When I was younger, like most kids, I LOVED going to the playground.
One day I was swinging along the monkey bars when I fell hard and chipped my tooth. It was a really painful experience! It was one of those childhood moments where your carefree world is shattered as you come face to face with reality.
From that moment on, I feared letting go of those bars, and the thought of loosening my own grip, WILLING to fall- felt like self destruction.
As an adult, I’ve discovered something else that I’m often afraid to let go of: unhealthy relationships.
Letting go of relationships, even when they are hurting us, feels frightening, and so— we hold on.
It’s true, isn’t it? Can you think of a time when you held onto a relationship even though it wasn’t right for you?
In working with hundreds of women, I’ve discovered a few of the biggest reasons we stay in relationships even when they’re hurting us:
#1 We’ve already invested so much
Sometimes relationships are okay for the first little while and then get worse as time goes on. By this point we’ve invested so much energy, time and love into the relationship that we rationalize red flags and it becomes very difficult to leave.
#2 We want it to work SO BAD
Emotions are powerful drivers of behavior. Sometimes it’s hard to leave a relationship because we want it to work so badly for one reason or another that we let this emotion drive our actions.
#3 We don’t believe we deserve better
Some women I work with have worthiness issues that keep them stuck in low-quality relationships for years. They stay because they don’t believe they deserve better.
Relationships aren’t the only thing we need to learn to let go of. Bad habits, unhealthy beliefs and mindsets, unrealistic expectations for ourselves and others; these are all things we have to let go of in order to create room for what we really want in life.
Related posts:
What we can learn from celebrity breakups
How To Break Relationship Patterns
How to Handle Being Ghosted
Things To Say Besides “I Love You”
How Trauma Affects Relationships
Is this holding you back in dating?
Are you holding on to an unhealthy relationship?
The Dating Mindset Shift That Can Radically Transform Your Love Life
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