Toxic Relationships

http://www.sxc.hu/photo/867275

How Do You Know When It’s Time to Go?

By Shannon Hembree

Have you ever been in a toxic relationship? You know, the kind of relationship that makes you doubt everything about yourself – the kind where you give and give and give and are totally crushed when he doesn’t give back. It’s the kind of relationship where you think your guy is so great that even if it isn’t the perfect relationship, you’re lucky to have him.

Sometimes you know when you are in a relationship that it is bad for you. Other times, you look back and wonder why you didn’t recognize the signs sooner, because they were definitely there. Or maybe, you saw the signs, but chose to look the other way, because you wanted so badly for the relationship to work. So what are the signs, and at what point do you just know that it is time to go? Below are a few examples of how women came to the realization that their relationship was over.

“I knew when my boyfriend didn’t come into my house to pick me up for prom. He honked from his car. We didn’t get any before-prom pictures at my house. My mom took one of me alone before I left.”

“I thought things were going well. I, of course, was envisioning our future together, and he just stopped calling. OK, that didn’t signal to me that he was not interested. When he did call, and I asked what was going on, he said he had just been busy and didn’t want to call if he didn’t have time to get together. OK, I can possibly get that…then I asked what he had been so busy doing…well, it seems he had been busy speed dating.”

“I knew it was time to go when we had broken up for the fifth time.”

“He would be great and really into me, and then he would stop calling for a while. When he wouldn’t call, I would write in my diary about how I loved him and then I would write how I hated him and then I would wonder over and over why he wouldn’t call. It was pretty sick.”

“I knew it was time to go when I would have preferred death over staying in the relationship. I could not fathom any more time with that person knowing it was making me so miserable and making me so awful to everyone around me.”

“I knew it was time when I realized I was better off without him than with him.”

Being in a bad relationship can sometimes be like watching a movie where you know how it will end, but you really want – and almost half expect – it to end differently. Just like the movies, bad relationships don’t develop happy endings if you wish hard enough that they will. It may seem impossible while you are in a bad relationship, but you will find the right guy for you when the time is right. So don’t settle for a toxic relationship, because you think you can fix it or you can’t do any better. You can’t fix it, and you can do better. You deserve to be treated well, and there are great guys out there who will do that. That’s the way it should be.

Tags: bad, doubt, relationship, time to go, toxic