Why do people struggle to leave unhealthy relationships? Expert shares reasons

From hoping for them to change to having children to being financially dependent, here are a range of reasons which makes us struggle to leave unhealthy relationships. Take a look.

Leaving a relationship or ending an association is a big change. This change happens gradually, over a period of time. Often such life transitions take years. When we have initiated the change and we go on with life, and some day when we look back, it may look easy and fast. But that’s not how life works. We need to live life looking forward, not backwards. Living life in the present can be challenging in many ways. Often there are a combination of factors at play which makes us stay in a relationship which, even when unhealthy, makes us feel we can sustain it.

Why people struggle to leave unhealthy relationships? Expert shares reasons(Unsplash)

In a post, Psychotherapist Emily H Sanders addressed the issue of struggles in an unhealthy and toxic relationship and wrote, “The truth is leaving a relationship is a process. It takes time. Sometimes it takes a LOT of time, as many chosen life transitions do.” She further noted down a few reasons which make people struggle to leave.

Change: Sometimes we request changes in a partner and wait to see them initiate the changes in their character and lifestyle. This makes us stay back.

Strategies: When one strategy of being happy in a relationship fails, we often try the other one. These strategies bind us to a relationship.

Children: When we have children with the partner, the thought of leaving them makes us feel that the children will not have both the parents.

Expectation: When we fail to get what we are looking for, we try to lower our expectations and adjust in the relationship.

Investment: We often feel that we have invested a lot of time, energy and emotions in the relationship and if we leave, it all may just get wasted.

Nostalgia: The relationship may have started in a great note. So, we often go back to that nostalgia and try to hold on to the memory, hoping that the relationship will again go back to that phase.

Confusion: Sometimes things may seem great, and sometimes not so good. This confusion makes us cling to the partner.

Worry: Worries of not being able to find another person to share the life with makes us want to stay back in the unhealthy relationship.

Grief: The thought of having to get over the grief of heartbreak scares us.

Concern: Sometimes the concern of what the partner may go through if we leave them makes us stay back.

We are the problem: In unhealthy relationships, often the partners make us feel that the problem is with us. So, we keep on trying to fix us and be a better person with whom the partner can be happy.

Encouragement: Family and friends sometimes encourage us to stay in the relationship. In most cases they are not aware of the toxicity of the relationship.

Religion: Sometimes the religious binding to a person makes us stay back.

Financial resources: When we are not financially independent and depend on the partner for the same, it can get increasingly difficult to leave the relationship.

Information: Even after leaving a relationship, we sometimes go back in order to get more information about it – if we were wrong or if it is fine now.

Dynamics of the past: Often the dynamics of the past play out in our mind which makes us want to stay back and try more.

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