How do I heal while I’m in a toxic relationship?
Dara writes: “I know that healing and having your own self worth should be something you do regardless of marital status, and I'm nearly certain divorce is the only choice...that said, I'm afraid (because divorce means trade offs I never wanted to make and I feel like I'm grieving). If, for some reason, it works out...I can't figure out how to heal WHILE still married to someone who caused me so much pain (grooming, cheating, manipulation, addiction). How can I heal while still being in a toxic relationship?”
Dear Dara,
Your question is a great one, because it centers on whether it’s possible to heal relationship trauma while you’re still in the midst of being hurt emotionally within your marriage.
In order to answer this question, you might first ask yourself whether it’s possible to build up your sense of self-worth while living with someone who’s always trying to tear you down?
Imagine for a moment that your life with this person who causes you so much pain is similar to living on a battlefield. In other words, you never know exactly what’s going to happen next, but experience shows that whatever it is will not be good. Trying to keep yourself safe on a battlefield requires never letting down your guard and always being prepared for whatever’s coming your way.
When we’re living in a relationship battlefield, we’re not focused on emotional healing. We’re just trying to survive and keep going. We can’t simultaneously focus on trying to survive another day and also start the process of healing.
Survival in hostile territory requires always keeping our guard up and being vigilant about protecting ourselves from what’s coming. Healing requires being able to let down our guard and turn our focus inward for a time.
Another big barrier to healing while you’re still in a toxic relationship is that you’re still being hurt.
We heal from things that happened in the past. But you’re in a present day situation where you have reason to expect that you’re going to continue to be hurt.
So my simple answer is no, it’s not possible to heal relationship trauma while we’re still in a toxic relationship. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing you can do to start the process of healing.
So let’s talk about what you can do while you’re still in this toxic relationship to move toward a time when you can begin to heal.
That way, if and when you decide that you’re ready to move on from this relationship, you’ll already have a head start on the emotional and psychological work that’s necessary in order to leave this relationship behind.
Here are three things you can do right now, whether or not you leave:
1. Let go of trying to earn love, approval, or respect from your partner.
You are completely deserving of love, care, and respect in your marriage. That might be hard for you to believe at this point in time, having lived through the grooming, lies, manipulation, addiction, and all the other chaos that comes along with toxic relationships. Being mistreated in relationships messes with our sense of self-worth at a fundamental level and it also erodes clarity about how we deserve to be treated in an intimate relationship.
So, let’s say this one more time: you are completely deserving of love, care, and respect in your marriage.
But that doesn’t mean you’re going to get it in this relationship. In fact, all evidence points to the harsh reality that you are not going to receive that kind of love and care in this relationship.
The sooner you can accept this reality, the sooner you’ll be able to stop trying to earn the love, approval, and respect that your partner is never going to give you.
You are never going to earn his love. You are never going to win his approval. No matter how hard you try, you’re never going to be able to prove to him that you’re worthy of being treated with love, care, kindness, and respect. It’s not about what you are worth, or about trying harder, or being patient—about ways you could change, or even about ways he could change.
The reality is that in healthy relationships, we don’t have to earn love. We don’t have to convince the other person that we’re deserving of kindness, care, affection, and honesty. That’s a given, because it’s part of the fabric of a healthy relationship.
When that’s missing—as it is in your relationship—the only thing to do is accept that your relationship is missing the fundamental elements of a healthy relationship.
It’s not your fault. It doesn’t mean that you’re not good enough.
It just is. And the sooner you can accept that, the easier it will be for you to stop trying to do the impossible, to stop trying to turn this toxic relationship into something it will never be.
One of the reasons that toxic relationships can be so powerfully seductive for those of us who learned somewhere along the line that it is our job to earn love is that it can really feel like if we just try harder and be better, we’re going to win someone’s love.
We imagine that someday we’re going to crack this seemingly-impossible code and finally we’re going to convince someone we’re lovable. But that’s not how love works. We don’t have the power to make anyone love us.
Accepting this truth—that you don’t have the power to make your husband treat you well—is actually an invitation to step back and look at the reality of your relationship.
It’s an invitation to begin grieving for what you hoped for this relationship that never was and will be.
Once you give yourself permission to stop trying to fix things—to fix him and fix yourself and make miracle transformations happen within this relationship—you make space for yourself to start grieving.
You can grieve for the person you were when you decided that this relationship would be The One, the person who brought all her hopes and dreams and best intentions into this marriage.
You can grieve for how much you’ve suffered. You can grieve for the loss of the fantasy that you could make everything better just by trying hard to somehow be better and more acceptable. You can grieve and let go of your dreams for the future and what you’d hoped this relationship could be … if only things changed.
You can grieve for the loss of the dream that you would eventually earn his love, care, approval, respect.
What I’ve observed is that many people really resist letting go of the belief that if they keep trying, they can fix their toxic relationship. The fantasy that things will get better, if only you stay faithful and hopeful, is a way of avoiding having to grieve. I get it.
As long as you’re caught up in the cycle of focusing on the fantasy that someday you’ll be good enough, then there’s always a better future that you can dream of finally reaching. With all your focus on the future, you don’t have to be in the present moment, facing the reality that it’s literally not within your power to make someone else love you.
No matter how amazing you on, no matter how much you do or all the things you try or how much you love the other person. It’s simply impossible to earn another person’s love.
Grieving a toxic relationship is painful work, but it is work that will take you somewhere new … to a place where you know that you want something better for your life.
2. Let go of trying to create mutual understanding in your relationship.
In a healthy relationship, couples can have conversations about their perspectives on situations in their relationship that are focused on developing a cohesive, shared perspective. For example, if an argument erupts over whose turn it is to pick up their daughter from daycare, couples can talk through the situation, with the expectation that by the end of the conversation, they will likely be on the same page about what happened and how to anticipate and avoid similar situations in the future.
But that’s not how it goes in toxic relationships. Instead, any attempts you make to create a shared sense of reality are used by your partner as opportunities to manipulate, confuse, or demean you.
This is especially true if you are trying to get your partner to recognize the impact that their toxic behaviors have on you.
Instead of trying to figure out the right words you can use to finally get him to see where you’re coming from, take that energy and focus on validating your own perspective on the situation.
For example, if you discover your partner has lied to you, rather than confronting him with the hope of getting an apology or a commitment that he will do better (when, realistically, that’s extremely unlikely at this point), use that energy to validate for yourself: I deserve to want to have a partner who is honest with me.
Giving up on trying to come to an agreement with your partner about what’s not working in your relationship is harder in practice than it might seem. As humans, we all want to feel understood by others. That’s how we feel connected.
We especially want to be able to create a shared sense of reality and mutual understanding within our intimate relationships. So although your desire to be understood is perfectly healthy, the reality is this desire will never be fulfilled in this relationship. Instead, it will also be used against you.
What I mean is that the more you attempt to get your partner to see things from your perspective, the more your partner will use these opportunities to twist your sense of reality and create more self-doubt, until you’re left wondering: Am I really making a big deal about nothing? It seemed like he was lying, but maybe he’s telling the truth and I just got the facts wrong.
Breaking out of this cycle of self-doubt requires making a determined effort to separate your perspective from your partner’s and let go of trying to get him to see things through your eyes.
Instead, practice listening to yourself more closely, so that your own voice begins to become louder and louder in your mind while your partner’s voice starts becoming quieter. If you have a private space to write down your thoughts and descriptions of events as they happen, you can look back at your descriptions of what’s happened whenever you start to doubt your own perspective on situations in the relationship. In other words, your written accounts of what happens will become an extremely valuable reality check.
3. Invest your energy in building connection with others.
People who are caught in toxic relationships for a long time tend to become very isolated from others.
In some cases, this is because partners actively try to destroy one’s relationships, as a way of creating isolation and dependence on the toxic relationship. Other times, the shame of what’s happening in one’s intimate relationship is enough to put a wedge between oneself and others in one’s life, so that relationships become more distant over time. And sometimes, when you’ve shared a lot with others about how bad your relationship is and they’ve given you a lot of support, but you haven’t used that support to get yourself out of the relationship, others tend to back away from their relationship with you as a way to step off the emotional rollercoaster of your relationship.
Realistically, when you are on the toxic relationship rollercoaster, it’s hard to invest care and attention into other relationships when your marriage takes up so much mental space.
However, now that you’re looking to prepare yourself to begin to heal your relationship trauma, you will definitely want to focus on building other connections and relationships away from your marriage.
At Alchemy of Love, our philosophy is that what is wounded in connection heals in connection. In other words, relational trauma heals in relationships. Nurturing loving relationships with ourselves is a vital part of healing trauma. We also need to create close relationships with trusted, safe others. If you don’t currently have close, trusted others in your life, a place to begin building relationship is by finding a trauma-informed helping professional who has experience working with individuals in toxic or abusive relationships.
Some final thoughts: while you won’t be able to fully heal relationship trauma as long as you’re continuing to experience hurt in your relationship, you can still begin taking steps in the directions I’ve outlined here to begin showing yourself the love, care, kindness, and support that you’ve been deprived of within your marriage.
Remember that many, many people have been right where you are. They’ve walked the path of healing after a toxic relationship and gotten themselves to the other side—freedom.
You don’t have to make any immediate decisions about what to do with your marriage. You simply have to put one foot in front of the other and walk in the direction you want to go.
And on that note, I am wishing you tremendous goodness in your life as you take the first steps toward healing. You deserve it.
~Angela
Ask Angela is an advice column dedicated to the topic of having fulfilling relationships after trauma. Click HERE to submit a question for Angela.
DISCLAIMER: this content is intended for informational purposes only and does not constitute professional medical or psychological advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other licensed health care provider with any questions or concerns you may have regarding a medical condition.
about angela Amias, LCSW
Angela Amias, LCSW is a relationship therapist and nationally-recognized expert on trauma and relationships. She’s the co-founder of Alchemy of Love, which provides trauma-informed relationship programs and resources. She’s also the founder of the Institute for Trauma Informed Relationships, which provides training and education to therapists and coaches who want to help their clients heal past wounds and create more fulfilling relationships.
As an expert on trauma and relationships, Angela has been featured in numerous publications, including Today, Oprah, Cosmopolitan, The Independent, Well + Good, Inc., Forbes, Business Insider, Salon, MSN, Women’s Health and the Toronto Sun.
