Seven Lessons Learned from Letting Go of my Toxic Relationship

My ex and I were together for seven years. We were practically married, except of course, not really. Still, we were regarded in that way by close friends and some acquaintances in the music scene. On the outside things seemed so perfect between us, that even one guy showed a picture of us DJing together and used the hashtag #relationshipgoals (*cringe*). We really were in love, and had it not been for our poor communication skills, along with a heap of other issues, maybe we would still be together. But maybe it was that great sense of familiarity, that mundanity that creeped in over time that led to us taking things – and each other – for granted. In no time, what was once such a loving relationship became toxic.

The beginning of the end of us most likely started on Jan 1st, 2014, New Year’s Day. We had a big fight soon after returning from a one night’s stay at a resort on the east coast. At the time we were together for almost four and a half years, and we were still terrible at communicating. I was hurt that as soon as we got back from the resort, he had completely switched to work mode. My expectation was that we would continue to spend quality time together for the rest of the day, and not that he’d start calling up a friend to discuss music. So I lashed out, and he followed suit, and I left in tears, speeding off for home. We didn’t really smooth things over until almost three weeks afterwards. And those three weeks apart completely gutted me.

It wasn’t like we didn’t have terrible fights before, but from that moment on, things just got worse. Misunderstandings that should have been minor just escalated to blowout level, and we could spend a week or three not really talking or making up. Most of the fights usually started because whenever I noticed something I didn’t like, I called it out as soon as possible. I tried my best to not be bothered by everything under the sun, but obviously I wasn’t good at not being bothered.

I guess my main worry at the time was did this guy really care for me the way he said he did? If he really loved me, wouldn’t he do x and y for me? I had all these rules for what counted or didn’t count as love, all these expectations. You be the judge as to whether that was healthy or not. I’m still not really sure if all of my expectations were unreasonable. I thought I made it clear what I did and didn’t like. I liked when he said he loved me, but he rarely said it at all in the last couple of years. I didn’t like him to push my buttons, but he did that constantly anyway! He’d laugh even! The bottomline is whenever I didn’t like something, I made it known, but I have to admit I wasn’t very good at communicating it without anger.

Lesson #1: Effective communication is very important for a relationship. If you don’t have this, you can kiss your relationship goodbye.

One fine Saturday in July that year, we broke up. I initiated it. It was after another fight where he had shut down on me, and I was completely and understandably fed up. I tearfully packed up my things and left. But when I got home I instantly regretted it. When I tried to talk to him and to try to take back what I said, he said maybe it was for the best. I was heartbroken. I didn’t speak to him for days and tried to move on with my life. That moving on didn’t last long. By Wednesday night I called, still not over him, still not ready to get him out of my system. I decided that it would be a sign that things would work out for us if he answered. Surprise surprise, he did! I was so relieved. We decided to get back together and I was blissfully happy and in love.

Lesson #2: Don’t expect ‘signs’ to save your relationship.

Soon began this awful habit of breaking up and making up. Sometimes we would barely even see each other for months. And I was always the one making things worse because I wanted things to be better, and I wanted to see him, but he kept pulling away. In 2015, this happened a lot. And after our sixth anniversary, we barely got along for three months (!!!!). It was an absolutely devastating and soul-crushing time.

During one of our breakups in 2015, I had a revelation. I discovered that while I was so happy we were okay again, there was this brimming sense of self-loathing. I knew internally I was making a mistake, but my heart was still too in it, still so committed to him and to the idea of us being together forever. Further introspection revealed that I was becoming this person I no longer recognised. A person who was constantly wound up, angry, defensive, shrieky, and overly sensitive. My self-esteem was plummeting. And while I recognised all of these things, I still wasn’t ready to let go. My world still revolved too much around him.

Lesson #3: If you realise your relationship has changed you for the worse, then it’s not the right relationship.

And then came the emotional affair. One day in November, after we decided we wanted to make things work, he confessed that during one of the times that we weren’t speaking to each other, he met a girl at one of his gigs. They exchanged numbers and they started getting close to each other, but only via the phone. As soon as he realised he was starting to like her, he pulled away. He said it only lasted a week, and then he told her he couldn’t talk to her any more and wanted to make things work with me.

I was devastated. That week when we didn’t speak to each other, I was hoping that he’d call and want to talk to me. Instead, he was talking to this other woman? How dare he! I felt completely betrayed and heartbroken. I cried my heart out that night. But what did I do the next day? I forgave him and told him to come over. I was hurt but I was still too in love with him to let him go. And I believed him when he said that he wanted to make things work. He deleted her number as per my request and I took him back, on the condition that we finally try therapy.

Lesson #4: Don’t wait for things to get really bad before you see a couples’ therapist, because your relationship is probably too far gone by then.

I was surprised when my ex took the initiative to call up the list of therapists I’d compiled. It showed me that he was serious about us making things work. We selected a therapist and from our first session with her, things started to feel a lot better. We learned how to communicate more effectively through therapy, using the guidelines our therapist printed out for us. For an entire month, everything was pure bliss, as our number one problem was ‘solved’. Eric even started to say ‘I love you’ again, and everything felt like new. We felt the most connected in years.

Alas, all good things don’t last forever. My ex usually doesn’t like to follow the rules, whereas I was the rule enforcer. So even though the rules were meant to keep us in line and to maintain respect, he often broke those rules, accusing and verbally attacking me, while I desperately tried to remind him what the rules were. Sometimes I tried not to, because he took clear offence to my reminding him.

It was truly messy. Messy and above all, toxic. We were both depressed. I was suicidal. Every time we broke up, I would tell myself that that was it, I was done with him. But then I would miss him and want him back, and he would want me back. We wanted each other even though we were clearly unhappy together.

Lesson #5: If it smells like ‘toxic’, it probably already is.

Finally, our little ‘toe-stepping’ dance grew weary on me. The last straw was when I paid lots money for an online relationship course (US$500), expecting that he would take part in it with me. This was like the last last ditch effort, mind you. It was probably dumb, but I really cared about our relationship and wanted to save it. At first he was upset that I signed him up without talking to him about it first. In my defence, there really wasn’t much time to talk to him about it first because as soon as I heard about the course, it was going to start the next day. Nevertheless, I begged him to participate in it with me for the eight weeks, and he eventually agreed. While he paid attention to the phone call sessions, and appreciated the insights I had from each week’s lessons, he just didn’t care to do the work with me.

Anyway, that’s when I realised that as much as the coach said that two people in a relationship are like two cogs in a wheel, and one cog can affect the other cog, I just got tired of being that cog that did most or all of the work. That analogy just never worked in our scenario. In fact, the total last straw was realising that he would never be on my side the way I expected him too. He would never stand up for me and have my back the way a man should for a woman (or at least the way I felt he should). So finally, I ended it. I thought I would have been devastated, but I think I was too tired, too numb, too over it, to be devastated.

Lesson #6: You can try to do everything right and have the best intentions, and it could still backfire.

Where I am now in my life, I feel quite free. Weeks after the breakup, I chided myself for not really seeing the big red flags in our relationship that should have made me leave much earlier. But the point is you can only leave when you really have the strength, the courage, and the determination to. You may not be 100% sure but you already know it’s the right thing to do. You also need to reconcile your feelings of guilt if you worry about the timing of choosing to leave your partner when he’s not in a good place. You also need a support system. Mine was my therapist, my mom and my closest friends. When I ended things, I also asked them to remind me of the reasons why I broke up so I wouldn’t get back together with him yet again.

There’s life after losing the one you thought you would be with forever and always. It turns out that you can feel okay right away, where I think the faster you’ve been through so much shit in the relationship, the sooner you’ll recover. It’s now been five months and counting since we last broke up, although it feels like it’s been much longer than that. I’m still healing, as I’m still very sensitive to any situation that reminds me of one that I’ve had with my ex. But I’m alive, and I’m free, and that’s most important.

The best part of all is learning to put myself first again, after having devoted seven years to putting him and the relationship first. This is something that I think I’ll try to not do again. A relationship can’t become my everything, my sole purpose of being. It has to be me first, and then the relationship. And as much as I want a relationship to work, it can’t be up to me alone. It has to be up to both of us.

And finally …

Lesson #7: Not every relationship is meant to last, and you’ll live anyway.

I fully believe this now. You can try your hardest to make things work by reading every relationship article under the sun and trying to implement the advice. But when you start to find that the more you put in, the less you get out of it, maybe it’s time to stop trying.

Maybe it’s time to just let go.