If you know he’s not good for you but you constantly find yourself at his door anyway, you’re not alone. Whether you can’t help but see the best in him or you keep holding out hope that you can help him change, you know you need to get away but it’s just so hard. If you feel like he’s a hard habit to break, remember this:
- He doesn’t own you. You might feel like he’s made an imprint on you that you can’t shake, but nothing is forever. You need to remind yourself that he doesn’t own you in whatever ways you know will feel real and true. You were your own separate person before you met him and you still are. Keep hold of that.
- You’re not a bad person for going back to him. Beating yourself up every time you fail to keep your resolve to stay away? Yeah, that’s not gonna help much. You won’t be able to talk yourself out of it just by telling yourself you’re an awful person. You may be doing something you know isn’t good for you, but that doesn’t make you a terrible human being. It just makes you plain old human.
- Feelings can cloud your judgement. Sometimes you can find yourself in a totally confusing situation, wondering how the hell you got there. You were just telling yourself all the ways he’s hurt you, and yet here you are again, back in his arms. Feelings can be intoxicating and they can erase all logical decisions from your brain. It’s a fatal flaw in our wiring, but you can overcome it.
- Sometimes you have to learn it the hard way. Sometimes there’s just no other way around it. You can know something in your brain but still act in ways that are contrary to your own best interests. You may have to just see this thing out to the bitter end before you learn it in a way that sticks. This happens for everyone at some point in their lives. It’s gonna hurt, but you’ll learn.
- Once they’re in your system, it’s hard to get them out. A relationship can chemically alter your brain and body. You can be addicted to him, even though you know he’s not the person you need. You have to treat it like a twelve-step program of getting him out of your system. Sometimes you can make it happen just by ticking days off a calendar of not contacting him. Sometimes it takes a lot more effort. You can start small and then escalate.
- We’re all entitled to a few mistakes. Listen, even Mother Teresa made mistakes. No one is perfect and mistakes are not only part of your life here on earth, they’re necessary for you to learn and grow as a person. If he’s your mistake, you can forgive yourself for that.
- Shame won’t help. You can’t embarrass yourself out of seeing him. Shame isn’t a powerful motivating force when it comes to cutting him out of your life. Whatever his hold over you, it’s powerful enough that being ashamed of it isn’t going to help you break it.
- Even well-meaning advice can hurt you. You know the saying, “The only way to get over him is to get under someone else”? Well, you might be desperate enough to try it, only to find out that all it does is make you run right back to him. You can find yourself trying all sorts of tricks to break yourself of the need to be with him that will only drive you to embrace him even more.
- You are the captain of your ship. You are the person in charge of your own destiny. You get to make the choices you want to make. He doesn’t get to have that control over you, and when you start to believe in your own power instead of his, you’ll be on your way to breaking the habit.
- You’ll be able to walk away the moment you’re ready. It won’t happen any sooner. You can pressure and push yourself, you can ask friends to do it for you, but if you’re not ready to give him up, you won’t be able to. It’s going to take time and effort, but if you know you deserve better, you’ll get there.
