Walk Away for the Sake of Your Health

You can stop giving away your power to toxic relationships.

Toxic relationships seemed to follow me around like a dog on a leash.

For decades, I went from one relationship to another, seeking comfort and peace. Misery and lament followed in my wake.

I didn’t know any better. I wasn’t taught that being abused was something to scorn. I didn’t learn being yelled at for hours behind closed bedroom doors was an unacceptable action.

It wasn’t until much later — and a substantial amount of soul-searching — that I could finally figure out I could have changed my life from the beginning by walking away from toxic relationships the moment I recognized them.

It all starts when young.

My experiences with toxicity began when I was a mere child. Crushed under the foot of a whiskey-drunk father and neglecting mother, who turned a deadened heart and eye against what she saw was a learning experience.

I screamed. I fought. I begged for it all to stop repeatedly, only to have my pleas ignored.

When I grew older and began leading life on my own terms (or so I thought), I jumped into relationships that were as horrible as those I experienced growing up.

A silo full of PTSD and depression, attempts at taking my own life, and a pathway of self-loathing and destructive actions are unfortunately hard to get past.

But I try. That, I think more than anything, is the best anyone can do.

If I could have seen the signs from the beginning, I think my life would have had a better chance at being something to be proud of.

I’ll probably get the stink eye from my loving wife for that line, but that’s okay. She knows I am damaged.

Here’s what to watch out for, dear reader. If you see these things happening, please walk away before the damage is done.

There’s a lack of empathy.

This one can start out with early childhood. It happened to me, and it really affected the way I looked at myself.

Sometimes it’s simple words, not actions, which cause the harm.

“Wow, you’re eating again?” “You really are a big girl, aren’t you?” “Why can’t you be more like your brother? He’d never do anything like that.”

They’ll tease about your relationships, your financial aptitude, appearance, mental health; everything is a target.

Of course, they will often couch these damaging words with, “Oh, I was just kidding.” They’ll act like you are the one who should tolerate it, feigning innocence while paying lip service to your harm.

Worse, they also disparage your feelings entirely, passing it all off as your own fault for feeling that way.

For many of us, our parents are our worst bullies.

It may not be your parents saying the things, too. You might hear these words from grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles. These are people who we are supposed to trust the most, but they cause extensive harm that lasts a lifetime.

It happens outside of family matters, as well.

A close friend of mine was getting married to a woman he adored, but on the day of the wedding, she came to me in confidence. She admitted she didn’t really love him as he was, but would do what she could to change him into the person she thought she could love.

“He’s got potential, but I’ll figure out how to settle that.”

Her words floored me. Here this woman was speaking assurances of love to my friend, all the while holding that kind of nastiness in her heart.

I tried to warn him, but he didn’t believe me and, in the end, it damaged the relationship we had fostered.

Of course, the marriage didn’t last long. Two years after she married him, she left him because she couldn’t stand him anymore.

They will do anything they can to control you.

“Where were you? Where are you going? How long until you get back?”

Innocuous questions, but unfortunately many times when they ask, it’s with a jealous tone and angry eyes.

That’s how it starts out. In the beginning of many toxic relationships, it’s simple, with exchanges of words that shift in tone as the days and weeks pass. They become strident, with texts coming in one after the other, demanding to know where you are and what you are doing.

The harassment will continue until you feel you’ve lost control over your own life and autonomy. You aren’t your own person any more. You are a creature of their creation.

Sometimes, these things happen to us because we feel we don’t want to lose that person. We don’t want to be alone, so we put up with the words and demands. We might get exasperated with the constant texts and phone calls, but we’ll gloss over the way it makes us feel because it’s just their way.

Maybe they’ll change some day. Maybe if we prove to them we’re trustworthy, they’ll ease off of it.

No, dear one, it just gets worse from there.

It rarely takes long before they shift from asking where you are to ensuring you need permission from them to do what you want to do.

Toxic people nurture resentment.

Resentment is, unfortunately, easy to foster. It does not take much for jealousy to drive a wedge between you and your partner, friend, family member, or even your own self.

Have you ever experienced a relationship (no matter what type) that has tones of jealousy to it?

You feel like going out with friends, but your partner starts a fight, wanting you to stay home with them instead. They’ll yell. They might cry. It could even go so far as bringing up things you’ve already resolved between each other, causing more of a rift.

A toxic person will do everything they can to drive a wedge between what you care about and you, forcing you to distance yourself from it all. Sometimes we give up on what we’d like to do just to save ourselves from the fight.

They have disrespectful patterns.

Toxic relationships vary, but many people experiencing them talk about the way the other person disrespects them and their time constantly.

It might be as simple as constantly “forgetting” important dates or events from your life. Maybe they continually call off meet-ups. They’ll call five minutes from the time they’re supposed to be there to say they forgot or had something else come up.

They lie about what they’re doing or who they are with, to the point you feel you can’t trust them any longer.

And yet you stay, because you don’t want to be alone. Worse, you might feel it’s what you deserve.

Granted, this type of thing isn’t always because they’re trying to be toxic toward you. Some people do have legitimate health reasons for having forgetful minds, keeping track of schedules, or time.

Talk to them openly about how it affects you, and their reaction will tell you if what they’re doing is intentional or not.

Familial toxicity is devastating.

Toxicity from family members is among the most harmful to the people experiencing it. It’s what starts out the pathway to further problems in life.

Depression, losing a sense of self or your own idealism, even self-harm are all things those of us who have experienced familial toxicity are left with. The most difficult part of it all is that by experiencing it as a child, we’re more likely to become toxic people ourselves.

I went through three noxious marriages because of what I was raised with, thinking I deserved every bit of the abuse I suffered.

It makes you have no sense of safety, no comfort in any relationships. There’s no solace, because we keep seeking more.

Toxic friends and partners are all take, with no give.

The drain on us from being around them is exhausting. We have to watch out, be on guard against the things they say and do. It forces us to endure the constant fight to be ourselves.

The other person might backbite and gossip about your other friends, especially if they sense you are getting any comfort from them. They could even sow dissent with the other people “on your behalf” to cause them to resent you. The wedge is driven in further, making it that much more difficult to have control.

Do you stay?

Once you recognize you’re in a toxic relationship, what can you do? What will you do?

Do you try to break free of it all and hope you find better next time?

Ask yourself why you’re remaining in the relationship. Are you getting anything out of it yourself? Or is it more because it’s a habit or what they have trained you to endure?

I had to create a little mantra for myself years ago, when I decided I could no longer tolerate any of my family members being in my life.

I didn’t want my own children growing up in the same environment I did, so I broke contact with everyone I felt wasn’t worthy of being in my life.

Just because you’re saddled with someone genetically, that doesn’t mean you have to have anything to do with them. You can walk away.

It’s sad that the people who do the most damage to us are usually the ones who have taught us from the beginning we can never get away from them. It happens so frequently in families that pass the toxicity from one generation to the next.

If it’s a friendship, keep in mind they are getting more out of the relationship than you are. They’re not sitting there stressing about how you might be feeling about all of this.

That’s on you. They don’t really care.

Toxicity can be as harmful as a cancer, invading every part of your life. The stress destroys your health and deeply impacts your mental stability.

Don’t give anyone else your power. You can choose to keep it by walking away, cutting them off, and doing something new with your life.

I hope, after all is said and done, you can live in peace.

About me:

I am an author with over a dozen books and dozens of short stories published. I have experience with both traditional and self-publishing, and love to discuss the pros and cons of both.

Why do I write? Because I am blind and live on woefully low disability payments each month. The government graced me with trying to live on about $700 per month, and I decided to start publishing because I also like to be able to eat.

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