I think in a toxic relationship one doesn’t actually realize how bad it is. It isn’t that they are naive or lack such self-confidence that they endure it I just think it’s a relationship that gets seen through rose colors lenses. It’s a relationship that isn’t 100% bad all the time, which is why people get away with it. But more than that there’s a love there for the way the person is at their best that makes it hard to walk away.

And when you’ve invested enough time and energy into someone you don’t want to be wrong about them. You don’t want to accept you wasted time and energy in someone who was a lost cause.

It takes everything in her to walk away. But once she does it’s a completely different person who comes out of the relationship as a result. Walking away might seem like the easy part but it isn’t. It is everything after that which is hard. It’s learning to not only trust others again or love someone else but learning to trust yourself and love yourself while someone spent time teaching you, you didn’t deserve it.

1. Understand she’s not weak for staying in it.

She’s not weak for being with someone who didn’t deserve her and manipulated her over time. Toxic people are the ones who are weak for needing to control someone and knock them down to feel better about themselves.

When a toxic person doesn’t have control of parts of their own life they try and control others.

2. She’s strong for enduring it as long as she did.

There’s strength in believing in someone so much you love them through their worst parts. There’s strength in hoping they stay their best self all the time. But toxic people have two very opposite sides to them. It’s the charming charismatic side, then there is the part of them that loses their temper and takes it out on the last person who deserves it.

3. Understand she’s forgotten what she deserves.

When you endure mistreatment long enough your standards shift from high expectations to suddenly hanging into good moments that are few and far between.

It’s going to throw her off entirely when you start treating her normally. It’s unfamiliar to her but that doesn’t give you a pass to treat her less than she deserves for it.

4. So you gotta teach her how a real man treats someone.

Constantly show her this is what you deserve and everything in the past was something you didn’t.

5. Understand her expectations are very low.

She’s expecting everything to end badly. She’s not setting the bar high or getting her hopes up at all. She’s just going through the motions checking her back because she’s learned she has to.

6. Simply to protect herself from getting hurt again.

If overcoming a toxic relationship has taught her anything it’s that she’ll never let someone hurt her, control her, or impact her so much as her past relationship. She changed because that was her only chance of overcoming it and walking away.

7. Understand she doesn’t trust you or herself at all.

When the person she chose completely deceived her and turned out not being what she expected and she endured it for longer than she should have, not only does she question others but she questions her own judgment as well.

8. It’s something that will take time and patience.

Every move you make, everything that happens, you gotta follow her lead in it. She’s scared and doesn’t trust people. That’s going to take time, to build back up.

9. Understand she’s going to doubt and overthink everything.

Overthinking and those red flags in her head are there to protect her. She’s not going to trust you at all at first. But if you can understand it isn’t you, she doesn’t trust it’s people in her past that made her question even good guys, maybe you’ll gain sympathy and understanding of where she’s coming from and work with her through it.

10. And when you get too close she’ll push you away.

She has walls higher than anyone. And there are very few that get past it. Just when you think you’ve made progress with her and you’re starting to get somewhere, she’s going to pull away. Just let her come back around. Don’t suffocate her. Don’t pressure her. She’s used to that and she doesn’t respond well to it.

11. Understand she’s going to think there’s some catch.

While you’re simply treating her the way you were taught to treat women, to her it’s unusual. In the past, kindness has come bearing favors and used as blackmail. So the concept of being nice because she deserves it is foreign to her.

Teach her she deserves genuine kindness just because.

12. Understand that she thinks fighting is normal.

She’s going to anticipate fighting. She’s going to expect things to end only to begin again. She expects running in circles.

That first fight she’s going to expect you to take off running and it’s her fault.

When you fight with someone toxic they manipulate you into thinking the cause and effect is never them but something you caused them to do.

“Had you done this correctly I wouldn’t have yelled as much as I did.”

“Had you not acted that way I wouldn’t have gone after you.”

The common phrase of “you made me do it,” justifies mistreatment.

13. And will apologize even when she’s not wrong.

If you guys do fight, she’s always going to be the one to take the heat and apologize. She just wants to the fight to end and she’ll do anything to ensure that.

14. Understand she’s going to try really hard all the time.

When you are in a toxic relationship you’re always trying to prove you deserve them and they don’t do anything to reciprocate it. It’s led her to think to gain anyone’s interest she’s gonna have to try really hard.

At first, her gestures and kindness will be unusually over the top because people who come out of toxic relationships treat others so well for three reasons.

The first is nothing they ever did was good enough so they had to try hard.

The second is, she gave someone else the love she should have been giving herself but forgot she deserved.

Third, she will never treat someone the way other have treated her in fact, she uses that mistreatment to do the complete opposite.

So when she loves again and lets someone new into her life, you’re going to get all these things and it’s going to blow you away.

15. But doesn’t expect you to do the same.

She doesn’t do things in hopes it comes back to her. She does things because making someone else happy brings her happiness.

16. She will open up to you about her past.

Eventually, she will trust you enough to tell you everything. Even though she’s really nervous to. She considers vulnerability weakness. But she’ll tell you these things and not even get worked up about it. And it will be in those moments she tells you the worst things that have ever happened to her, you see strength in her eyes.

17. And it’ll be there you fall in love with her.

You’ll fall in love with her for the person she became as a result of all of this. You’ll look at her and want to treat her well for every person in her past who never did.

It’ll be there you teach her love isn’t about control.

Love isn’t manipulation.

You build her back up and love her the way she deserves and in return, you get a love so pure, so genuine, and so unconditional, she’ll heal you in ways you didn’t even know you needed just as you did her.