1.

We become comfortable with negative feelings and are afraid to break away. Sometimes we can’t imagine a relationship without fighting, without making us feel like we are useless.

---

2.

We don’t feel like we deserve better, so we stick it out with someone who doesn’t tell us how much they love us—or more than that, show us how much they love us.

---

3.

We are lacking purpose and don’t know how to find it or where it is, so we think our relationship gives us some purpose.

---

4.

We think we can change the person or hope someday they will wake up from their misery and stop pushing it on us—this will never happen.

---

5.

We become so attached and the thought of being alone is too scary and staying in a toxic relationship is easier and less scary.

---

6.

We have seen toxic relationships in our lives, whether a parent or someone else we believe that in some way our relationship is not that bad or it could be worse.

---

7.

We love the person, and we think love is enough to get through anything when it reality it cannot make a person completely happy.

---

I stayed in a relationship like this for one year and was totally obsessed with the person who treated me like shit. I never thought I deserved or could get better. It finally ended when he dumped me, and it was then that I realized that the “toxic” had become normal to me. I realized that the love I had was not what he had felt, and some people feel good in making others feel miserable. We cannot allow ourselves to engage selfish individuals such as this because quite honestly they don’t deserve it and we deserve far better.