Falling for someone toxic doesn’t make you stupid. The reason they’re so toxic in the first place is because there are multiple sides to their personality. If they were all bad, then you wouldn’t have been tempted to get into a relationship with them in the first place. You would have kept your distance from the start because you would have known they were nothing but trouble.

Most of the time, the reason someone is so toxic is because they have a sweet side too. They can be generous. They can be funny. They can be thoughtful. They make you feel beautiful when they aren’t making you feel like complete shit.

It can be difficult to accept that someone you care about can have such charming qualities and such destructive qualities at the same time. You would rather put them in box to neatly label them as good or bad — which is a dangerous thing to do because it ends with you flipping back and forth with how you feel about them.

On the days you consider them bad, you swear you’re never going to speak to them again, you pack your bags, you get ready to walk out of their life and never look back. But as soon as they show you their sweet side again, you believe they’re good again. You believe things are going to change because deep down they’re a kind, gentle person.

The hardest thing that you’re going to have to grow to accept is that they can be both. They can be sweet and nasty. They can be generous and vindictive. They can be supportive and discouraging. You have to ask yourself whether you can live with both sides of their personality — and whether you should live with both sides.

Everyone has their weak spots, and everyone has their bad days, but that doesn’t mean they should take their frustrations out on you. That doesn’t mean you deserve to be treated so poorly. You can find someone else who isn’t going to feel like a completely different person based on the day (or the hour or the minute). You can find someone consistent. Someone who is still going to treat you with respect even when you’re in the middle of an argument, even when they’re overtired, even when they’re drunk.

Toxic people are so hard to walk away from because there are plenty of good qualities to cancel out their bad qualities — but you can’t pay too much attention to how they treat you on their good days and completely ignore how horribly they treat you on their bad days. You deserve to be treated well every single day of the year. You deserve someone who would never dream of hurting you.

Maybe the toxic person in your life will change the way you’ve been hoping they would — but you have to ask yourself whether there’s any evidence that is going to happen, whether they tend to keep their promises, whether you’re only going to get hurt by them again and again.