Know when to hold them, know when to fold them!

It is amazing how well we can see other people’s lives. How clearly we can identify their issues and their blind spots? We can see the patterns and if we know them well enough, we can recount instances in their lives where they were in the same situation and had similar decisions to make. We have the perfect advice for them and the perfect strategy that they can take if they only dare to do it. It is easy to advise as we don’t have to suffer the consequences. Then we go back to our own lives, and we blind ourselves to the reality of it. We lie to ourselves that everything is fine, and we hide our heads in the sand. We tell people our stories and hope that if they believe them, we will too. Things change and then reality comes in and shows us that all of those perfect pieces of advice we were dishing out were the same ones that we should have been following all along.

After hearing story after story about friends, relationships and so on, the question came to my therapist: “Why do you think you struggle so much with letting go of toxic relationships?” A very good question but one that I, unfortunately, did not have an answer to. I was aware that it was happening, I had been in plenty of relationships that ran past their expiration date and still, I hung on to them. I knew I did it but why was a complete mystery. One thing about me though, I love a puzzle, and I love a good mystery so, I have started to think about it and tried to figure out where this problem started. The easiest place to start was my relationship with men. I have started to think of all my past boyfriends and think about how they treated me. I thought that they were horrible people and then the reality hit that they treated me this way because I allowed them to. There is nothing worse than realising that you are the cause of all of your issues.

Every friend group has that one friend who has the funniest stories about the men she has been on dates with. That is me. I am that friend. If I had a pound for every time my friends have asked me where I managed to find this guy or the other… My answer was always that I didn’t find them, they found me but now in hindsight, clearly something in me attracts them. Like the time I went to an office Christmas party, and I had the choice between the two bartenders. The one I picked and went on a date with had told me on sight that I should stop wearing heels because he doesn’t like to be shorter than the girls he is out with. He then proceeded to scoff and look down on me during our entire conversation. At the end, we were walking, and he hugged me all of a sudden in the middle of the mall, and I asked him what we were doing to which we replied, we were looking for each other. I thought I was going to sprain an eyeball rolling my eyes at that one and that was my cue to go home. He was shocked when I didn’t agree to a second date. I have always wondered what would have happened if I picked the other one.

Another time, I agreed to a date with the guy that sold me my laptop. We went for a walk in the park and as we walked, I was trying to explain to him what I do for work. He did not get it and kept on insisting that I was a secretary. I get that I had a corporate job where roles and responsibilities are specific but the way he insisted I was a secretary was just unreal. He then decided out of nowhere that he was going to buy me a gift, earrings, opal earrings. I was baffled at this and asked him why he thought that he should get me anything as he had just met me, but he said that it would be his pleasure, and it was his wish. By this time, I already regretted my athletic ways as there was no other way to end this date but to complete the tour of the park and I was stuck. The final nail in the coffin came when I said that I was moving house, and he offered to help me carry furniture and build everything for me and then proceeded to explain the roadmap to us moving in together. No, thank you. Taxi!

One of the recent ones was when an acquaintance wanted to get to know each other better and hang out. I told him that I was chatty and friendly but I was not looking for anything so they should be aware of what was happening, and friendship is all that I was offering. I always worry when it comes to being friends with men that the boundaries are going to be blurred so, I wanted to make sure he was aware of what this was. He said that was fine but as the conversation went it was clear that he was trying to stay in the friend zone to get more. I tried to restate my boundaries, and I almost got “yelled” at via text that he was a good guy and that he was going to show me. If you have to say it like that, you are not a good guy. I was so scared by it that I was happy that he didn’t have my address, and I locked my door that night regardless.

These are ones that I dodged but there were so many others that I entertained despite the signs. It starts well and it seems all so exciting. They are doing all the right things and saying all the right things and I start to imagine how amazing everything will be, and I start building that pedestal. Time passes and it seems that this might work out, but things change, and they start to say hurtful things. I start thinking that I am imagining things. I started to find excuses that maybe they had loads going on, a tough day at the office. Maybe they didn’t quite say what I heard and that I am looking into things, and I am imagining them. They start breaking promises and say they forgot or don’t even admit to making those promises. More and more hurtful things get said and done like they are trying their best to hurt me and see how much they get away with and because I let things slide or seem to forgive them, the more spiteful they seem to get. And yet I stay and think that I am the problem. That they are right, and I should change things about myself. Everybody leaves and I don’t want to be alone again, so I stay. Better the devil you know.

They hurt me and I think why would they do that to me? It is so far from anything that I would do that my mind can’t wrap itself around why somebody would lie and hurt somebody just because they can. I have wanted the best for them. I would have given them everything that they could have wanted or needed and instead, they decided to hurt me. Even worse, they knew that they were doing it, and they didn’t care. I think that they must take pride in it and how they pulled the wool over my eyes. Why do they just want to hurt me? And at this moment, you no longer hear the strong, independent woman who can give herself everything she needs, but a scared little girl, desperate to be seen, understood, loved, and cared for. She is always put to the side and forgotten. The perfect example of seen and not heard. She is quiet because when she talks, she is not listened to, she is mocked, or spoken over so she has convinced herself that she must not have that much to say. She escapes by fantasizing that one day someone will save her. That she too will be like one of those people in the movies and she would just be living her life and boom… fairy godmother comes along and changes everything and makes my dreams come true. It is very tough when you have hopes that everything will change but life keeps going and it stays the same.

Everybody that is lost just wants to be found. What happens when you feel like no one is looking? And here comes someone who says they love me. They say that I am special. They say that they have never seen anyone like me. They said they never want to hurt me and in the embers of that promise, it feels so warm and inviting and I am so tired and weary. What would be the harm of one moment of rest? Of course, I can hear the wolves howling outside and the wind blowing a gale but what if I could just pretend that they are not there for a while? Pretend that I too can be at peace and have happiness. I have had my guard up for so long and I am so tired that just this once I will allow myself to be seduced and give into the fantasy that this can indeed work. But instead of seeing it for what it is, I remain trapped and say that I can turn it around. I can make it better. As I slumber, the spider’s web grows tighter around me. More time invested, more feelings added, and a stronger bond created, making it harder to cut the ties.

Once I am out of it and I can fully see what happened, I can’t imagine how I ever allowed myself to be treated that way. I think to myself that people told me but no, I had to do my own thing because I knew best. So much time invested and hoped that if I could only show them how special I am, they would love me. All the hatred that I should maybe have for them, turns on me for letting my guard down and allowing this to happen.

I thought long and hard as to why I got stuck and the best response that I could come up with was that the models of women that I had in my family taught me that I shouldn’t have boundaries, that I should accept what I am getting, that I should do anything I can to stay in a relationship so if this is what I saw how could I act any different?

Toxic relationships though don’t only extend to romantic relationships. For work, it has been the same. Working with people who push my boundaries, tell me that they appreciate me, that we are a team and then they pile on more and more work and when I am exhausted and make mistakes, they are the first ones to treat me poorly. And again, I start believing that I should work harder and that I should not be making any mistakes. That their poor treatment of me is a result of me making their life more difficult and that I should work on improving myself. Once I saw things for what they were, I tried to put up boundaries again and that did not go well. They have actively tried to stop me from progressing and developing, despite years of telling me how they were supporting me and that they are putting my name up for awards. This was an important lesson. I learned that sometimes, the people who seem to be rooting for you and see you as their go-to person might also be the ones trying to hold you back and use you to achieve their purposes. You are there to serve and you should not follow any other goal than working hard to help them achieve theirs. Advocating for myself was a hard-earned lesson.

It hurts when this treatment comes from friends. From people that you thought you could trust, people that you have entrusted secrets to and opened your heart and they seemed to have done the same. One friend shared my secrets with other people to make herself more popular despite me knowing hers and keeping them, as a friend should. Worse still is when you are at your lowest and you think that you found someone to support you, and you support them and then you start to realise that they try to stab you in the back at every turn. They are petty and jealous and try to take the little that you have to prove their worth. I saw the signs, but I thought that surely, I was imagining it, that I was being a bad friend for even thinking bad things about her. That she helped me, and I was being ungrateful. I never said anything to anybody about it because I thought that it would mean that I was disloyal. Until it got blatantly obvious what they were doing. Even more so when they were trying to start fights in private and then when we were in groups, they would push my buttons so I would react and then they could make themselves a victim in front of people. I could see the change in her, and I could see the change in other people as they were siding with her and rolling their eyes at what I would say. When I accepted that this is happening, that I am not imagining it and even if somebody helps you at some point, it doesn’t mean that they are entitled to treat you poorly, I decided to break all ties. Finally, I was starting to learn to let go of toxic relationships.

It is complicated to be selective when you come from a place of wanting but holding on to things hurts more in the long run. Learning to set boundaries, learning to say no, knowing my worth, and being able to admit that I misjudged people and that letting go of people who are not good for me is the best form of self-care, were all important lessons and they were hard-earned. I can’t change people, I can’t change who they are and how they react, but I can change how I react and for sure, I can fight to see people the way they are and let their actions do the talking no matter how alluring their words are. In the end, I have to be thankful to those people. They hurt me and pushed me so far into a corner that they left me no other option but to come up swinging and give myself the love that they wouldn’t or couldn’t give me. They served a purpose; they are forgiven and their access to me is forever denied.