Tim Arrigo argues that staying in a toxic relationship is a choice, not a trap. He says healing requires acknowledging your own dysfunction, not waiting for your partner to change. The most toxic relationship, he claims, is often the one you have with yourself.
It's amazing to me how many people enter relationships and choose to be in a relationship with somebody, and then years pass by and that person they were in a relationship with becomes toxic. And they're more willing to acknowledge that the person they're with has become toxic than they are willing to acknowledge that they chose to be in that relationship. And we live in a culture that perpetuates this victim narrative. That everybody is with a narcissist and, oh, that's too bad for you because you must be an empath. What this does is it actually disempowers people. It takes away their freedom and autonomy because it puts them in a position where they believe the power is in the other person's hands to change. Check it out. No one's change of behavior is going to heal you. Someone's change of behavior does not heal you. So the problem is, if I'm in a relationship with somebody that's toxic, and I stay in that relationship and I'm the victim, then what am I doing? Why am I in that relationship? Why am I staying? What does that say about me? But see, people don't want to look at that. They don't want to look at hurt people hurt people. In order to be in a dysfunctional relationship, you have to be dysfunctional, period. Most of the time, we're not only the victim, we're also the perpetrator. And I could tell you, I was a victim of a lot of things in my life, a lot of which were self-induced. And believe me when I say this, I definitely became the perpetrator. And the problem is, is that people's ego doesn't want them to acknowledge that, but that keeps them stuck. You are not shackled. You are not confined. You are not bound to any relationship in your life. Now, covenentially between you and God, that's another thing, but that's between you and God. But you are not bound to any circumstance that you deem to be abusive. So what does it say about us that we stay there? Well, maybe it says that the real toxic relationship we have is one that existed before the relationship we're in. And maybe the only toxic relationship we've had that left us predisposed to another one was the one that we've had with ourselves.
