8 Reasons why it’s hard to walk away from the toxic relationship:
By: Alyssa Riegel
It sucks. It honestly sucks having to walk away from the person you’ve spent the last year with. You’ve become so used to the constant communication and the sappy relationship stuff. It’s hard to move on and to start over… but sometimes starting over is the best possible thing. Sometimes you need to drop people from your life.
- You’re comfortable with each other
You and your s.o. have known each other for such a long time that you’ve become comfortable. You’re OK with letting them see you cry and letting him or her know things that you haven’t even told your college best friends. You’ve come to that comfort level of staying at each other’s places and not feeling the need to hook up, but instead just actually sleeping. You’ve both seen each other in the ugliest, just woke up, no make-up, and my hair’s a mess kind of mornings. You’ve become so comfortable with this person that you forget what it was like before them.
But you need to realize that you’re young and you’ve got time and it’s OK to become just as comfortable with someone new.
- You’ve met the family and friends
It’s hard leaving someone, but it’s even harder leaving his or her families. He’s met your mom, your high school best friend, your aunts, and your cousins. You’ve met his mom, his brothers, and his best friend since middle school. You feel attached to these people. You like to be around his people and your people like him.
But the thing about growing up is that these other adults will respect you a lot more for deciding to finally end the drawn-out, over-played situation.
- You’ve become so used to talking to them 24/7
Every morning, like clockwork, you could expect a sappy ‘Good morning. Have a good day and I’ll see you later (*insert kissy face emoji*)’ text. You texted each other all day, every day, whether you were in class, at lunch with your friends, doing homework, no matter what you were doing you two were constantly texting, calling, or FaceTiming.
It was nice. Sure, we all like to have our person remind us constantly how much they like us, but eventually it’s nice to put down the phone and focus on yourself. You need to remember how nice it is to rely on yourself to make yourself happy.
- You’ve ‘worked it out’ a million times before
Every time there was a stupid argument or a bad decision on either end, you vowed to work it out and fix it. No problem was ever too much to end it for good. But then, it started to be one fight after the next. There was no more happy, but instead deciding which fight was easiest to live through. Eventually it became a game of who could hurt the other more. Congratulations to him… he won. He hurt you so much so that your friends intervened and convinced you to cut ties.
But congrats to you, too! You ended things and it’s quite possibly one of the best things you could’ve done for yourself.
- Your friends like him
He was nice, he was respectful, and he minded his manners any time that your friends were around him. They saw that he made you happy and eventually you got comfortable with him hanging out around your friends.
But your friends saw what was really going on. They saw your relationship falling to pieces and they’ve been waiting for you to end it. And it’ll be OK, because when you find someone new your friends will embrace him and learn to like him just like any past lovers.
- His friends like you
You met the friends (the crazy, rude, judgmental, teenage boys). You met them and you passed. They liked you and he was allowed to bring you around again. That was until you got in your first fight and he went running back to them to tell them how much of a brat you are. And from then on, they hated you.
But it’s OK that they didn’t like you anymore, because you never actually liked his friends anyways and you dreaded having to go over to his place and see them… so was it really a loss on this one? Probably not.
- You’ve talked about being ‘in a relationship’ together, but you never made it official
You constantly talked about “let’s go here” or “let’s do this”… as if you were assuming that you were going to be together for a while longer. You also talked about future dates and future plans and you just kind of assumed that there was a future. The only problem was that you never made it official.
And I guess it’s a good thing that you never made it official, because you didn’t have to make it Facebook official that you broke up. Also, you didn’t have to remove those embarrassing Instagram and Twitter bios (simply because you never put them there) stating that you were dating, your ‘date’, or any other emojis dictating that you were in a relationship.
- Everyone knows that you’re ‘together’
By far the worst part of being in this toxic relationship was everyone knowing that you were ‘together’. At the time it was great. Other girls kept their boundaries (and boys, the same). Also, it was nice to be ‘together’ with someone, but you were never exclusive… best of both worlds I guess. But now, you haven’t broadcasted your business to the whole world about breaking up, so nobody knows that you aren’t ‘together’ anymore. This leads to that awkward conversation of answering when people ask if you are still together and you need to tell them no…. and of course everyone asks “why” or ‘what happened”.
Overall, ending your toxic relationship sucked. It probably still sucks. You see him around campus or with another girl and you’re reminded of what you used to be. However, be thankful for your friends who pushed you to end it. Be thankful for the friends who let you cry about how much that you miss him. Be thankful that you got yourself out of a vicious cycle that was never going to end.
Lastly, get rid of him. Delete his number (if you haven’t already), unfollow him, unfriend him, get him off of your snapchat, take his pictures off of your social media, and move on. You can’t move on if he’s still lingering in your life.