You work hard, take care of yourself, treat your friends like the queens they are, yet somehow you still end up dating the most toxic person on the planet. It happens.
Even the smartest of us are blinded when it comes to love, but being in an unhealthy relationship can have serious adverse side effects.
The simple act of staying in a bad situation can literally ruin your life in so many ways. Here’s a list of them below:
1. It can ruin your self-esteem
If your self-esteem is taking a huge hit because your partner is horrible to you or insists on betraying you whenever they can, it’s not going to bode well for all other areas of life. You’ll start to doubt yourself as a person, a friend, a coworker —everything. All of your great ideas will now seem like duds and you’ll lose the part of yourself that makes you go for gold.
2. You’ll be tired all the time
Putting your all into something but receiving nothing back is exhausting. Relationships shouldn’t be about giving to get, but if you’re the only one being generous and going out of your way to care for your partner, it’s going to drain you day by day. Eventually, that tiredness will turn into chronic fatigue and you won’t be able to get anything else done.
3. Negativity will surround you
When you’re constantly in a negative frame of mind because of your toxic relationship, that will spill out into other areas of your life. The street where you once saw cute dogs on the way to work will be replaced with nothing but left behind dog poop. You’ll see the bad side of everything.
4. It can help solidity bad patterns
If you’re in a bad relationship and it’s not the first time, staying in one can help you get even more comfortable with those types of situations. This will establish a subconscious pattern for you, which will be that much harder to break once you do finally get free of the relationship.
5. It can turn you into someone you’re not
The stress and turmoil of a bad relationship can bring out behaviors that you may not indulge in otherwise. Maybe you drink a whole lot more than you used to or you picked up your old habit of smoking cigarettes to manage the stress. Those are just two examples, but the parts of you that you don’t necessarily like will come out because you’re constantly under a dark cloud.
6. It can make you lose hope for the future
Bad relationships have a way of hindering any hope for finding a good one if you do ever break free. For some reason, terrible partners can make you believe the notion that maybe there’s no such thing as a real and loving relationship. When that happens—when your hope dies—a little piece of your heart dies along with it.
7. You’ll lose trust in yourself
Making bad decisions—like getting into and staying in a bad relationship—will have you questioning your own mind. Why didn’t you see it coming? Why couldn’t you have made a better choice? Why did you stay so long? The constant interrogation of yourself will only lead to more self-hate and a hindered ability to trust your gut in the future.
