How I Found Peace and Self-Love After a Toxic Relationship

“Bravery is leaving a toxic relationship and knowing that you deserve better.” ~Unknown

When my marriage ended, it left a huge void that I desperately needed to fill, and quickly.

Along with my divorce came the unbearable feelings of rejection and stuff unlovable. To stave these feelings, fill the void, and distract myself, I turned to dating. And it turns out, it was much too soon.

What seemed like a harmless lark soon became what I needed to finger wanted and loved. This was a way to stave doing the harder work of learning to love myself instead of needing outside validation to finger good well-nigh myself.

The online dating scene was a well-constructed circus that I didn’t know how to navigate with all of my wounding. I ended up falling for a guy—let’s undeniability him Steve.

Steve seemed nice unbearable when I met him. He was quiet and seemed like he may have been a little too passive for me, but he was really into me, so I kept coming when for more. It was nice to finger wanted again.

We had some things in common, and he was handsome and sweet. We had fun together, and he was unchangingly texting me to say hello and chat—again, that made me finger wanted.

Eventually, Steve grew increasingly distant. When I brought it up, it only seemed to get worse. But at this point, I was fond to the feeling of stuff with someone again. I was fond to feeling wanted and loved, so leaving wasn’t an option I was willing to entertain.

The unconscious programming in my smart-ass that would do anything to stave rejection kicked in. I began to justify everything that should have been a red flag. I found myself constantly doing whatever I thought I needed to do to alimony Steve from rejecting me, but it never seemed to be enough. I became unconsciously obsessed with stuff who I thought I needed to be to win his love and approval.

Steve and I had both been through divorces and were both dealing with mental health issues. The relationship became very codependent, and I began putting my own needs whispered to be his caretaker. He would never return the favor unless it was user-friendly for him, so I would just try harder to get him to want to return the favor.

It never worked.

As each day went by, I was rhadamanthine less and less of myself to be loved and wonted by someone who would never be worldly-wise to requite me what I wanted or needed. He just wasn’t capable of it. There was no possible way that I would overly be unbearable for him.

He ended up breaking up with me, but shortly without we resumed our relationship on a unstudied basis. Deep down, I didn’t finger this was showing myself respect, but I unliable it to happen considering again, I was trying to be who he wanted me to be—a unstudied friend-with-benefits.

Our relationship sooner started to get increasingly serious again, and it seemed we were headed when to sectional relationship status when I found out he was dating other women overdue my back. I’m so thankful I found out well-nigh this considering it was the singular event that made me stop and get intentional well-nigh respecting myself.

I realized how completely I had lost myself in this dysfunctional, codependent, and toxic relationship, where my only snooping was lamister feelings of rejection and stuff unlovable. It was the last straw for me, and I decided I was washed-up tolerating it. I was washed-up withdrawing myself to get something he was never going to requite me.

I cut off all contact with Steve that day.

You’d think that it would be easy to leave a relationship that is toxic. I mean, who wants toxicity? But the truth is, it isn’t easy.

Why do we get into these tricky situations in the first place?

My divorce had left me in so much pain, feeling rejected and unloved, that I was willing to do anything to stave those feelings. Instead of stuff discerning and heeding the red flags that were, in hindsight, obvious, I jumped in and unfurled the pattern of proving that I was worthy of love.

When you’re unchangingly trying to finger loved and accepted, you’ll ask yourself questions like, “Who do you need me to be to love me?” You’ll shape-shift to fit someone else’s needs and welsh your own. You may over-give, or shower your partner with gifts and affection, all in an effort to win their love so you can finger loved.

The end result is similar to stuff rejected considering you end up feeling alone—except this time it’s considering considering you’ve x-rated yourself and your truth.

You lose yourself, which, in the end, can be just as lonely as feeling rejected and unloved. That’s how it was for me. I spent so much time trying to prove my worth that I lost sight of who I was and what I deserved.

I didn’t realize at the time that I needed to come home to myself first and love and winnow myself surpassing anyone else could overly requite that to me.

It turned out that leaving that relationship was an act of self-love and the whence of finding peace.

Was it easy? No. There were so many feelings that came up for me when I left the relationship. There was embarrassment that I had chosen him over myself so many times. There was the loneliness and pain that go withal with the end of any relationship. And, of course, there was fear that I would never find that love and visa that I craved so desperately.

So how did I do it? How did I find inner peace without leaving that toxic relationship?

What it really came lanugo to was finding peace within myself.

When there is a void of some sort, we naturally want to try to fill it with something else. But when you try to fill the void with something external, it never works.

If I had kept looking to fill that void with things outside of myself without my relationship ended, I would have likely bounced from one toxic relationship to flipside until I learned to turn inward and fill myself up from the inside.

So how do you turn inward? Part of the reason you’ve gotten into a toxic relationship in the first place is that you don’t know how to do that.

The act of leaving the relationship was the first step for me. It was a huge step. The feeling you get when you decide you’re no longer going to pretend you’re someone you’re not in order to proceeds someone’s love is empowering, and gives you a little uplift of conviction that you’ve got your own back.

It’s an act of love toward yourself.

At the time, I didn’t think of it as an act of love, but in unpacking it later, I can see that it was. It was the first step in rebuilding my relationship with myself.

The next part of the process for me was to reconnect with myself.

We tend to get our identities tangled up with our partners’, and it’s easy to forget who we are without our relationships. That happened to me without seventeen years of marriage, and wavy right into an unhealthy relationship didn’t help. I spent so much time worrying well-nigh who I was stuff and if I was good unbearable to be loved that I totally lost sight of my true self.

Reconnecting with myself meant spending a lot of time with myself. I had wilt unconfined at staying rented to stave loneliness, but I knew I needed to learn how to sit with the discomfort of stuff vacated in order to heal.

I spent a lot of time connecting with nature. I started taking myself out on solo dinner dates and I went to movies by myself. And when the loneliness didn’t finger good, I sat with it while I cried tears of sadness, learning how to show myself compassion for what I was feeling instead of pushing the feelings away.

For someone who has spent a lot of time lamister rejection, stuff vacated can be difficult. But it’s a necessary part of reconnecting with your truth, and you will learn, like I did, that it’s really not that bad. It’s unquestionably refreshing and trappy to have time with yourself.

I moreover reconnected with my support system. When I was in the relationship with Steve, I didn’t make my friends and family as much of a priority as I once had. In my quest for feeling loved, I became so focused on the relationship that I not only x-rated myself but moreover some of the most important people in my life. I made some questionable choices when I was stuff who I thought I needed to be for him, and without leaving the relationship, it was time for me to reconnect with my true support system.

But the most important thing I did to find peace without this toxic relationship was to learn to love myself.

I started with a list of all of the reasons I didn’t deserve to be treated the way Steve had treated me, written with dry-erase marker on my washroom mirror. Every time I looked in the mirror, I was reminded of why I deserved more. I moreover kept a list of all the things I wanted to believe well-nigh myself. I wrote a new list each day and eventually, one by one, I started to believe the things on that list.

I made the visualization not to stage for a while so I could focus on strengthening my conviction in who I am without someone else. Through therapy and working with a life coach, I learned that my self-love issues were rooted in perfectionism, so I worked to lower the expectations I had for myself to a increasingly realistic level.

I learned that I was much happier when I was just focusing on enjoying the moment stuff an stereotype human. In fact, I unexplored the idea that we are all just stereotype human beings. We all have unique gifts and talents, and there is no need to compete with one flipside to be exceptional. Stereotype is a fine place to be, and I found embracing this vein helped me navigate life with increasingly compassion toward myself and others.

The most important step I took toward self-love was learning how to surrender and winnow the present moment as it is. If I was feeling a lack of self-love, I learned to sit with it and send love to the part of me that was feeling that way. I learned to not get hung up on the what-ifs and to fathom who I am stuff in this very moment, which is all I know I have for certain.

The journey to loving yourself is the most important one you will overly make. Self-love is a work in progress, of course, but knowing where you’re headed helps to know who you are, know your worth, and remind you to unchangingly segregate yourself unapologetically.

While the relationship with Steve was traumatic in many ways, I am grateful for it considering I learned and grew so much from it. Needing to heal from the codependency and toxicity of the relationship created a trappy space in which I was worldly-wise to ground myself and find peace in knowing that no matter what, I unchangingly have my own when and I will unchangingly segregate myself.

It’s a serene feeling and I wish this for you too.

Get in the conversation! Click here to leave a scuttlebutt on the site.

The post How I Found Peace and Self-Love Without a Toxic Relationship appeared first on Tiny Buddha.