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How a Toxic Relationship Opened Doors for Self Transformation

Here's to learning and growing through our experiences
nohely@mypurposepursuit.com

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5 Min Read

toxic love

*Mini celebration for all the strong men and women that decided to leave a toxic relationship*

At first, I wanted this article to be about leaving a relationship with a toxic partner. But who am I kidding? I contributed to its’ toxic-ness as much as he did.

While this post explores the reasons why you should leave a toxic partner, it’s more about doing the inner work. You know… so that we can learn and soak up all the lessons that it has to teach us.

By toxic, the saying “misery loves company” comes close to how I define it.

Whether they are conscious of it or not, these are the people that are bringing everyone down with them. They don’t feel whole and complete within themselves. They have a distorted self-perception, so they project them onto other people to cope with it. They’re unable to stand in their truth, wholeness and completeness.

A toxic relationship looks like:

  • Emotional dependency
  • Having sex to cover up relationship problems
  • One sided relationship
  • Lacking communication
  • Acting out of integrity for the relationship
  • Pretending the relationship is okay when it’s not
  • Holding each other to past mistakes
  • Bringing out the worst in each other

Sounds familiar?

Instead of pointing fingers, it’s important to accept things as they are. That’s the best space, I find, where growth can occur.

Join the conversation at the My Purpose Pursuit Tribe Facebook Group.

Compassion always wins

Compassion allows one to understand that everyone has a different background. Everyone has their own share of trauma and hurt.

But here’s the catch: compassion can only exist when self-compassion is present. As we all know that we can not share something that we don’t already have ourselves.

Self compassion is the foundation for dealing with and healing from our own trauma and hurt. We can do this by,

  • Realizing that we are more than our trauma and emotionally triggered responses, because behaviors and identity are two separate things
  • Developing compassionate self-talk
  • Maintaining awareness towards our existing self-talk and emotional patterns
  • Taking responsibility for our contribution to the toxic relationship
  • Making necessary changes within our own attitude and decisions
  • Realizing that we are more than our trauma and emotionally triggered responses. Behaviors and identity are two separate things.
  • Developing compassionate self-talk.
  • Maintaining awareness towards our existing self-talk and emotional patterns.
  • Taking responsibility for our contribution to the relationship.
  • Making necessary changes within our own attitude and decisions.

Then the question arises. “How do I find a balance between forgiveness and maintaining my integrity?” And usually, the most self-compassionate way of dealing with things is to walk the hell away.

Compassion doesn’t disregard accountability. People should be responsible for their actions, ourselves included.

Honor Yourself

I advocate for self-empowerment. It’s impossible to live a self-empowered life without honoring ourselves.

Oftentimes, we know what we should be doing, but we fail to do it. Honoring ourselves means listening to the answers that arise from within. We listen by taking action.

We must listen to,

  • The patterns from the experiences in our life and in others
  • Our intuition, hunches and gut feelings
  • The synchronicities that play out in our life

We also honor ourselves by honoring the red flags and deal breakers that come up. Instead of trying to read someone’s mind, the wisest thing to do would be to go based off of their actions. Their actions speak very loud and very clear.

Are you lowering your standards by letting that one deal breaker slide?

Save yourself the self-inflicted pain, suffering, and wasted time. AND. HONOR. THAT.

Try these self-awareness activities to increase your level of self-awareness:

Look in the mirror

Every moment in every day, we’re given the beautiful opportunity to create ourselves anew. Do you know why? Because we can choose to be the person that we prefer to be.

Relationships reflect exactly what we need to experience. They allow us to explore and discover more of who we are choosing to be.

In the presence of this relationship, who are you choosing to be?

Do you choose to condemn them? Judge them? Blame them?

Or do you chose to self assess. What have you done to contribute to the situation? What actions would you have taken instead?

Reality check: you did contribute to this in one way, shape or form, but the point here is not to sulk in regret. Instead, you are to take responsibility for your role. Then you can walk-away the most self-empowered version of yourself.

  • Are you displaying toxic behaviors yourself?
  • Are you making it okay for someone else to do the same?
  • Are you not drawing healthy boundaries?

Honoring yourself also being real with yourself. That’s the only way to grow.

Last Point to Walk Away With (pun intended)

What is the role of other people in our lives, anyways?

Their role is to help us define ourselves more. We perceive ourselves in comparison to other people and our relationship to them.

Being in a toxic relationship taught me that I ain’t responsible for changing someone else so that they can fit my agenda. I am not here to fix them or control them.

That caused me way too much pain and suffering.

The key to self-transformation? I am only responsible for changing, fixing, or controlling myself.

And if someone does not fit in with my personal vision of self-transformation and personal growth, then it may be time to chunk up the deuce. ✌?