Dear Readers.
There are all types of unhealthy relationships and many reasons why people stay in them. For those who haven’t experienced this but who have played the confidant to someone in an unhealthy relationship, it can be understandable, from a practical standpoint, why people stay, Perhaps the person’s reasons for staying in the relationship are financial, or maybe it’s the feeling that if one makes a commitment, one sticks with it and makes it work. Maybe you understand their worry about what else will be out there for them, or their concern that leaving will adversely affect their family, as in an unhealthy marriage or an unhealthy work situation. You may also understand why one remains friends with a childhood friend who depends on him/her, or if dropped will create awkwardness in their social life. These practical appraisals are things that most people can, at least somewhat, understand or relate to.
What is far more difficult to comprehend is why a person stays emotionally invested in an unhealthy relationship. When people who are in unhealthy relationships confide in or lean on someone who isn’t, the confidant is befuddled, and often frustrated, by their emotional investment in the relationship. It goes something like this in their head: “How can you care about this person who is supposed to be your friend? She leaves you feeling terrible, half the time you hang up the phone with her crying. Why are you still friends with her?” Or: “If your boss makes you miserable, pulling apart every contribution you try and make so that you feel horrible about yourself on a regular basis, why do you keep trying with her?”
If their explanation focused on the practical and was followed by a clarity that someone can stay in a relationship but create emotional boundaries–not a break, but enough emotional distance that they can stay in it without being affected by it the same way–the situation would be more understandable. Something like: “Listen, we’ve been friends forever; all of our friends are friends. It would be really awkward to drop her. She’d create a situation where people would have to choose…” Or: “I’m worried that if I don’t actively participate, even though she decimates my contributions, she’ll look to get rid of me.”
It’s the staying and continuing to be hurt, calling it a relationship and allowing the hurt in because of a lack of clarity about what is really going on that leaves most people looking on confused and frustrated.
So why do people do this? Why do they stay in unhealthy relationships, even when it comes at a cost and causes them pain?
One of the most pervasive reasons that I see consistently with people who stay emotionally “stuck” in a dysfunctional relationship is hope. You see, relationships don’t start off this bad. What’s often going through someone’s head is: “Things were once good, even very good, and okay, it’s true, now things are only occasionally good. But there is still some good, even occasionally, so that means things could still be much better like they used to be.” And when they’re miserable, they console themselves with the hope that things will get back to how they once were. They don’t take an accurate appraisal of how things are, because that is really painful, and there are all these many practical reasons that prevent them from wanting to think about leaving or making a change.
What keeps people stuck and what they don’t realize is that they can emotionally “leave” the relationship if it is too painful, or only occasionally good, or really hasn’t been good for a very long time. One can create an emotional boundary by taking an honest look at the relationship as it currently is and has been for a while, and rather than keeping up the cycle of hope, disappointment, and pain, say that practically they’re staying, but emotionally, they’re protecting themselves by not thinking this can be something it’s not, based on what it hasn’t been in a really long time.
Unfortunately, the demise of hope is a very difficult thing for most people to tolerate. That in and of itself can create such intolerable pain that it’s what sends people back to try harder to make the dysfunctional functional. Ultimately, one’s path on this journey is their own to choose. Though we may think we know which path we would take in a particular situation, we don’t actually know how we would act, and it is important to hold our judgement and just show support. Because really, support and understanding is what the people we care about need us to do, and, where possible, try and get them to seek help in getting to a healthier place if they seem to continuously be in pain.