What Am I Doing Wrong?
Sometimes you wonder if you have some kind of beacon that calls to all the assholes in the universe. Despite your best efforts, you find yourself in toxic relationships with partners, friends, and even family members. You want to have deep, meaningful connections but you often find yourself in relationships that feel wrong, one-sided, or problematic. Instead of making your life better, your relationships just make you feel like crap. Even worse, when you try to address your concerns, you’re treated like you’re “crazy” or promised that things will get better, yet nothing ever changes.
Why Does This Keep Happening?
It seems like you end up in the same kinds of relationships over and over again. You love so deeply and unconditionally yet can’t seem to receive the same love in return. At times you feel neglected, misunderstood, maybe even abused. It hurts so much that all the love and energy you give out is never reciprocated. You wonder if you’ve done something terrible to deserve being treated this way and that’s why your relationships all follow a similar pattern.
I Just Want to be Loved
You see other people in healthy relationships and all you have are questions:
“Why not me?”
“Are my standards are too high?”
“What if I just don’t deserve that kind of relationship?”
You believe relationships are work but don’t understand why you’re the only one putting in the work. Even worse, it seems that after bending over backward you only end up hurt, rejected, or feeling stuck in a relationship that doesn’t feel good
It’s Not Bad All the Time
And if you are in that stuck place where you know the relationship isn’t healthy but you just can’t seem to leave, I understand your struggle. People don’t stay in toxic relationships because they are all bad – there are also elements of goodness there. Sometimes it’s even great, it just never seems to last. You often find yourself hoping that this person can change and be the person they have the potential to be. Maybe even the person who they were when you first met or before things got so hard. That hope for change often keeps us around even when we feel like we aren’t getting much out of the relationship.
Maybe I Deserve This
At the same time, when we stay in relationships that aren’t good for us, we feel a tremendous amount of shame. We should be stronger, we should leave, we should be able to get out. You may have even been told by friends or family members that you should leave, that you deserve better, or that they don’t want to hear you talk about your relationship problems anymore. This leads to you feeling even more isolated and alone because they just don’t understand. You feel judged, sad, alone, and you wonder why you are so weak. “What will I take before I finally leave,” you might say to yourself. “How bad will it have to get?” These feelings of shame may lead you to a place where you feel like you deserve to be treated this way and that nothing can get better. That is simply not true.
