Toxic Relationship? This was my experience.

My teenage love relationships were a learning experience, I am writing this merely as a reflective piece. To see where I have been.

Our memories are just that “ours,” and I fully acknowledge that the reflections below are how I see what happened and how it felt to me. Toxic relationships can be an addiction, hard to get away from……..

When I was in high school my home life was in turmoil. My parents’ marriage was ending, and things were kind of unstable. During this important time of my life, I found myself in relationships with jealous and/or controlling boys.

These boys did not like how I said “hi” to a certain guy in the hallway. One wanted to control who I was friends with, what I wore, where I was and how long I was gone. Several times in one relationship things got very physical, mostly to keep me from leaving a room, by shoving me. One incident before a family wedding, there was a fuss (probably about the dress I was wearing) in a hotel and I broke most of my fingernails. I was not blameless in all of this, I pushed them to try and get them out of the way or at least I pushed back. I knew that what they were saying or doing was not ok, something I was not going to bend my will to, but I stayed in each of the relationships for years.

I was told that no one would ever love me like they did. All this jealousy was about them, it had nothing to do with me even though they said, “I trust you I just don’t trust other guys.”

There was a car chase through town after I left a party.  The time one of them made me so mad I threw his car into reverse while we were moving forward. There was damage that was done to my car door that I told my dad was caused by the wind.

Did I stay because I was no one else would want or love me?  What if I never found someone else? I was a teenager!

After a year or so in one of these relationships I found myself having headaches all the time and heart palpitations. I wore one of those heart monitors for a few days until I realized that what was wrong with me was the relationship. Not sure if I broke up with him or if the realization was enough to stop the headaches and heart palpitations. There were many on and offs in all my long-term relationships.

I may have given into what they wanted in the moment, but they never broke me or made me small.  I always “pushed” back.

One of these relationships is part of the reason I moved to Ohio.  I knew that if I was in the proximity of this person………the relationship might always be a possibility.

My hope or reason for writing this piece is that 4 times in my adult life, I have been friends with women who were in bad relationships. Merely by them being around me, because I never told them to leave the relationships, in a short amount of time they decided to take steps to leave these relationships. Their lives changed for the better.