{"id":608636,"date":"2019-04-18T17:29:37","date_gmt":"2019-04-18T17:29:37","guid":{"rendered":"
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\n\"Right\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Have you been ignoring the signs of a toxic relationship because you\u2019re too scared of feeling lonely if you break up?<\/p>\n

Has co-dependency on your toxic partner clouded your mind?<\/p>\n

And if you do eventually break up, you find that you\u2019re feeling lonely and can\u2019t stop thinking about him.<\/p>\n

Food has no flavor and every song sounds sad. You never have even a moment\u2019s rest from the heaviness in your chest.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, you wonder what you are even here for.<\/p>\n

If this happens every time you break up with someone\u00a0and you only feel better around other people, you may have been in a toxic relationship, which leads to a life of loneliness and codependency.<\/p>\n

And I feel you.<\/p>\n

I have no family, no husband, no significant other, and maybe one friend.<\/p>\n

Feeling absolutely at sea, utterly unmoored and adrift, pining back into the past for more connected, better, happier times was me, pretty much one hundred percent, for most of the past five years.<\/p>\n

Since I\u2019ve been widowed, how to get my life to feel anything close to right again has been a major question for me. A brief flirtation with a married man didn\u2019t help.<\/p>\n

Well\u2026no. I can\u2019t quite say that. It\u2019s sent me on a learning quest, during which I discovered the concept of pathological loneliness.<\/p>\n

What is pathological loneliness?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s basically loneliness on steroids. It\u2019s loneliness that says that unless and until you find the right sort of support in your life, you will never feel right, never feel happy again. Period.<\/p>\n

Pathological loneliness is a feature of codependent relationships.<\/p>\n

In fact, the wonderful codependency expert Jerry Wise defines the feeling of loneliness as a sense of, \u201cI\u2019m not worth being with\u201d, as in, \u201cI\u2019m not worth being by myself with.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pathological loneliness is one reason those with codependency don\u2019t leave when it is clear they are being abused or maltreated by a person who isn\u2019t interested in changing.<\/p>\n

This doesn\u2019t only hold true when you\u2019re in a toxic relationship with a toxic person, such as an alcoholic, a drug addict, someone who\u2019s beating you, or someone just lying on the couch while you pay all the bills.<\/p>\n

If your married lover isn\u2019t leaving, for example, but is only using you to make his marriage bearable and you can\u2019t bear the thought of being without him, this might include you, too.<\/p>\n

Pathological loneliness often creates codependency and holds people in bad and unhealthy relationships long past the point when a healthier person would have left.<\/p>\n

People feel so helpless, so depressed, and so scared of being alone that they reason that the miserable (or even dangerous) relationship they are in is better than no relationship at all.<\/p>\n

According to codependency expert Ross Rosenberg, author Kathleen Dowling Singh, and my own observations, there are factors at work in your life that point to the fact that you may be pathologically lonely so you settle for toxic relationships.<\/p>\n

With that said, here are the 13 signs of pathological loneliness and codependency due to your toxic relationship.<\/p>\n

1. Extroversion<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you\u2019re extroverted, you feel a lot worse when alone than introverted people do.<\/p>\n

2. Constantly thinking of the past<\/strong><\/p>\n

Loneliness arises from a deeper situation or a past memory.<\/p>\n

Some deeper situation is making it more than just being without human companionship. (This is me.)<\/p>\n

3. Cognitive Distortions<\/strong><\/p>\n

You\u2019re telling yourself something about the condition of being without fellow humans that simply isn\u2019t true.<\/p>\n

For example, you want to be in a relationship but you always tell yourself, \u201cI\u2019ll never meet anybody again.\u201d<\/p>\n

4. Boredom<\/strong><\/p>\n

You haven\u2019t found something you love doing when you\u2019re alone.<\/p>\n

These are activities that may actually be best done alone, such as painting or writing.<\/p>\n

5. Surrounded by toxicity<\/strong><\/p>\n

You actually could develop closer friendships and social support, but you haven\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Not me, though, because anyone I\u2019ve met over the past five years has either been a toxic or otherwise inappropriate person.<\/p>\n

6. Failure to entertain yourself<\/strong><\/p>\n

You actually can go do things alone that maybe you always thought you couldn\u2019t because you \u201cneeded someone to go with.\u201d<\/p>\n

And you might discover a sense of independence you didn\u2019t know you could find, in doing this.<\/p>\n

7. The inability to calm down and feel better<\/strong><\/p>\n

This often roots from neglectful parenting in very early childhood or perhaps from certain mental illnesses. When you\u2019re upset, you can\u2019t console yourself<\/p>\n

Sufferers of borderline personality disorder also have this problem.<\/p>\n

Some people still need another person to do that for them, much like Mom or Dad picking up the crying baby from the crib and changing a diaper or rocking, holding, and cuddling the child.<\/p>\n

8. Anxiety about the future<\/strong><\/p>\n

Related but perhaps not the same thing, you get anxious about what will happen to the self if something bad happens.<\/p>\n

Help is needed, but no one is there to help.<\/p>\n

9. Stigma<\/strong><\/p>\n

Movies and TV show us this stereotype of lonely people as intentionally shying away from other people and feeling sorry for themselves.<\/p>\n

Even worse is when we, the lonely people, think this of our own selves and then berate ourselves for it.<\/p>\n

10. Feeling depressed and a sense of loss<\/strong><\/p>\n

Conditions like grief or depression make it worse, especially for the elderly, who may have lost most of the people they knew in years gone by make the loneliness even more apparent.<\/p>\n

My great aunt made it almost to 95. All of her brothers, sisters, and a lot of her friends were already gone, and all her other relatives were scattered across the country.<\/p>\n

11. A sense of having no intrinsic value to the world around you<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you\u2019re lonely and you need someone to come and rescue you from your plight, you may see that as a drain on another person, when what you really want is to contribute.<\/p>\n

You want to have something to offer, to be valuable and wanted, rather than have someone conceding to spend time with you because you are needy.<\/p>\n

People need and want to feel useful. And I am sure there are a lot of elderly in nursing homes, homebound, or in assisted living who would feel the truth in this.<\/p>\n

12. Feeling useless<\/strong>
You have this idea that you are so sad and you don\u2019t have anything to offer anyone anyway.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re grieving or depressed, you cannot offer to others the cheer that makes people want to be around others.<\/p>\n

If you know that, you may decide you don\u2019t want to inflict yourself on anyone else.<\/p>\n

13. Feeling guilty<\/strong>
You have this idea that if you aren\u2019t actively pining away, you didn\u2019t really love a person you lost or you must have fallen out of love with them and don\u2019t love them anymore.<\/p>\n

You might feel guilt or confusion over this, thinking to yourself, \u201cIf I don\u2019t have these big, dramatic feelings anymore, do I still love the person?\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\u0642\u0627\u0644\u0628 \u0648\u0631\u062f\u067e\u0631\u0633<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Have you been ignoring the signs of a toxic relationship because you\u2019re too scared of feeling lonely if you break up? Has co-dependency on your toxic partner clouded your mind? And if you do eventually break up, you find that you\u2019re feeling lonely and can\u2019t stop thinking about him. Food has no flavor and every […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":608637,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-608636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lifestyle"],"yoast_head":"\n13 Signs you\u2019re staying in a toxic relationship - Ghanamma.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2019\/04\/18\/13-signs-youre-staying-in-a-toxic-relationship\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"13 Signs you\u2019re staying in a toxic relationship - Ghanamma.com\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"Have you been ignoring the signs of a toxic relationship because you\u2019re too scared of feeling lonely if you break up? 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