Hope and forgiveness in the wrong hands

Relationships thrive when rooted in mutual respect, trust, and honesty. But, when these essential elements are missing, especially in relationships with people who exhibit narcissistic traits or emotional dysregulation, the dynamics can become damaging and emotionally exhausting.

Being in a relationship with a person who has narcissistic traits or emotional dysregulation can deeply affect your sense of self-worth. Over time, your self-talk starts to reflect their lack of compassion, empathy, and respect - leaving you feeling inadequate and stuck in negativity.

A lifetime can be spent trying to get the acknowledgement from aloof, detached and disconnected parents. This unmet need often resurfaces in adult relationships,  where we're drawn to new partners who replicate those dynamics. These romantic relationships offer a false opportunity and ephemeral idealisation in place of real organic connection and eventual belonging merely because you are (for them) an ideal choice because of your vulnerability.

In such relationships, the wound never heals and the negative self-talk becomes louder and louder until you are eventually convinced of your own worthlessness. It always ends in tears, and they will be yours - not theirs for sure!

So, how can we better manage this sad and painful repetition? Familiarity (however bad it is for us) plays a big role. When we're drawn in and seduced by what is known - because we forget, and we hope, and we forgive because we so want it to be different - our alarm system is down. People-pleasing and delusory false promises, as well as this infallible hope, keep us here in this darkest of perilous inter-relational dynamics.

Coping strategies for toxic relationships

1. Manage expectations

This can limit the personal pain and damage as well as be realistic about investing our hope in what is unlikely to change. Those with narcissistic traits are unlikely to see, own or validate their own dysfunction and, therefore, getting to stage two of the necessary participation in employing and exploring change is equally unlikely to happen or ever take place.

2. Practice acceptance

This is how it is. Accept it or slowly (or quickly) walk away from it. Sometimes this approach of a new more realistic acceptance is necessary when it is a parent or a child or a long-term relationship or marriage that you cannot bear to leave.

These relationships are also by and large not bad all the time and might well have their good moments. In fact, paradoxically, this is often what prevents any kind of healthy change. Or there are finances or cultural issues as well as love that makes a severing of that relationship seem and/or feel impossible and unbearable. Most especially I feel if the relationship is with your own child when, beyond the cutting of the umbilical cord, any other severing is far too much to bear or consider.

3. Rebalance your emotional energy

Sadly, the truth often is that we put 90% of our hearts, minds and souls into our most dysfunctional relationships, and far less into those that are healthier, rewarding and more peaceful. We are so taken up and emotionally denuded there is less to go around.

Better to re-address the calculus by limiting unhealthy interaction/s and so, importantly, lowering our realistic expectations. Then we don’t fall so far by our cognitive awareness of the limitations and we lower the impact of "being back here again".

Moving forward: Redefining hope and forgiveness

So, where is the resolve? What does it look like? Maybe it lies somewhere here: Not expecting the ideal, the fairytale.

It might not be what we originally imagined or hoped for but, in changing our own narrative and the shape of our expectations, we can love those who let us down by accepting less. In turn, this limits disappointment and prevents this from feeding into our own self-alienation and lack of self-acceptance. Hopefully, here in the paler blue of the Azul is a different shape of an emotional circumference that allows new freedom of breath and peace.

If we can change the narrative, we can find unalterable freedom that is not dependent on another who cannot give us not only what we need, but what they are also fundamentally unaware of through their own limitations and not ours.