When a Healthy Relationship Turns Into Toxic Attachment

Everything was fine. We did not start at this place. We were completely different in the beginning. That was not what I signed up for. What happened? Where did I go wrong? We had a future planned right in front of us.

If you have clicked this article, I assume, you are likely to be familiar with some of these thoughts, if not all. You might have spent days and nights thinking about how to solve this issue if there is one at all.

It might be hard to accept that nothing major happened to discourse the dynamic of the relationship and try to find subtle reasons that had the power to break it or fade its light. Yet sometimes trying to find a reason is pointless while you know that in the end, it might not even change anything.

A healthy relationship does not turn into a toxic attachment overnight. A lot of things affect this gradually. Sometimes they are so small that no matter how much time you ponder on them, you can’t find a real cause. Even if you did not look, those little influences were everywhere when in the relationship.

No one is perfect and it is totally perfect that we behave naturally, thus imperfectly. Why does that happen?

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1. Lack of communication overtime

There are several things that lead to the lack of communication. Now you might wonder, if there is love, it would not matter so much. However, though, it matters especially if there was a lot of communication in the beginning.

Over time, as the exchange of information about each other’s lives, work-life, etc. fades away, so does the intensity of the relationship. Then you wake up wondering where did you go wrong? Maybe it was the outcome of the fact as simple as the absence of talking and listening?

Then the wicked scenario starts to play. You always look for the old rhythm of the relationship but it is not there anymore. You seek the old little things that your relationship was actually made of, but they seem to be nowhere.

2. Not being able to tolerate the growth in partner’s life.

We never stop growing, we are constantly changing, and to this change, almost everything that is external and internal influence. Whether we like it or not. Through this change, we might act as another person or act differently that might threaten our significant other putting them into thinking “maybe something happened and they don’t love me anymore”.

Something new is constantly happening but we have to know our way in dealing with these constant changes.

Just because you change, it does not mean your relationships do as well, but not everyone is able to think this way all the time. So assuming like something is wrong is so natural but should not be bigger than what it is, which is simply in our nature and a fact.

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3. Acting like you can’t lose that person.

This is one that is much more common and can even happen to the best of us and is also linked to the first reason which is the lack of communication.

When you are certain about the partner and that they would never leave you and that you have something extraordinary, different than other couples because you respect each other, are loyal, and have a healthy affair, over the span of years this state of being rest assured can be devastating actually.

Even though you love each other endlessly, one should never forget the possibility of losing one another because life is a beautiful mess and we have no idea how external things affect us. We simply cannot measure the probability of this happening for another person who is not even us.

I don’t advise overthinking about losing your partner or them abandoning you, only remembering this from time to time. This, I highly believe, will improve your relationship no matter what.

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4. Perfectionism

Once you get the idea of the perfect relationship it gets harder to live up to these expectations. As if you reach the top of the mountain and it is almost impossible to stay there for a long time because life goes on and so should you.

As time goes on, when everything is not as beautiful as it was once, you can find yourself wondering whether they are not in love with you as hard as before or is it you that is losing feelings in some way?

Most of the time there is not anything wrong going on, only the fact that you are not at the peak of the relationship anymore and it is okay. However, if you don’t talk this over or have not talked about the possibility that things cannot be perfect all the time, it can be harder to degrade it later.

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Bottom Line

Anyone in a relationship can find themselves in this situation and I don’t think, partners should allow it to ruin what they have. Finding yourself being attached to your partner and feeling like things have changed can be a call to action. An action to communicate and fix the situation eventually or communicate and decide where you both want this relationship to head for.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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