The longer you date a toxic human, the more you’ll resemble the worst parts of them. It’s not that you find their behavior acceptable. It’s that, in order to survive your relationship, in order to cope with the horrible way they treat you, you’re going to have to do some lying and manipulating of your own.

You’ll lie to your friends and family about arguments and insults and bruises in order to make your partner look better, in order to prevent your loved ones from hating them, or even worse, nagging you to break up with them. You’ll leave out key details from stories you’re too ashamed to tell and skip over parts that you don’t want to relive. You might even distance yourself from your loved ones, because you don’t want to lie to them, so it’s easier to ignore their texts.

Of course, the lying doesn’t stop there. You’ll lie to your person in order to keep yourself out of trouble. It’s not that you’ve done anything wrong. It’s that you know what sets them off.

Maybe they get angry whenever you speak to another man, so you never mention the guy at work who has been training you or the neighbor who spoke to you while you were getting the mail. Instead of accepting the fact your partner has unfair rules for you and you should break up with them, you find a way around those rules. You learn how to navigate your toxic relationship without causing any extra ripples. You learn how to prevent the drama whenever possible by lying and leaving out information that would set your partner off.

When you’re in a toxic relationship, you’ll lie to yourself most of all. You’ll tell yourself that every relationship has speed bumps. Every relationship goes sour after the puppy love phase. Every relationship needs some work.

Every single time they screw up, you’ll lie to yourself about how you’re not leaving this time but you’ll definitely leave if they make another mistake, if they hurt you again, if they repeat the behavior they’ve already been repeating for months. You’ll lie to yourself about how this is love, about how this is okay, about how you can handle this, about how it could be worse, about how you’re lucky to have anyone at all. You’ll lie to yourself because it’s too painful to admit you’ve been with the wrong person this entire time.

The longer you’re in a toxic relationship, the less you’ll recognize yourself. The less happy you’ll be with yourself. The less you’ll trust yourself. The worst part is that you’ll start blaming yourself. Whenever your partner screws up, you’ll justify it by saying you aren’t perfect either, you’ve lied too, you’ve done some bad things too. This creates a dangerous cycle you don’t want to find yourself stuck in.

That’s why you need to get out of a toxic relationship as soon as possible. You need to pack your bags and leave. You need to save yourself because it won’t get better the longer you’re together. It’s only going to get worse.