Sometimes he makes you feel like the luckiest girl alive. He’s your best friend with whom you’ve created countless memories and you can’t wait to continue making more. These are the moments and the days that you tell yourself, “Wow, I’m never going to give this boy up. He’s just too perfect”.
But those are just the good days. And unfortunately, there are far more bad days than good. Toxic relationships can be physically and emotionally draining. The relationship may feel one-sided; your partner may tell lie after lie, make you feel bad about yourself and the relationship may have an overall lack of communication. These are all signs that you are in a toxic relationship, and it took me the longest time to recognize they were present in my relationship.
My relationship with my boyfriend of two years wasn’t strong going into college. We both realized that even though we loved each other, we couldn’t stop fighting over our lifestyle differences and miscommunications we had. But we wanted to make it work. We were willing to put up with each other. The long-distance helped give us some breathing space for a short time, but he soon started confronting me about every single thing I did or he asked about every person I hung out with. Soon he started telling me he didn’t want me to hang out with person X or Y or Z even though he had never met them. And yet, I listened to him.
Back home, he would do things to break my trust all the time, like going out every night, drinking too much, even getting intimate with other girls. He would try to hide it from me by blocking me on his social media, but I always found out one way or another. This led to an extreme lack of trust and caused me to question his every move. He would become more and more frustrated with me, and he become verbally abusive in his responses to me. It is because of him I deal with depression and anxiety. I’d have panic attacks every night he went out. But I just couldn’t give him up and told myself to just be fine with it.
My friends at home realized he was not good for me. My friends here at SMU also caught on very quickly to how much trouble and hurt he was causing me and the constant verbal abuse that I’d grown blind to. One evening, towards the beginning of the semester, I had just gotten off this phone with my boyfriend. It was a fine conversation, in my mind, and we had only gotten into a minor disagreement. However, when I hung up, my roommate immediately had questions.
“You let him talk to you like that?”
“Like what?”
“He straight up yelled at you for 15 minutes. What do you mean like what?”
“LOL nothing’s wrong it’s fine.”
I realized that I had grown accustomed to his language and the way he talked to me. I didn’t see how his tone and words were a problem. In fact, the conversation in my mind went relatively well compared to some other blowouts we’ve had. But I realized I grew used to this verbal abuse and it was the first time that I decided I should do something about it. I decided to cut him off by blocking him on everything.
The first few days were hard. He was MY person who I would tell everything to. He was my confidant, my best friend and someone that made me genuinely happy during the good moments. I wanted to go running back to him, but I wasn’t going to allow myself to get hurt again. And let me tell you ladies, this was the best possible decision I could have made.
Although I still have of work ahead of me, my life has changed dramatically. Being surrounded by so many amazing friends and people here at SMU has distracted me from thinking about my relationship ending. Getting involved on campus is one of the most important things you can. You can find something you are really passionate about and devote your time and energy into it as something positive that makes YOU better and happier.
If you are in a toxic relationship, SMU has a lot of great resources that you can use. Please do not be afraid to reach out and get help. Ladies, take care of yourself because you are your number one priority and you deserve the world.