We Need to Stop Romanticizing Toxic Relationships
Look, growth only starts when you establish boundaries and cut of all toxicity in your life.
To preface this, I was in a terribly dysfunctional relationship for the bulk of my youth — 6 years to be specific. Although we did break up for approximately 9 months in-between, I’d still say it was 6 years of pain, heartache, plenty of tears, but happiness as well.
I did love this guy, let’s call him P. It was love at first sight for me when I first saw P playing at a concert. I remember everything just as if it was yesterday. It was a More Than Life concert, and his band opened for them.
I thought nothing of it until I saw him in school the next day. Never did know that he was in the same faculty as me, never believed in fate.
Being the Alpha that I was, I approached him and the rest was history. It was a good few months at the start. Then came the fights, the tremendous baggage on both our ends, and different aspects of how each of us viewed love i.e. terribly different love languages. Still, I loved him, as he did to me.
We traveled to many countries in the span of 6 years. Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand. We had the exact same interest in music, same political opinions of the world, and most importantly, we loved the same sport — Muay Thai and Brazilian Jujitsu. I thought this was it, I’m gonna marry this guy. We almost did.
4 years later, the verbal abuse started. “You fucking whore”, “fuck your entire family”, and the likes, I heard it all.
It takes 2 hands to clap and I did put him through a shit ton of trauma with my suicide attempts and other issues I will not get into.
The bottom line is that we both reached a point where it was best for us to go our separate ways.
For the next 9 months of separation, I finally got back on my 2 feet and got my act together. I never stopped missing him, though.
To my surprise, I received an email from him in the wee hours of the night. He was drunk and so was I, the rest is history. We were happy enough for the next 5 months.
From flying to Phuket to pursue our martial arts endeavours, to the smallest thing such as switching off the lights in the room at night where I could almost say — cohabitation.
It didn’t last long as we both never ascertained boundaries. My boundaries with mental health, and his with trust issues.
Within months, the fighting frequency increased, and it felt as though we were in our teenage years again.
Funnily enough, it seems to be always post-break-up where I’m able to be my best self or at least strive to be. My worst self came out with him, he whom I deemed to be as a cliche as it sounds, my best friend, soul mate and lover. I can say with certitude that he feels the same too and that he is able to be his best self without having me as a compadre.
The tragedy in life is that love is not enough. Save yourself.
Stop romanticizing that 2 broken souls can ever make it work. Sure, perhaps in a 1:1000 ratio. Movies and books have it all wrong. It’s merely a sinking ship. Feel free to have a discourse with me if you disagree but this is my stance — and it shall be for the longest time.
Love, G,
