Member-only story
A Letter to the Person Stuck in a Toxic Relationship
You’re not alone
You sit on your bed and stare into space while your mind races back and forth — Should I leave? Can I leave? Can I even do this? I know you think you’re all alone in this, that you have to figure it out on your own.
You think you might go crazy, or perhaps you feel you’ve already gone there, making yourself mad trying figure out how to do the right thing.
What is the right thing anyway? There are too many variables. Too many opinions. You Google “Should I leave?” and don’t find the answers. You ask your closest friends, some give opinions, some just listen. But it doesn’t help make up your mind. No matter what, you feel stuck.
Perhaps it’s your financial situation holding you back from leaving. Not knowing how you’ll survive on your own. If you even can afford to live on your own. It’s scary to lose all that you’ve built together. It’s scary to start again from scratch. To shove everything off the table and rebuild from the base up after all that time, all that effort to make it work. To make something work.
Perhaps it’s your kids. No one wants their kids to get hurt. No one wants to have custody battles, or child-care arrangements, or days when you say goodbye at the door and watch them cry because they don’t want to leave…
