20 Things You Need To Unlearn After A Toxic Relationship
Was Your Old Normal Chaos?
A toxic relationship is more than just a bad experience; it can have traumatic effects on your mental health and self-esteem. What's more, it can poison your future relationships and inhibit you from feeling at home with a healthy and loving partner. The journey to recovery isn't just about moving on; it's about consciously and deliberately unlearning the survival mechanisms that no longer serve you, and rediscovering the person you were before the toxicity began. Here are 20 things you need to unlearn after getting out of a toxic relationship.
1. Self-Doubt
With all the gaslighting you've experienced, chances are you tend to doubt yourself. You must now rebuild trust in yourself that your past relationship eroded.
2. Trust Issues
Trust issues are one of the most common takeaways from toxic relationships. Either your partner played with your trust or made you feel untrustworthy. As trust is the foundation of any healthy relationship, it's important to work on trusting people again.
3. Over-Apologizing
If your partner had a short fuse, you may have grown accustomed to apologizing quickly to appease them and diffuse the situation. Sometimes, it truly isn't your fault, so unlearn this bad habit that inhibits your confidence.
4. Self-Blame
Toxic partners often place the blame for any conflict on you. They're also experts at convincing you that it's your fault, even when it's not.
5. Fear of Conflict
Toxic relationships are so often conflict-laden. Although it's normal to argue with your partner every now and then, the constant threat of an explosive fight is not normal, and you shouldn't bring that fear into future relationships.
6. Jealousy
Toxic relationships often include excessive jealousy and possessiveness that get normalized when you're in your bubble. This leads to controlling behaviors and might result in your avoiding making new friends.
7. Putting Your Needs Second
When you have a demanding partner, you get used to putting your needs on the back burner or ignoring them altogether. It's now time to start prioritizing your own needs again.
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8. Walking On Eggshells
Toxic relationships can make you feel like you need to walk on eggshells to avoid your partner's short fuse from going off. You no longer need to constantly monitor your words and actions.
9. Being Responsible For Your Partner's Happiness
In a toxic relationship, you might feel responsible for your partner's happiness or well-being, but that will only lead to emotional exhaustion on your part. Partners should be making each other's lives happier and propping each other up in a balanced way.
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10. Over-Explaining
To combat your partner's insecurity in a toxic relationship, you likely became accustomed to over-explaining every little thing you did. Now you can just be free.
11. Ignoring Your Gut Feelings
Intuition is a powerful tool that you should never ignore. In a toxic relationship, ignoring your gut feeling probably led you to stay in with your partner longer than you should've.
12. Anticipating Negative Reactions
When you have a toxic partner, you get used to anticipating negative reactions for everything you do because it so often worked out like that. In a healthy relationship, you don't have to brace for anger or criticism.
13. Love Bombing Equals Love
Love bombing is the excessive display of love and affection displayed early on, used as a form of manipulation in a toxic relationship. After having experienced it, you might now associate this behavior with true love when, in reality, love is usually more subtle and sincere.
14. Not Setting Boundaries
Toxic relationships involve a lack of respect for your boundaries. Now that you've come out the other side, remember the importance of setting and enforcing healthy boundaries.
15. Fighting For Attention
Your toxic relationship may have made you feel like an afterthought. In a healthy relationship, you'll feel like a priority.
16. This Is The Best You Can Do
A toxic relationship, with all its ups and downs, and a narcissistic partner telling you what to think, may have convinced you that you're lucky to have them. Unlearn this falsehood and know that you deserve a healthy, loving relationship.
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17. Needing Constant Validation
In a toxic relationship, you were likely not getting validation from your partner, leading you to crave it. Learn to find your worth from within, not externally.
18. That Your Memory Is Unreliable
Gaslighting is a common practice in toxic relationships. Your partner probably made you feel like your memory was unreliable, but it's not.
19. That Your Feelings Are Invalid
Another side effect of gaslighting is making you believe your feelings aren't valid or are "crazy." In a healthy relationship, your partner would always care about your emotional well-being and work to understand you.
20. Deflecting Compliments
You were made to feel worthless to the point where you got in the habit of not believing compliments when they were offered. You need to learn to accept kindness and believe in your own worth.
