When Love Hurts: Break up With Harmful Partnerships

This is a discussion about the hardest kind of person in the world to break up with. A relationship with them tends to begin like this. You're very drawn to them. Perhaps they very much attract you physically, and their personality is compelling as well. You admire them and in areas feel a lot of sympathy for them too. There's probably something in their past which really interests and touches you. You have no desire to break up, and in fact, you'd love this to last until the end. For their part, they seem to be keen on you. That's what they've said on a number of occasions. They show no interest in leaving you. They want this to be for the long term, perhaps forever. And yet there is a problem. A problem so grave and yet so hidden, so damaging, and yet so hard to grasp, that you can only bear slowly to. To face up to it. You start to realize that the partner whom you love and who says they love you is having a grievously detrimental effect on your mental and physical well being. What wrong might the partner be perpetrating? It can be a spectrum.

The Spectrum of Harmful Behaviors

At one end, they might be hitting you, but the spectrum is long, and it contains all sorts of far more insidious ways in which, without ever raising a hand, let alone a finger, one human can badly damage another. They might be having affairs or spending too much money. They might be addicted to something or. And this is properly hard to get a grip on. They may be constantly absent. They may show no reliable warmth towards you. They may never initiate any touch. They may never even give you so much as a hug. They're present, but not really there. Probably as soon as these problems first arose, you started to complain. But you did so softly, or sarcastically or bitterly, not head on. After all, you love them and you're a good boy or girl. It can take a long time, years, decades, before you finally dare to find your voice and come to a place of being able to raise an adult objection. What then happens when you at last ask these types to face up to the harm you feel they're doing to you? There are two main responses. Both of them are appallingly hard to master, and probably the second is the very hardest.

1. They confess it. Fed up. At last, you tell them that you've had enough of the violence, affairs, addiction, financial spend, distance, lack of intimacy, lack of sex, and you raise an ultimatum. If they don't finally raise their game, you're going to be leaving, even though, of course, it's the last thing you really want. You love them. You may be shaking and flushed. After you've spoken, you're feeling you might be crazy after all. Surely it's crazy to threaten to leave someone you love who says they love you? You'd expected all sorts of dark responses on their part, but something that is, on the surface, rather lovely now tends to happen. They admit it. They confess. They say, my goodness, you're right. I hadn't really fully realized until now, until you made me finally open my eyes to how I've harmed you. Baby. I hear you, baby, I'm so sorry. The person promises that they will now change. They just need a bit of time. They just need your understanding. They suggest getting themselves a therapist once a month or so, and then they'll get on top of their issues. Their ready candor is deeply moving and suggests they really do have a handle on their psyches. You are, in any case, desperate to believe them. They have a very willing audience indeed. The problem is that despite their promises, the person doesn't change at all. They make a short term adjustment strong enough to ensure that you won't leave them on the time scale you were threatening, but not profound enough to correct the problem and allow you your freedom. And in the gap between their promise to change and your realization that they haven't got the ability, or perhaps intention, to do so, children may have been born. They wanted kids to keep you around. You wanted them as a token of the happy future that was being promised. Commitments pile up, and there are fewer options left in the world beyond, you might not be so young anymore.
2. Possibility, they deny it. However hideous all the above sounds, there is an even worse kind of relationship to leave than that. And this is the one with the same dynamics, but with one extra twist at the end. When you finally confront them with the problem, they don't confess, they deny it. They tell you you're dreaming. You're imagining it. The problem lies with you, they say. At the same time, they get very incensed and offended at the suggestion you're making. You're so cynical about me. Don't you trust me? How rude you are about me. Why don't you have more faith in me and in us? And they push back. You're just as neurotic as you say I am. The problem's with you, not me. This is minefield territory. Relationships and their interactions are generally not recorded, so it's very hard for you to back up your claims or even be sure of your verdicts when they're relentlessly challenged. Is the loved one spending too much money, or am I just nagging? Are they actually flirting, or am I just jealous? Are they constantly failing to initiate sex, or am I just insecure? The partner whom you love and really don't want to leave and who says they love you adds to the difficulty you face by enthusiastically telling you with authority that you really are a bit crazy, that you are seeing things, that you are too demanding, that there's something wrong with you. Probably you're an open minded, nice, intelligent person, and open minded, nice, intelligent people tend to give others the benefit of the doubt.

The Challenge of Self-Doubt

After all, such types know they aren't perfect. They're aware of everything they get wrong. They don't feel they're brilliant in every way. Therefore, perhaps it's quite plausible that here too, you may be seeing things that aren't there. Why insist, especially when you love your partner and want to be with them? Here is a nice person telling you you're a bit mad and imagining things. It's a dispiriting message. But if disregarding your impulses and your emotional needs is the price you have to pay for keeping a relationship aloft, maybe it's worth it. Maybe it's worth thinking of yourself as a bit insane. At least you'll still have a partner, so more time passes and you stay put. And in that time, probably there are more children, more entanglements, and less of life left for you to build on afterwards. There is also highly likely to be a destruction of your sense of reality. You'll probably start to feel as mad as you're being subtly told you are. You might have a breakdown, which isn't an ideal backdrop against which to leave anyone. All that said, in both of the above cases, eventually you will have to leave.

The Need to Leave for Mental Well-Being

Your long term mental well being depends on it. But it isn't a picnic having to leave someone you love who says they love you, and who is either falsely promising to change or denying they need to change because you're the defective one to begin with. You will feel extremely alone with this decision. You will be left to wrestle either with feelings that you are nasty for leaving someone who is promising again and again to change, or that you are mad for leaving someone who tells you youre demented to doubt their sincerity. You will have to destroy a relationship that might have children in it on the basis of nothing more firm than an inner sense that your partner is doing something seriously deficient to your well being and cannot stop themselves doing it, despite telling you they love you. And yet you will have to leave. In order to leave, you will need to think in your mind I'm in love with someone who is damaged. They cannot realistically change and may even be using me as a reason not to change. Or they're in denial and are abusing my credulity and self doubt in order not to look more honestly into themselves.

Importance of Support in Making the Decision

You will have to think, there is probably something in my past, a history of putting up with intolerable situations, which makes me a long term sucker for this sort of suffering. Mountain climbers know that certain peaks can't be climbed on one's own. You need a climbing buddy, and in this context, let's call them a psychotherapist or a very, very good friend. The sort who can put in the time to reassure you of your sanity and who can be there for you at the inevitable moments when you'll feel like you're making the worst choice in the world, even though, despite your self hating feelings, that you're impatient or getting everything wrong, you are in fact in the process of taking the very best decision of your life. Deciding whether to stay in or leave a relationship is one of the trickiest and most consequential decisions we can face. Our stay or leave card game can help us towards an answer.