By Lynn Ayoub | Staff Writer
You’re so close yet so far away, bound to them so hard so you don’t stray, they’re burning you, your flesh to ashes with every gaze, yet you feel as if that person is the only light that can find its way in your maze. You hurt and you bleed and then you pray yourself out of this need and every night you blindly take another leap, wishing each other to keep. You feel their breath around your neck, ripping you to pieces making you sick, you become their patient, no medicine no cure can break you free. You find yourself an addict, everything that you once deeply hated. You fade within their waves and drown in their oceans and it is like death has never felt so in motion. You are awake staring at the ceiling, waiting for some buzzing to keep you breathing. You’re always right back down where they wanted you, you should’ve seen the truth by now and it’s a tragedy, they pull you in and you forget reality, you try to escape but you can’t from the force of their gravity. A good morning can brighten your day and a blank screen can elongate your nights all the way. On the good days, you own the world and on others, you feel it all crashing on its own, and you wonder how you can be so in love with the same person that makes you feel so worthless. This is not your one and only, and it’s not true love has its hardships kind of love, falling for a toxic person once is bad luck, twice is a coincidence and three times is a pattern. So why do we get attracted to toxic relationships and how does that affect our lives over time?
A toxic partner is a person who tends to be unstable, one day they will make you feel like you’re everything to them, and the next you’ll be nothing. They find it hard to feel content and safe within a relationship, no matter how loving and supportive their partner is. Their behaviors are usually driven by unmet needs, and most of the time it goes back to how they were raised as children, whether they were neglected, had abusive experiences in their childhoods, or conditioned to believe they were unlovable. As adults, these people start to reflect their insecurities in their behaviors and relationships. One perspective on the attraction to these toxic partners according to evolutionary psychology is that our ancestors lived in an environment where forming alliances and social bonds was particularly important for their survival. In most situations, aligning with individuals who exhibited dominance and assertiveness provided a better advantage when it came to survival. In this contemporary society; however, these same traits are considered to be toxic behaviors in relationships. So, for a lot of people, their attraction for this kind of assertion and dominance goes back to the ancestry of the human species.
Moreover, sometimes we might think that if a person grew up within a toxic household during their childhood, they would want to be better. That is not always true, and it’s the same for the person who gets attached to the toxic person. This is called Familiarity. Humans are creatures of habit, and familiarity breeds comfort. We learn about intimate relationships in the context of our family and environment. When you form secure attachments with your parents based on unconditional love and acceptance, chances are you will attract people who love and respect you, they will treat you with compassion and care, listen to your opinions and make you feel comfortable. However, if you have a toxic environment, where your needs for love and safety weren’t appropriately met by unavailable, volatile, and critical parents, chances are you will choose partners that put you in similar situations. You will subconsciously see similar dynamics in your adult relationships, because what we learn early in life feels real and true. Even if that might hurt us and cause us harm it feels right, we tend to be drawn to what confirms our visions of the world from when we were kids no matter how much suffering it might cause.
You are not weak because you can’t let go of a person that you know is bad for you, and not being able to let go is not an indication of your worth. A toxic relationship goes deeper than just hurtful words and unhealthy attachment styles. It’s sleep problems, eating disorders, concentration problems, and an increased risk of developing mental health issues. The brain’s reward system plays a key role in our relationship choices, when a person experiences a positive interaction neurotransmitters like dopamine and oxytocin are released which create a sense of pleasure and bonding. However, in a toxic relationship, intermittent reinforcement, which is periods of positivity followed by periods of negativity mimics the cycle of an addictive pattern. Therefore, the brain becomes conditioned to crave positive moments from that person even if they are scarce. Moreover, being in a toxic relationship puts the person under a very high amount of stress which increases cortisol levels. Thus stress has humongous effects on the person, it can alter their neurochemistry, shorten their attention span, cause memory issues, and even heart problems. In the long run, stress is known to kill the brain.
The magnetism of toxic relationships stems from so many different causes, such as trauma bonding, self-esteem and need for validation, and fear of abandonment, usually these troubled toxic partners feed on the vulnerabilities of the other person, they manipulate them to get some sort of satisfaction or to feel better about their shortcomings. Being in such a dynamic, where there is always this push and pull, gets addicting due to physiological reasoning. It might feel like you’re on the edge of a cliff, dopamine rushing through your veins and you want to fly, but when you look down you see a desert and you’re scared to fall. It is dreadful and heartbreaking when something as beautiful as love turns into a drug that you can’t help yourself from needing, consuming you, all ways, always.
References:
- https://www.therapywithab.com/blog/2023/11/26/unraveling-the-science-behind-our-attraction-to-toxic-relationships#:~:text=A%20fear%20of%20abandonment%20can,past%20traumas%20or%20attachment%20issues.
- https://www.rwapsych.com.au/blog/trauma-bonding-why-and-what-keeps-us-bonded-in-toxic-relationships/#:~:text=Put%20simply%2C%20when%20humans%20are,likely%20attach%20to%20unhealthy%20relationships.