I Kept Going Back to My Ex 3 Years After We Broke Up and Here’s What I’ve Learned

My ex and I broke up three years ago and somehow we managed to keep finding our way back to each other. A year ago I would have claimed it was fate or maybe the angels were really working in our favor. Now I know that's far from the truth. Every girl loves to stick their head so far up a fantasy that they forget to see the reality. That's exactly what I was doing, forgetting to see the relationship for what it actually was. Every time I let him back in, it ended in the same disaster each time. For the first time, I started seeing the relationship for what it really was.

It was definitely a Type A toxic relationship, but I had my head in clouds.  The way that we interacted with each other was not healthy for him, nor I. It would go from fighting for an hour to not speaking for another to finally, me ending up in the backseat of his car. I didn’t care that this cycle was continuing to repeat itself because he was still an active person in my life. I am very accustomed to people coming into my life, becoming close to me and then leaving. The fact that he stayed for so long made going through all the hard times worth it.  I was at such a low in my life that the way that he treated me made sense, almost like I deserved it.  It made sense to me that I was being treated like trash because that’s how I felt on the inside.  The Perks Of Being A Wallflower was right, "we accept the love we think we deserve."

He was using me, and in a way, I was using him as well. I was using him to cure my loneliness and that’s just as toxic as what he was doing to me. He may have started the toxic behavior, but I was the one that fed into it. I am to blame just as much as he is.

Another thing that I have realized about that relationship is that it was holding me back in so many different aspects. Emotionally, I was invested in something that was never going to change as was, therefore, keeping myself at a standstill. I was putting my energy and time into something that wasn’t benefitting me.

It takes two people to be in a relationship but only one to break the cycle. After one of our moments, he was always the first to leave and the first to come back. This time I’m breaking the cycle. I’m leaving and I have no intentions of looking back. I'm finding a new fantasy, one that revolves around me.   I've learned that you can't keep complaining about a person being toxic if you keep allowing them to come back into your life.