Ending a toxic relationship is extremely difficult. Even when someone knows their partner is treating them poorly, they often find themselves going back over and over again. This phenomenon confuses many people who have never experienced a toxic relationship firsthand. From the outside, it seems obvious that the person should move on and find someone who makes them happy. However, there are many complex emotional and psychological factors that make leaving for good challenging.
Fear of Being Alone
One of the most common reasons people return to toxic relationships is simply fear of being alone. Even if the relationship is unhealthy, having a partner, any partner, can feel better than not having anyone at all. Being alone means dealing with issues singlehandedly, not having physical intimacy, and having to find fulfillment completely from within. This can be terrifying for people who rely heavily on their relationships for self-worth and social connection. By going back, they return to what feels “normal” and avoid facing life on their own.
Related to the fear of being alone is low self-esteem. People with poor self-image may stay because they believe no one else would want them or they do not deserve true happiness. Their toxic partner reinforces those fears by telling them no one else would put up with them or repeatedly pointing out their flaws. Due to that conditioning, the person depends on their partner and feels trapped in the relationship, even if it makes them miserable.
Codependency
Many toxic relationships involve a power imbalance, with one partner being controlling or abusive. This often leads the other partner to become extremely dependent on their abusive partner. The loss of independence stems from the controlling partner systematically isolating the other from external support systems. The abusive partner also undermines the dependent partner’s self-confidence, making them believe they are incapable of handling life alone.
This codependent dynamic makes leaving incredibly difficult. The dependent partner feels they cannot function or survive without their abusive partner on whom they rely financially, emotionally, and socially after being cut off from other sources of support. The controlling partner often reinforces this by threatening to hurt or kill themselves if the dependent partner leaves. Codependency is difficult to overcome even after the relationship ends, and often draws the dependent partner back once the initial separation anxiety passes.
Trauma bonding
Trauma bonding occurs when the mistreatment in an abusive relationship leads to powerful emotional bonds forming. The cycle of abuse sparks high emotions and the release of hormones and neurotransmitters linked to attachment. This leads the mistreated partner to form strong trauma bonds with their abusive partner during the reconciliation and “honeymoon” phases when the abuse briefly stops. When the relationship ends, those powerful trauma bonds often override logical thought processes and draw the abused partner back into contact.
Trauma bonding makes leaving a toxic relationship similar to overcoming addiction, because the body craves the hormonal roller coaster even when the situation is logically unhealthy. The emotional highs and lows become addictive over time. The abused partner feels physically compelled to return to their abusive partner due to the withdrawal-like symptoms they experience during separation.
Unfinished Business
Toxic relationships often follow a cycle of extreme highs and lows. During the good times, the mistreated partner comes to believe their partner is capable of being caring, attentive, and loving under the right circumstances. Even after the relationship ends, the mistreated partner may hold onto hope that if they just treated their partner better, communicated more clearly, or had handled things differently, the relationship could have worked.
The desire for closure can draw people back into toxic relationships as they try to understand what went wrong and look for a sense of resolution. Some return hoping to recapture the good moments or revive the relationship once and for all. When things quickly turn bad again, they have difficulty accepting the futility, getting caught in the cycle over and over.
Guilt and Self-Blame
After a breakup, people often feel guilt about their role in the relationship failing. This is especially true for those fleeing abuse, who have been conditioned to take the blame for their partner’s actions. The abusive partner often reinforces guilt by refusing responsibility and vilifying their partner when they try to leave. This can leave the mistreated partner feeling too ashamed to stay away and hoping if they just treat their partner better the abuse will stop.
Even without manipulation, people tend to look back on relationships remembering their own faults most clearly. This can lead them to return hoping for a chance to “make things right.” Of course, the problems in a toxic relationship cannot be solved with any one person’s actions. However, guilt and self-blame make it challenging for some people to stay away after a breakup.
Loneliness
After a breakup, acute loneliness often sets in. Adjusting to life without one’s partner, especially after an abusive relationship, can be incredibly difficult. Even if the relationship was unhealthy, completely abandoning a primary attachment figure leaves a painful void. Many return to their toxic partners just to avoid or alleviate that empty, lonely feeling and regain a sense of normalcy.
Ending contact usually means losing one’s primary social connection and source of companionship. For isolated victims of abuse, their partner may have been their sole daily human interaction. The shock of complete isolation after leaving drives many back to their abusive partner temporarily just to relieve the loneliness while they rebuild a social circle.
Learned Helplessness
When people feel powerless to change their circumstances, they eventually stop trying and resign themselves to the situation. This phenomenon is called learned helplessness. Victims of ongoing abuse often develop learned helplessness after repeated failed attempts to improve or leave the relationship. Eventually they come to believe escape is impossible, even if opportunities present themselves.
Learned helplessness perpetuates toxic relationships after breakups, because the abused partner cannot recognize or act upon opportunities for escape. The chronic abuse creates psychological paralysis and cognitive dissonance, preventing the mistreated partner from processing contradictory evidence that leaving would be possible. They return to the familiar toxicity because they have learned to be helpless, regardless of changing circumstances.
Stockholm Syndrome
Stockholm syndrome describes the phenomenon where hostages bond with and develop sympathetic feelings towards their captors. This psychological response emerges as a survival strategy in response to trauma, threat, and isolation. In toxic relationships, Stockholm syndrome can make breaking the trauma bond impossible for victims of intimate partner abuse and violence.
Victims may come to see themselves through their abuser’s perspective and take on their abuser’s views, losing touch with their own feelings. Out of traumatic bonding, they protect and feel loyal to their abusers, rationalizing or excusing abusive behaviors. These powerful psychological symptoms virtually force Stockholm syndrome sufferers to return to their toxic partners after initially leaving.
Unresolved Psychological Issues
Each person who gets into an unhealthy relationship dynamic has underlying psychological factors that shape their reasons for staying. Things like unresolved trauma, attachment disorders, low self-worth, and personality disorders often predispose people to entering and remaining in toxic relationships.
When these root psychological causes go unaddressed, the person remains vulnerable to recreating similar dysfunctional relationship patterns. Until they receive help through counseling, self-reflection, or support groups, they find themselves pulled back in and unable to permanently detach from toxic situations and partners. Recognizing one’s psychological issues takes away their power and is key to escaping relationship toxicity.
Threats and Retaliation
In abusive relationships involving domestic violence, the abusive partner goes to extreme lengths to prevent the victim from leaving successfully. Threats to harm the victim, their loved ones, pets, possessions, or reputation are common manipulation tactics used. Stalking, harassment, and retaliation often escalate when the victim tries to break free, causing the victim to return to the relationship for safety.
Abusive partners frequently threaten suicide if the victim leaves, trapping them in the relationship out of guilt and fear. Victims also often hide the abuse to protect the reputation of the abuser, who then uses the threat of exposure to blackmail the victim into staying. When the abusersabotages their victim’s supports, goals, or property when they do leave, the economic and emotional turmoil often pushes victims back into the relationship temporarily.
Physical and Mental Illness
Toxic relationships take an extreme physical and mental toll on victims, leaving them depleted and sick. Chronic stress weakens the immune system and can trigger or exacerbate health problems. Domestic abuse survivors often suffer from anxiety, PTSD, depression, insomnia, digestive issues, chronic pain, headaches, and more, long after leaving. Eating disorders, addiction, and self-harm frequently develop as coping mechanisms as well.
Too unwell to care for themselves alone, many victims have no choice but to return to their abuser. Some are even intentionally drugged or poisoned by their abuser to incapacitate them. Without help escaping, treatment, and time to heal, the victim lacks the strength and stability to stay away from their toxic situation. Promises of help with recovery may manipulate them into returning.
Financial Constraints
Escaping any relationship has financial implications, but victims of abuse often face extreme economic limitations preventing their escape. Nearly all financial power and assets are often in the abuser’s control. Victims have often been isolated from education and employment opportunities. Intimidation tactics are used to prevent victims from working to gain independence. And the costs of establishing a new household alone can be high.
With no money stashed away, shaky employment prospects, and a mountain of debt, the economics of permanently separating are virtually impossible. Out of desperation and concern for basic survival, many victims return at least temporarily to their abuser. Sadly, some endure continued abuse just to keep a roof over their head.
External Pressure
Similarly to how abusive partners isolate victims from support systems that could help them leave, they also manipulate the people close to the victim to encourage their return. Abusers often put on a charming, helpful facade in public. Allies who only witness this Dr. Jekyll side have a hard time believing reports of abuse. Further charming manipulations and lies by the abuser can turn family and friends against the victim, pushing them back.
Victims also face pressure from cultural expectations and norms. Many cling to the hope of keeping their nuclear family intact, especially if children are involved. Religious institutions and family members often discourage divorce and separation. Victims who lack financial independence rely heavily on their partner for economic survival. These external pressures compound psychological reasons for returning.
Children
When children are part of a toxic relationship dynamic, leaving becomes much more complicated. Most parents want to keep their children’s family intact for stability and economic reasons. However, domestic violence and toxicity in a family often harms children even if not directly targeted at them. Witnessing abuse of a parent can cause lasting psychological damage to a child.
Yet when attempting to leave an abusive partner, threats of losing child custody or kidnapping children are common. Abusive partners will promise change and weaponize children’s emotional attachment to manipulate the other parent into reconciliation. Allowing continued access to the children is often the lesser evil compared to losing them entirely.
Sunk Cost Fallacy
The sunk cost fallacy describes the tendency for people to continue investing time, money, and effort into something after substantial investment even when future gain is unlikely. Years or decades spent together cause many toxic partners to stay together even when unhappy. Starting completely over with someone new can feel overwhelming when so much has already been put into the existing relationship.
People think about the investments made and sacrifices given in support of the relationship. This creates a cognitive bias favoring staying over leaving the known entity. Partners hold onto the distant hope that with more investment and sacrifice from both, the relationship can transform into something healthy and fulfilling.
Positivity Bias
Positivity bias describes the tendency for negative memories and events to fade faster than positive ones. Looking back, people more vividly recall the pleasant moments of even toxic relationships. The painful conflicts, turmoil, fear, disappointment, and abuse become muddled. This psychological phenomenon helps explain why people return seeking to recapture what they remember as the “good times.”
Through the lens of positivity bias, people let go of past hurts more easily. They have trouble remembering all the reasons and circumstances under which they needed to leave originally. Favorable memories make them doubt whether the relationship was really so bad or wonder if it could be good again.
Conclusion
Ending a toxic relationship takes tremendous courage, resilience, and support. It is not a matter of just deciding to walk away, but overcoming numerous psychological and external barriers hindering escape. People return to toxic relationships for so many valid reasons: fear, guilt, isolation, illness, trauma bonding, financial insecurity, manipulation, and more.
Judging those who go back only serves to shame victims, potentially keeping them trapped. With empathy, emotional support, and access to resources, many find the strength to break free permanently. For most, fully untangling oneself from toxicity is a process that happens in fits and starts before achieving full freedom. Meeting victims with compassion gives them hope for finding healthy relationships and lasting happiness.