Most of us, at some point, will go through a toxic relationship. Fights about nothing, screaming at each other no matter where you are, putting each other down more than lifting each other up, and sometimes, abuse. These relationships are not easy, healthy or fun but they are for sure the hardest ones to walk away from and to heal from. But it is possible.
I got away from a toxic relationship and just 2 months later met my current boyfriend, and quite literally the man of my dreams. It definitely wasn’t easy to let my guard down and tell him how I was feeling, but eventually I found that risking it all, again, could possibly be worth it. And it was.
I learned that if I wanted to start this new relationship I had to try to let go of the things that had hurt me in my last one. I needed to wrap my head around that this was a totally different man than the one who had hurt me so badly, and that he more than likely wasn’t going to do the same things. Sometimes I would be very blunt with him and directly ask him questions I had that were making me feel anxious or un-easy.
Me: “So…We’ve been talking for about a month now…you promise you aren’t sick of me yet? Like, you would tell me right?”
Him: “Babe lol, of course I would. But I’ll never be sick of you.”
~SWOON~
Being this straight forward was not easy by any means, but it helped me heal, gain trust and helped us establish an honest and open foundation to our now very healthy relationship. But learning how to trust and love a new man wasn’t the only challenge I faced, I had to learn to trust and love myself before I jumped into anything new.
This is still something I’m working on, but I have come so far since my toxic relationship ended it almost feels like I’m a new person. I started this process by deleting everything on my phone that I had from the period of time I was in the toxic relationship. This helped me not look back and compare my life then to what my life had become, it also helped me make sure I didn’t have any screen shots of old conversations, old couple pictures or anything like that. This really felt like a fresh start because anywhere I looked that part of my life was erased, and while I still have the memories in my mind, I have nothing physical to strengthen them allowing them to fade away (that’s not as depressing as it sounds, I promise). This was also something critical to do so I wasn’t comparing one man to another constantly.
Going from a toxic relationship to a healthy one was difficult for a while. But I found that being open and honest, no matter how bad it scared me, with whoever I was talking to and with myself helped me pick myself back up and move on. It’s important to always remember that you are not the awful things a crappy person once said about you or even to you. You are someone’s everything and as scary as it is, you need to have an open heart to take the plunge with them.