Q&A: How to leave a toxic relationship or marriage?

Q: How to leave a toxic relationship or marriage?

Anyone can get trapped in a toxic situation, especially given how toxic-level conflict is often romanticized as passionate fire in media representations. These lessons mislead people into believing that love requires pain. If you’re ready to consider other possibilities, below are brief tips for how to leave a toxic relationship.

Is Toxic the Same as Abusive?

This article focuses on toxic relationships, not abusive ones (though there is overlap). Toxic relationships can be one or two-sided. Two/multi-sided often means that the people involved bring out the worst in one another and in doing so, cause the other(s) harm. For one-sided, the toxic person engages in damaging behavior towards another - potentially through recurrent emotional outbursts, though not always intentionally. Abusive relationships include the intention to control someone (their finances, social activities, actions, reproduction, opportunities, beliefs, etc.).

What to do in a Toxic Marriage or Relationship

Build Your Community

This is #1 because whether or not you’re in a toxic situation, it is good to have multiple people in your life that you care about and care about you. It is a lot of pressure to be everything for another person and that pressure can even be the cause of stress within relationships. Making sure you have your people means that if anything does happen, you know who you can trust and where to go for support.

Recognize it

If you’re reading this wondering if you are in a toxic situation but not ready to leave, try journaling to remember the things that are causing you to doubt your relationship. It can be easy to look back and remember the good things or minimize negative experiences but that becomes harder when you take notes about the things that don’t feel right and how they are making you feel in the moment and reflect back over them.

Make a Plan

If your finances, social life, family, living situation, etc are connected, it is helpful to create a safety plan for leaving that minimizes the likelihood of this person trying to suck you back into the relationship.

One important piece of that is to reduce contact as much as possible. Ask your community to help keep you engaged and to support you in remembering why you decided to leave when/if you feel tempted to speak with or return to the toxic person. This can include avoiding shared spaces and communicating via a mediator for any necessary contact.

If living together, you can lean on your support system or public services to help you (and any dependents) find a safe place to stay. If financially dependent, start looking for work options as soon as you can as financial issues sometimes force people back into unsafe relationships. If you share accounts, make sure your partner can’t wipe out the accounts as a form of backlash.