Thinking About Toxicity

Yesterday I went out to dinner with a lovely friend of mine from grad school. We went to an awesome wine bar, had charcuterie, and played trivia. It was a joyous evening with someone who, like me, loves to write and read, is a huge sci-fi nerd, and loves cheese. Honestly, the best makings of a good time. But one thing our time together made me think about is how, since I left my ex, I have worked to cultivate friendships that aren’t, at their root, toxic. And I started thinking not only about the people who are no longer in my life and how truly toxic they are, as well as all the ways that I have allowed toxicity into my life.

My partner said something to me the other day. He pointed out that I have this massive standard set for what I think my responsibilities are as a friend, and that I have a tendency to let people take advantage of me without consequences because I care about them. And while this is an admirable thing on the surface, at its core it actually is damaging to myself and my relationship with my own mind, heart, and body. I knew the moment he said it he was 100% right and I could think of several examples where I had done just what he said, and how those choices have contributed negatively to my wellbeing ever since.

As a result, my goal for next year is to figure out how to reduce the amount of toxicity I have allowed into my life, and how I can hold myself accountable for the ways I contribute to that toxicity. And it’s easy to say that boundaries are the number one way we maintain healthy relationships with people, but purging ourselves of toxic habits goes beyond that. It has to begin with the way we see ourselves. And, as my partner said last night, the ability to forgive ourselves for allowing the toxicity into our lives in the first place. Therapy has linked to all of this as well, so hopefully what I’m about to say makes sense.

I have always and still do care far too much about what people think/say about me. I think it comes in part from being an extrovert, but I think it also comes from not being taught about self-esteem when I was younger. I even, to this day, care about what the people who have hurt me the most think/say about me. I don’t respect them as individuals since I’ve seen the ways they use up and dispose of people based on financial benefit, so why do I care about their views of me? Especially seeing firsthand how dishonest they can be, and knowing that even if I had done all the things they say I should have done, they would have found something else wrong with me and spewed that out at the world.

Why do I care? Well, the answer I can come up with off the cuff is insecurity and codependence. Leaving a marriage where I literally didn’t matter in any real way, I was desperate and chose to cling to the first place I felt I belonged and was wanted. My identity as wife was gone, so I tried filling that void with my identity as friend. And for a time, it worked. But only for a time because the real place I needed to find belonging was inside of myself. Instead, I did and said what I thought I should at the time to prove not only my love and friendship, but that I really did belong in these people’s lives. But what that did was reinforce the idea that I was somehow defined by that role and by those choices. I invested more financially than I ever should have, I ignored the things that hurt me, I ignored their inability/refusal to even acknowledge my boundaries, I pretended I was okay when I wasn’t, and when I finally decided I wasn’t going to repeat those choices, I went from being a beloved friend to being a mortal enemy overnight.

I can see and understand this trail of events, but taking that understanding and applying it to any kind of personal closure is hard. “I should have seen it earlier,” and “If I had only enforced boundaries all along,” and “The red flags were there from the very beginning,” swirl around in my mind. Forgiving myself for what I didn’t see, what I didn’t say, what I didn’t do, is a necessary first step in not only healing from that time of my life, but also moving on and building better habits. But it’s hard to do because as I moved into the dating world, I continued the exact same pattern of putting up with so much more than I deserved for the sake of feeling loved.

But feeling loved and being loved are not always the same. I felt loved by at least two men before I met my current partner, and both of them love-bombed the crap out of me, manipulated me, disrespected me, and then tossed me aside as if I was nothing. Sometimes the love we feel from people is really just a facade to hide the fact that they’re just taking what they need from you at the time. Sometimes they even have good intentions at the start, but then those intentions change. Sometimes they change in a few weeks. Sometimes they change over the course of years.

Real love, real belonging, is safety. It’s a mutual respect of boundaries, not a demand for one side to always get their way while the other is silenced, invalidated, mocked, criticized, and ignored. So the question becomes, how do I extricate the toxic behaviors I developed to try and “keep” the love and belonging I thought was real but wasn’t? Part of it is time. Part of it is acknowledging the self-destructive habits that made me choose the things I did. And part of it comes down self-forgiveness.

Yes, I made bad choices because of toxic connections to toxic people.
Yes, I knew better, even at that time.
Yes, I know better now.
Yes, I wish I made different choices, but I can’t change the choices I made, so the only choice I have now is to acknowledge what happened and why, and forgive myself.

This is the hard work of healing. It’s hard to acknowledge the ways that I have failed myself, and it’s even harder to forgive myself for those choices, but admitting the problem is the first step. If I want healthier connections in 2022, then I have to learn to let go not only of my own impulse to beat myself up, but I also have to let go of the opinions of the people who caused this damage in the first place. If they can’t acknowledge the ways they hurt me (and they don’t get to say they didn’t hurt me), then there is no point in worrying about their opinions of me.

Period.

This process is complicated and multifaceted. Because it’s not just about looking at my own lack of boundaries and the absurd standards I hold myself to in regards to how much of myself I give, shrink, and distort to fit what I think other people want from me, it’s also looking forward and seeing those habits as they unfold in new friendships and do what I can to change them. It is an ongoing process, but one that will lead to a reduction of toxicity.

Imagine the lives we could have if we didn’t allow toxicity into our lives? How much more energy would we have? How healthier would we be? Let’s make a goal to find out as we go into the new year.