful things they do and say. And write down how those things make you feel.
People are human, have flaws, and lose their tempers sometimes. However, in a healthy, loving relationship you should feel respected, valued, seen, and heard. Occasional hurtful behaviors should be followed with a genuine apology.
People can change, but it takes a lot of time and effort, and the person genuinely has to want to change. Promises of change followed by brief periods of good behavior is not true change. It is manipulation.
Do not stay in a relationship because you think someone has the potential to be a great partner. You need to remain in the present, not in future wishful thinking. Evaluate your partner based on their current actions. Accept that the relationship is unhealthy and is not good for you and that you need to let it go.
Grieve
You need to feel all of the emotions that arise when you accept the reality that you are in love with part of a person, not the full person. And the part that you love about the person is not really who they are. It is extremely painful to accept that the wonderful part you love isn’t real.
The person you knew at the beginning of the relationship is gone. You need to grieve that person like they died. Moving through the grief cycle will help you to better accept the reality of your situation.
The bad times in the relationship were really bad, but during the good times you felt amazing. You are going to miss that. You are going to crave that. You are going to feel like your heart is breaking into a million little pieces.
You need to process through those emotions in healthy ways like crying, journaling, or talking to a trusted friend or therapist. These emotions need to be released. If you try to numb them through other addictions and distractions, like drugs, alcohol, sex, and excessive busy-ness, it will take you much longer to heal from the relationship.
Go No Contact
Just as an addict needs to be completely clean from their substance, you will need to be completely clean from your ex-partner. Your hormones have become dysregulated, and you have an unhealthy hormonal association with your ex-partner. Communicating with or spending time with your ex will trigger the cascade of addictive hormones, making your breakup even more painful, and possibly pulling you back into the toxic relationship.
Toxic relationships are often characterized by frequent breaking up and getting back together. This is due to the addictive hormones that keep pulling the two people back into the inconsistent cycle. One person may convince the other person that they have changed, and when they get back together, the relationship is great for a short period of time. But then things revert back to how they were.
That is why it is best to cut off contact.
There may be situations where you can’t avoid your ex, such as if you share children or work together. In those situations, it is best to only interact when necessary, and to only discuss items related to kids or work.
After you have healed, it may be possible to have more contact with the other person. But in order to avoid triggering painful emotions and addictive hormones, you must first make sure you have fully healed.
Work on Yourself and Be by Yourself
An emotionally healthy person has high self-worth, a sense of internal safety, a secure attachment style, and strong boundaries. If you have been in a toxic relationship, it is unlikely you have these things.
You need to take the time to understand why you chose to be in an unhealthy relationship like this. You need to understand your unhealthy patterns and attachments. And then you need to work on healing your unhealthy patterns and attachments.
You need to work on developing self worth and feeling safe within yourself.
You need to assess your lack of boundaries, create firm boundaries, and practice enforcing those boundaries.
You need to forgive yourself for accepting poor treatment because once you do this work, you will realize that you deserve better.
During this time, you need to focus on yourself and your healing as much as possible. Therefore, it is best to avoid romantic relationships. It is likely the new person is just a rebound, and it is also likely that you will use them as a distraction to numb your pain and avoid doing the work to heal.
You want to break free from addictive cycles, not jump from one human fix to another.
Understand What Real Love is Like
Up to this point you may have only had toxic relationships. Or you may have been in relationships with an emotionally healthy person and felt like something was missing.
For someone who is used to toxic relationships, stable love can feel boring. You associate love with volatility and strong emotional reactions. You may think that if someone remains calm during an argument, they don’t care about you. You may start fights as a way to get attention from your partner.
You need to rewire your brain. This is another reason why it is best not to jump into another relationship. Until you break the association between toxic relationships and love, you are apt to continue to choose partners who will contribute to toxic relationship dynamics.
Make a list of the behaviors that are unacceptable to you in a relationship. And make a list of how you want to feel in a relationship. This is going to be your guide going forward. Once you do begin dating again, refer back to your lists. Check in with yourself to ensure your partner is not doing the behaviors on the first list, and that you are feeling the things you wrote on the second list.
Final Thoughts
When we are trying to break free from and heal from toxic relationships, it is helpful to understand the relationship dynamics and the brain chemistry that is keeping us in the relationship.
Toxic relationships are characterized by volatile and inconsistent behaviors. They often have one partner with an anxious attachment style and one partner with an avoidant attachment style. These partners may be codependent or narcissistic. The relationship may be abusive.
Due to the hormones that are released in these types of relationships, the relationships become addictive.
In order to break free and heal from the relationship, it is important to do the following:
- Accept reality
- Grieve
- Go no contact
- Work on yourself and be by yourself
- Understand what real love is like
We all deserve to be in relationships where we are respected, valued, seen, and heard. Don’t believe you need to settle for less.
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Previously Published on medium
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