It can be hard to be single, surrounded by images of laughing couples and media messages that no one can be fulfilled unless they’ve found the right person. However, a relationship does more than fill a hole in your life; it helps you to define who you are, and you don’t want a relationship that turns you into someone you dislike. What’s more, if you aren’t happy with the person, even filling a hole is a bad idea.
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Filling a hole in the ground with a sapling or flower seed is great; filling it with thistles, less so. Below are nine reasons why you should consider breaking away if you’re with the wrong person.
You Deserve To Be Happy
If you’re with the wrong person, chances are that you feel unhappy. Seeing their number on your cell phone makes your heart sink instead of dancing. When they talk to you, you’re wishing that you were watching TV instead of having another conversation with them. You deserve to be with someone who makes you happy instead, and you’ll never find them if you’re with the wrong person.
Your Honey Deserves To Be Happy
You may think that you’re doing a good job of hiding your dissatisfaction with the relationship, but there’s a good chance that your annoyance is coming out in a thousand little ways. If your partner is as unhappy with the relationship as you are, they need to be released from it as much as you do. And if they’re head over heels in love with you but you just can’t make yourself feel the same way, they deserve to be with someone who will love them back.
People Shape Our Personalities
If you’re with the wrong person, you probably don’t like the person you are when you’re with them. Do they make you snappish and angry or nervous and insecure? Do they have a cruel sense of humor that makes you want to chime in with your own mean-spirited jokes, only to feel terrible afterwards? If you don’t like the person that you are when you’re with your partner, you shouldn’t have to be that person for one second longer.
The longer you stay in this situation, the longer these moods and personality traits will start working themselves into your mind and become habits. Don’t get in the habit of being someone you dislike. Get away from your partner and the you that your partner brings out in you.
Your Self-Esteem Needs It
If you’re with someone who actively insults you or makes you feel foolish for being yourself, it should be clear that your self-esteem will improve dramatically once you’re out of the relationship. However, even if your partner isn’t obviously emotionally abusive or distant, a bad relationship wreaks havoc on your self-esteem.
Every day you spend with this person, you’re telling yourself that you don’t deserve someone who truly loves you, or that you’re too weak to make it on your own – and you’ll eventually start to believe it. If you’re with someone who loves you even though you don’t love them back, your self-esteem will crumble because you won’t be able to shake the feeling that you’re a terrible person who’s using your partner. Ending the relationship will help you to end these toxic feelings.
Bad Relationships Keep You From Good Relationships
If you’re in the wrong relationship, you aren’t in the right one – plain and simple. If you’re spending your time and attention on a relationship that goes nowhere, you’re distracting yourself from hitting the dating scene and finding the right person.
Even if you hope to find someone, fall head over heels, and leave your current partner (which isn’t really fair to your current partner unless they know that’s the plan), your new crush might not want to date you. No one wants to be the rebound relationship, and if you ditched your last partner, your new crush may be afraid that you’ll ditch them in the same way. It’s better to make a clean break and hit the dating scene now.
Being Single Lets You Think About What You Want
If you’re in a relationship with someone, they’re going to affect your vision of the future. If you’re actively trying to make the relationship work even though it isn’t working at all, you’ll make decisions for the future based on maintaining this toxic relationship (for instance, passing up that dream promotion that involves relocating because your partner doesn’t want to move).
If you’re fantasizing about leaving but not actually doing it, you may only be thinking about the future in terms of what you can’t do right now or in terms of what would upset your partner the most (for instance, daydreaming about moving to Hawaii and leaving all this behind you even though you don’t actually want to go anywhere).
If you’re single, though, you won’t be making your plans for the future based on anyone else, whether it’s pleasing them or displeasing them. You’ll be able to think about what you truly want out of life and plan accordingly.
Bad Relationships Can Teach Us Lessons
If you’re afraid to call it quits because you don’t want to admit that you wasted your time on this person, put that worry aside – you didn’t. Bad relationships teach us what we don’t want in a partner, and that’s a valuable thing to learn. The only way to waste your time is to stay in the relationship now that you’ve already learned the lesson and are ready to move on.
Little Things Become Big Regrets
You may think that your minor feelings of unhappiness and dissatisfaction aren’t big and important enough to warrant a break-up. However, your feelings of mild dissatisfaction now will eventually blossom into full-bore regret. If your relationship feels loveless and empty now, you don’t want to look back 20 years from now and lament the fact that you never had the chance to have a relationship that was loving and fulfilling.
You may regret ending your bad relationship for the first few weeks afterwards when you feel lonely, but you won’t regret it for years. Continuing it, however, can lead to a lifetime of what-ifs and should-haves.
There’s More To Life Than Relationships
If you’re so fixated on being in a relationship that you’re willing to stay in an unhappy one in order to avoid being single, you need to remind yourself of how much more there is to life than having a boyfriend or girlfriend.
Breaking up with your partner will help you to focus on what truly makes you feel happy and fulfilled, whether it’s volunteering, pursuing a beloved hobby, spending time with your friends and family, or getting more involved at work.
Finding that kind of fulfillment will also help keep you out of bad relationships in the future. If you know who you want to be, you’re more likely to get involved with someone who’s right for that person.
