8 Reasons People Stay in Harmful Relationships

I have listened to many people ask this question. They know they are being taken advantage of by their partner. They know they are suffering. They know they need to get out. Yet they cannot manage to let go.

The people I work with who are in these kinds of relationships describe their dynamic as akin to an addictive attachment. When they sincerely try to leave their partners, they experience the same kind of withdrawal that happens when a person is dependent on a drug that fulfills them in the moment but costs them deeply in the long run.

Are you one of those people who has become enmeshed in a seemingly compulsive relationship pattern where you cannot bear the cost, are unable to change the dynamic, and can’t let go?

The good news is that by learning where those harmful dynamics came from and challenging them with a different perspective, you can change how you behave and create much healthier relationships. If you can courageously face when and where you fell prey to their ownership of you, you can choose to leave them behind.

Following are eight of the most common reasons why people are unable to let go of relationships that are cumulatively harmful.

1. Fear of Collateral Damage

Intimate relationships are never just between two people, especially if they have been going on for some time. There are extended family and friends who have an investment in the partnership. There also may be children, mutual investments, financial dependencies, common memberships in external hobbies or social groups, and reputations to maintain.

Those entanglements are often intense and mutually inclusive. You may be more invested in one than your partner is, but all will be significant if they affect either one of you. Even something as seemingly mundane as who gets the dog can create a painful conflict.

2. Childhood Excuse Training

Relationship dysfunction often travels down throughout generations. When children see either parent behaving in disrespectful or insensitive ways to the other, and the invalidated parent makes excuses for them, those children internalize excusing those behaviors that are unhealthy in their adult relationships. They will, for instance, see an alcoholic parent as “just tired from working too hard,” “understandably irritable because of problems,” etc., rather than ineffectively facing and dealing with a disease.

That “excuse training” teaches that child, now an adult, to minimize behaviors that hurt or invalidate and focus on any that seem to compensate. Ask yourself if you “excuse” behaviors that you would never want someone you love to endure.

3. Swayed by Charisma

Often, the partner who can get away with mistreating a partner without having to pay the price is a charismatic person. I’m defining charisma here as the ability to wrap an energy field around other people that makes them unable to see or believe anything other than what that charismatic partner wants them to experience.

If you’ve had the experience of being entranced in the presence of your partner but able to think more clearly when away, you may be “under the spell” of a charismatic person.

4. Helpless Romantic

Many people of both genders describe themselves in this way. They feel that enough love and devotion will eventually conquer all, and giving up is not an option. They expect love to include fear and even abuse, and those experiences may actually drive them to love more deeply to make sure they have done everything they could.

Do you feel that someday your partner will suddenly realize how good the relationship is and will make up for all the sadness and pain you have endured in it? That if you just keep loving, it will all be worth it someday.

5. Fear of Retaliation

Anyone who has witnessed someone in this kind of relationship or is in one himself or herself unconsciously knows that the relationship is imbalanced and fragile if challenged. The person “hanging on,” without reciprocal devotion, always has the underlying fear that something bad will happen if they end the relationship.

If you finally decide to leave a relationship after a long stretch of martyred and unequal giving, you may legitimately be concerned that your partner may strike back. Did you see that happening in your own childhood and fear it happening to you? What if your partner will not accept the decision and begins emotional or physical blackmail? Will you be able to handle it?

6. Fear of Not Being Needed

Being with a partner who appears to need a lot of attention and acceptance but doesn’t leave the relationship can be very seductive to anyone who needs to be needed. Even if self-sacrifice is hard, the sense of having an important role to play in someone’s life can be enough of a reward to compensate for the cost.

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Have you become attached to being the ever-loving partner who will never be abandoned because of how necessary you are? You may not want to give that role up, even if it is costing you a lack of self-respect and exploits your availability.

7. Intermittent Reinforcements

In most of these unequally giving relationships, there are moments when the indulged partners express very loving and appreciative thoughts and feelings. That may be more likely to happen if they are in an altered state at the time, but they are enough to reinforce their partner’s belief that they are, in fact, truly loved, even when it is rarely expressed.

Have you been recaptured by these unpredictable moments of validation?

8. Can’t Accept Failure

For whatever reasons, many people just cannot give up something they have committed to do, even if the rewards have severely diminished and the costs have increased. They keep resetting their investment versus return expectations to maintain hope when it should be lessening. That rationale allows them to stay in relationships long after they should have cut their losses and moved on.

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