The Breakup Manual

To me, relationship addiction is one of the worst kinds of addiction because it is so easily confused with love. I used to wish that I was addicted to drugs instead because people are more likely to treat it like an emergency situation if it's not socially acceptable. Sadly, toxic relationships are romanticized so much that people don't bat an eye when they see it happening most of the time. It is brushed off as oh, she just likes bad boys, but the reality is that toxic relationships can be and usually are just as damaging to entire families and generations as good old fashioned drug and alcohol addiction. I thought he was my greatest "love". I loved him so much that I didn't care about anything else. I would have given up anything to be with him. I turned down every other healthy normal good guy that came my way for 10 years. Even after I thought I was done, I still turned down men because of him. I don't want to get into the details of the what he did or didn't do to make him a villain in my story, but I just want context for you, so you know that if you are like me trying to break up and against all "logic", you continue to engage in a severely toxic relationship. People who don't understand how hard it is to leave the cycle of abuse don't understand that it is truly an addiction. Until I treated it like addiction, I couldn't break free from it.