Alone Is Better Than Being In A Bad Relationship

There are over one hundred coping skills that I’ve learned in the last decade, each one helping to shape my journey to recovery.

I began my journey in recovery from a Bi-Polar 1 diagnosis and PTSD over a decade ago. True to the name bi polar, I’ve had many ups and downs in this journey. In this blog, I’ll be sharing my experiences of how I learned to cope with the ups and downs of life and moods, and eventually find stability in my inner being.

This week I’m highlighting the skill that took me the longest to learn, so it’s the most recent skill I’ve really applied to my life to find a deeper stability. This skill was knowing that Alone is better than being in a bad relationship from Safe Coping Skills (Part. 1 ) in Seeking Safety by Lisa M. Najavits, Ph. D. .(Image listed below)

In 2017 I remember sitting in the therapist’s office, and he asked me, “What are your goals for your life?” I must have responded with my goals involving a love interest, because he then asked, “Who are you without identifying as this person’s partner?” Internally I immediately rejected this question, because there was no me outside of this other person. My life was consumed by the question: will we, or won’t we work out? I believed I was the only problem in the relationship. I believed if we didn’t work out, it was because I was too defective. These unhealthy beliefs kept me in a relationship, I believe, for the sake of my pride: to prove I wasn’t too defective to be loved by someone.

In the process of trying to prove my worth to another person, I was at the same time losing my value, my esteem, and falling deeper into the black hole of shame, guilt, anger, apathy and grief. I want to belong. The more I wanted to be someone I was not, the more I hated myself, and those old thoughts of life is better without me, starting creeping in again.

I was training up in Life Coaching, more aware of my own dysfunction beyond just a mental illness diagnosis, looking at my entire psyche in a new way. I had also come to learn that my partner suffered from an intimacy disorder, an addiction to pornography. This awareness helped in my understanding that it really wasn’t about me, as far as his behaviors went. Still though, I was alone inside, completely defeated and depleted. As my partner dove into a 12 step program for sex addiction, becoming more and more at peace and even feeling joy in his discovered addiction, here I was, falling deeper and deeper into a black hole. “Why did I always partner with addicts? Why was God a man? I don’t like men, jeeez… but I need validation from a man. You want me to worship one??!” When i went to see a local pastor who also practiced EMDR therapy, I told him, “I don’t want to talk about God.” For a year, that pastor, Leonard, met me where I was. We didn’t talk about God, but we did great trauma work for my past experiences with men. I came out with a new healthy perspective on my past relationships, learning more about myself and others in the process. Sadly, all of this progress was not enough, and I learned that it was going to be impossible for my partner and I to heal under the same roof. I wanted to stay though, out of fear of losing the relationship. I still equated being alone to being a failure.

I started taking two mile walks in the countryside every day, talking to God. I asked God all sorts of questions, and expressed my frustrations and my want to have a closer relationship. I was tired of feeling alone inside. I was tired of hating myself and others for our trauma, essentially. I walked this walk about two weeks, until I felt all my queries were addressed with God. I was used to seeing God work miracles in others lives, sometimes even through my very own hands.. I didn’t think I could be helped in this wondrous way.

The anger had consumed me one day. I remember the rage, how it felt, overwhelming. I remember walking through the yard, armed with the worst of the worst on the tip of my tongue, my fists balled up, ready for the hate-fest about to start up as I approached my partner in the yard. Then, something happened.

A force greater than my own, turned my butt around right there in the yard and directed me to the spare bedroom in the house. Immediately I hit my knees for the first time, and went into desperate prayer for God to remove this anger from me, so I could know love, and be love. And JUST LIKE THAT: not only did the rage go away, but the thoughts that were producing the rage went away. I tried hard to hold on to those thoughts. They just evaporated into nothing I could grasp. My mouth probably hung open for a solid two minutes after that. I was worthy of God’s help. I was not alone anymore. I was never going to be alone again. When the time came, it wasn’t easy, but I left the home, and I trusted God would provide, and mold me into who I was. I had come to find my complete devastation of esteem as a blessing, as I could only be made into someone better, even better than before. It wasn’t a graceful exit. I threw my hands in the air, and yelled at God to just take it all. Take my relationship, take my stuff, my cares, my pride, my grief… take my home.. Just TAKE IT!!!

Being alone is better than being in a toxic relationship. What I have learned is that I am not truly ever alone, and that none of us truly have to be alone. Just like any toxic spill, the process to neutralize it can be hazardous, so safety precautions are involved. In this case, safety may look like space from someone, and sometimes permanently. This is okay, because in any recovery, safety is key. Today I am grateful for the safe space my former partner and I both have to continue to learn, grow, and heal from the past with our Great Helper. We are learning healthy boundaries. I am still grateful to this day for my former partner’s own realizations and recovery journey that helped to prompt my own deeper recovery, beyond the mental, emotional and physical, and into the spiritual. I think there’s a blessing in the brokenness of things, if we are willing to face the space to find out.

Statistics reveal that relational issues can be a factor in suicidal idealizations. My life coaching training revealed how the quality of our relationships directly impacts the quality of our life. Assessing our relationships and learning how to improve the quality of them or remove them from our lives helped me in my own suicide prevention journey.

Listed below are wonderful coping skills to help you improve your mental wellness. These have helped me wonderfully in my own journey! I have also learned to call on the higher power of prayer when times are good, and praise God for all of it, good and bad.

With gratitude,

Emily