Breaking Free from Toxic Patterns in Unhealthy Relationships

Intensity and unpredictability can recruit the brain’s reward pathways, making toxic relationships feel right.

An irrational fear of being unlovable and feeling undeserving of better can trap individuals in damaging relationships.

A cognitive bias against experiencing losses may lead people to continue investing in unsuccessful relationships.

You delete the text. Again.

It wasn’t the first cruel message, or even the worst. But this one—“You’re lucky I even deal with you”—cut through the quiet of the night and stayed with you longer than you’d admit.

You replay the good moments like a reel. The way they held your face when you cried. The inside jokes. The three a.m. talks that made you feel known. You tell yourself it’s complicated. You don’t have a clean answer—just a knot in your stomach and a heart full of doubt.

So, why do smart, self-aware people stay in relationships that slowly undo them? It’s not because they lack

willpower, don’t “know better,” or enjoy suffering.

More often than not, love isn’t what keeps us, but a mistaken conception of love, fear of being unlovable, or a cognitive bias known as the sunk cost fallacy.

Confusing Intensity With Love

Some relationships burn hot. Explosive arguments. Tearful reconciliations. Jealousy disguised as care. Everything feels heightened—urgent, dramatic, impossible to quit.

Why does this feel like love?

Often, it’s because of our internalized conception of what love is supposed to feel like.

Many of us grew up steeped in a cultural narrative that equates love with grand gestures, emotional whiplash, and suffering overcome. Popular media sells us love stories built on longing, chaos, and uncertainty. In those scripts, if it doesn’t hurt, it must not be real.

But here is the thing. Intensity and drama in relationships almost always signify dysfunction. Healthy love is dull—boring, even. It’s stable. Safe. Quietly reassuring.

Unfinished Childhood Business

Mistaking cycles of euphoric highs and crushing lows for love could also be rooted in your upbringing. If you grew up in chaos, love might not “feel” like love unless it’s intense, risky, and volatile. You might unknowingly recreate patterns from your early life in your adult relationships.

If you had a parent who was emotionally unavailable, unpredictable, or prone to explosive anger, you might find yourself drawn to partners who evoke that same dynamic, not because it feels good, but because it feels familiar and right. This feeling stems from your current relationship matching the image in your unconscious mind of what a relationship should be like.

You might even feel driven to “fix” the relationship as a means for resolving what you couldn’t fix in childhood. But repetition isn’t resolution. It’s a reenactment.

Abuse and Intermittent Reinforcement

Not all hurtful relationships are explosive. Some follow a more insidious rhythm: warmth followed by silence. Cruelty followed by remorse. Affection dropped in like breadcrumbs just when you’re about to walk away.

That rhythm isn’t without consequence. It’s psychologically binding.

In behavioral psychology, intermittent reinforcement refers to the unpredictable and inconsistent delivery of rewards. Rats press a lever longer and harder when the reward is random and uncertain rather than predictable and guaranteed. Why? Because an unpredictable and non-guaranteed reward produces a more powerful dopamine surge—the brain chemical tied to craving and motivation.

Humans aren’t so different.

When your partner unpredictably oscillates between warmth and cruelty, or affection and silence, this effectively works as intermittent reinforcement, causing you to endure the emotional abuse or neglect in anticipation of the rewards.

Even if your partner isn’t consciously manipulating you, the highs that follow the valleys of hurt keep you tethered.

Fear of Not Being Loved

Sometimes, what keeps us in a destructive relationship isn’t love—it’s fear of being alone, fear that no one else will want us, fear that we’ll regret walking away. Fear of this nature might be rooted in adolescent loneliness, a rising cause of diminished self-worth.

If your self-esteem has eroded over time, your fear that no one will want you can feel especially paralysing. You may start believing the little voice in your head that says, “This is the best I can get,” or “This is all I deserve.”

But here’s the truth: That voice is not the voice of love. It’s the voice of someone in your past who didn’t have your best interests at heart. The voice is lying to manipulate you.

But even if you end up alone for a short while, being alone is not worse than being with someone who consistently makes you feel unlovable. Solitude is not the enemy. Chronic self-doubt is.

The Sunk Cost Fallacy

Even when you recognize that the relationship is harmful, another thought emerges: But I’ve invested so much into this. The late nights. The difficult conversations. The second chances. The years.

Leaving can feel like abandoning a house you constructed with your own hands—even if it’s gradually falling apart.

In behavioral economics, this is referred to as the sunk cost fallacy—a cognitive bias that compels us to keep investing in something simply because we’ve already put in a lot, whether it’s a failing business, an unsuccessful project, or a relationship that has long reached its end.

We succumb to this fallacy due to our evolved tendency to avoid wasting valuable or scarce resources (time, money, effort, emotions). This aversion is usually beneficial, but when it drives us to continue investing in something we’ve already heavily invested in, it becomes detrimental.

Persisting in a failing relationship doesn’t recover what we’ve already lost. It merely drains more of our valuable resources.

So, What Can You Do?

Here’s what you don’t need to do today: Make a grand exit. Upend your life overnight. Erase every memory. Instead, start small:

• Admit the relationship is hurting you.

• Stop romanticising the good times.

• Write down how you feel after you spend time with them, daily.

• Reach out to someone who reminds you of who you were before this relationship.

• Talk to a therapist who can help you understand the emotional forces at play.

You don’t have to hate someone to leave them. You don’t have to have it all figured out. You have to stop abandoning yourself in the name of love. Treat yourself with the compassion you keep giving someone else who doesn’t deserve it.