Why Your Most Toxic Relationship Is the Hardest to Escape

If you’ve ever been romantically involved with someone who makes your life a living hell but you can’t leave them alone, you’re not alone. It’s happened to the best of us.

Or maybe you watched one of your friends, who legitimately has other options, but they couldn’t stop entertaining the worst one. And this goes for both men and women, by the way.

Contrary to what people think, you or your friend didn’t keep going back to a toxic relationship because you couldn’t or can’t do any better. At least not always.

Yes, there are the unfortunate situations where you know someone is using you and treating you like trash, but you’ve decided—consciously or subconsciously—that bad company is better than no company at all.

Or there is the case where you’ve prioritized looks to the point where you are willing to suffer through any disrespect or dysfunction, no matter what it costs you. As long as you get to claim that you are with the baddest, or richest, or whatever adjective you’ve considered is more important than receiving basic respect and consideration.

Those are the obvious cases, but in many cases, it is just not that simple.

In this essay, I’m breaking down the psychological and neurological perfect storm that makes it nearly impossible to leave someone who brings nothing to the table but misery, aggravation, disappointment, and heartache.

But before we get started, I want to issue a disclaimer.

There are people trapped in relationships because the threat of physical abuse constantly looms overhead. My heart goes out to those people, but they are not the ones I’m talking about.

This essay is about those of us who can leave without facing the threat of violence, financial ruin, or homelessness.

In other words, if a person can leave a relationship without losing their livelihood and security, I’m explaining how that works. And perhaps through that understanding, unveil a solution.

Sex Is One Hell of A Drug

First, let’s tackle the obvious.

Sex.

Everyone has heard a story of a guy who just can’t stop messing with a crazy girl because she’s a freak in bed. Maybe that’s been one of you.

But it’s not just men who can’t step away from a bad situation because the sex is so good.

A study titled “A Worldwide Test of the Predictive Validity of Ideal Partner Preference-Matching” set out to answer one question: do people’s publicly stated preferences for someone match with what they actually prioritize with their actions?

Researchers listed 35 traits—things like attractive, funny, financially stable—and asked over 10,000 participants to rank them.

They then looked at real people the participants knew or were already involved with, asking them to rate how strongly each person possessed those same traits—and how romantically interested they were in them.

The difference between what people said they wanted and what they actually prioritized in their romantic feelings was striking.

“A good lover” ranked only 12th when people described their ideal partner. But when researchers examined what most strongly predicted attraction to a real person, it ranked number one.

Now I admit that is a little nebulous. The exact wording was “good lover,” which could mean a few things, not necessarily great in bed. But for the sake of this discussion, as well as what the phrase is generally used for, we’ll assume it means “good at sex.”

This creates a bit of a “chicken or the egg” dilemma.

Do people in good relationships have better sex because the good relationship makes them see their partner as sexy, or do people who are better in bed make the relationship better because sex is that important?

A 2023 study actually answered this question.

The “Sexual Satisfaction Predicts Future Changes in Relationship Satisfaction and Sexual Frequency” study followed 2,100 American couples over two years, tracking changes in both their sexual satisfaction and their overall relationship satisfaction.

The researchers found that higher sexual satisfaction at one point predicted greater relationship satisfaction later. But the reverse wasn’t true: being happy with the relationship at one point did not predict greater sexual satisfaction later.

In other words, a satisfying relationship didn’t necessarily produce satisfying sex. But satisfying sex appeared to make a relationship more satisfying.

Sex isn’t the only thing that matters in a relationship, but it seems to be the most important thing.

Hopefully you do good things with that information in your own, hopefully healthy relationship, but when it comes to toxic relationships, here’s what I imagine is going on.

You’re with a terrible person—insert whatever appropriate derogatory term you use to describe them—and you want to leave, but sex has more than just a hold over you. It has completely warped the way you see the person.

Sex activates the brain’s reward and bonding systems via a neurochemical cocktail that obliterates your ability to make objective decisions about the person.

Dopamine increases the value you place on the person.
Oxytocin makes you feel closer to them, even if you know you should stay far away. Endogenous opioids—a.k.a. “Nature’s fentanyl” make you feel comfortable and relaxed around someone who usually makes you tense and anxious.

And just for the love of the game, the research also found that sexual satisfaction remained elevated for roughly 48 hours afterward—an effect researchers called the “sexual afterglow.” The hormonal surge dies down, but emotional effects linger:

You go from “That felt good” to “This person makes me feel good,” and if you get hooked on the wrong person, it makes leaving them quite difficult.

If sexual satisfaction alone can make an already healthy relationship better—and people prioritize it over every other trait, despite what they publicly say—then it definitely can make an intolerable relationship more tolerable, if not outright preferable.

Another way to put it is that sex—especially good sex—makes all the red flags look yellow and yellow flags look green.

And that’s assuming that you maintain the capacity to even see them in the first place.

The Difference Between “Liking” and “Wanting”

None of the above means you actually like the person. Even during the post-coitus afterglow, you may still be painfully aware of just how terrible they are.

You can resent them, distrust them, and intensely dislike them and who you become around them—and still feel an overwhelming urge to go back to them despite knowing better and what all of your friends and family tell you.

Everyone has called you stupid. You yourself think that your intelligence is in the negatives for going back. You don’t even really like this person, so why do you do it?

That’s because “wanting” and “liking” are not the same thing, and addiction researchers have long recognized the difference between the two.

“Liking” is the pleasure you get from a reward. “Wanting” is the motivational pull that makes you pursue it.

In everyday, colloquial speech, we tend to treat “wanting” and “liking” as interchangeable.

If you want something badly, we assume you must enjoy it. But wanting can be driven by what something gives you, even when you dislike the experience itself.

Every drug addict eventually hates the drug and what it’s done to their lives. They do not like it, but they want it so badly that they’ll continue ruining their lives to get it.

This is true in a toxic relationship, as well.

You don’t like the person anymore. But you want the sex, validation, reconciliation, or relief from the anxiety of losing them. You basically become dope-sick over not getting your fix of the person.

The same way an addict can desperately crave a drug that no longer makes them feel particularly good, you can crave a person that you can’t stand to be around.

The pleasure you get from the drug goes down as you develop a tolerance, but the dopamine-driven urge to obtain it grows even stronger.

Also, everything associated with the drug becomes motivationally charged.

A certain street, song, person, or time of day can trigger a craving before you’ve even had a chance to think about the consequences. This is why anyone who’s ever gotten sober from anything knows that they can not be around any of the places they used. It’s too triggering to handle.

When you’re addicted to a person, the same thing can happen.

Every good thing you got from the person—on the rare occasions they were good to you—trained your brain to associate them with good feelings.

Eventually, their name appearing on your phone, seeing their picture, or even just imagining getting them back can activate the urge to pursue them—even when the reality of being around them causes more pain than pleasure.

Intermittent Reinforcement Turns Bad Relationships Into A Gambling Addiction

Then there is the added factor of inconsistency. You never know if the person will be hot or cold.

Sometimes they give you affection; sometimes they withhold it. Sometimes they make you feel desired; sometimes they make you feel worthless.

They always keep you guessing.

This unpredictability takes advantage of a powerful psychological principle known as “intermittent reinforcement.”

A reward delivered inconsistently can be more compelling than one delivered every time, because you never know when the next payoff is coming.

Like a gambler pulling a slot-machine lever, each disappointment makes you wonder whether the next attempt will finally deliver the reward.

Every reunion with a toxic lover carries the possibility of that emotional or sexual reward.

The person doesn’t have to make you consistently happy. They only have to reward you often enough to keep you coming back and trying.

And each time you try to break free, you make it even harder to break free.

It becomes like emotional quicksand.

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The gap between wanting something and liking it doesn’t only apply to people.

Every day, the same thing is happening with your screens. Think about the last time you finished scrolling and felt better for it. You can’t. The liking went years ago. The wanting never did.

You still pick the phone up without deciding to, still lose forty minutes you can’t account for, still avoid the hard task for days because you can’t find the motivation.

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Value Follows Effort—Trying Harder Makes You Care More

In relationships, we assume that investment follows value: you value someone, so you give them your time, effort, and attention.

But the sequence usually runs in reverse.

Your investment is what causes you to value them. After all, why would you have given them so much if they weren’t important?

We assume our investment reflects how much we value a person. But sometimes our investment is what causes us to value them.

This is called effort justification, and it wrecks your ability to perceive who actually brings value to your life. When we endure hardship or expend serious effort to obtain something, we tend to increase its value in our minds.

Otherwise, we’re forced to confront an uncomfortable possibility: that we suffered, sacrificed, and humiliated ourselves for something or someone that was never worth it. You might also know it as something else: trauma bonding.

Dealing with trauma bonds and what you have to go through to create them forces you to simultaneously harbor two competing but equally valid thoughts:

“This person treats me terribly.”

And:

“I have sacrificed so much to keep this person.”

Holding both thoughts at once is a tough position to be in.

If the person truly is terrible, then all your effort looks foolish. But if the person is secretly special—if the relationship is unusually deep and complicated, you feel it’s destined to work if this person can just get it together.

So instead of reevaluating the investment, you reevaluate the person.

You focus on their potential. You remember the rare moments when they were loving. You tell yourself that nobody else understands them the way you do. You convince yourself that the intensity of the relationship proves there must be something profound underneath all the dysfunction.

And the more suffering you need to justify, the more extraordinary the relationship has to become in your mind.

In fact, rather than seeing the suffering as a warning, one of the reasons that people stay in these situations is that they come to see the dysfunction as a sign that it’s meant to work rather than a warning of destruction.

When Identity Trumps Sensibility

Let’s say it’s two in the morning. You’ve driven across town to rescue them from another drunken night out where you knew they were trying to hook up with someone else anyway.

You do it also so you won’t have to loan them money again—money that you know you wn’t get back—to deal with another DUI, like the one they got last time.

You’ve defended them to friends who could see exactly what was happening. You’ve forgiven betrayals you once swore would end any relationship. You’ve rearranged your life around their emergencies, listened to the same apologies, and given them chance after chance to become the person they promised they could be.

Every sacrifice should tell you to run, but instead it convinces you that this person must matter.

This is especially dangerous when you see yourself as the only person capable of saving them. A Captain-Save-A-Hoe or Bro, if you will.

Their dysfunction gives you a role: protector, healer, provider, or the one person who never abandoned them. Leaving no longer feels like ending a bad relationship. It feels like betraying someone who needs you—and surrendering a role that has, unfortunately, become part of your identity.

You’re no longer only attached to the person. You’re attached to the meaning you’ve created around staying with them.

All of this is before the dreaded sunk-cost effect enters the picture.

The Sunk Cost Fallacy Keeps You In The Game Long After You’ve Lost

Sunk cost is something you’ve already spent and cannot recover.

Rationally, past investments should not determine whether you continue making a bad investment. The only question that should matter is whether staying is likely to improve your future.

You shouldn’t throw good time after bad time, but that isn’t how people naturally think.

You’ve already given this person three years, a kid, and access to your bank account. And along the way, put up with cheating and disrespect that you never imagined tolerating.

If you walk away now, that would mean accepting that none of those sacrifices matter because you didn’t achieve the ultimate goal.

So you give them another chance.

You actually tell yourself that you can’t leave after everything you’ve been through and put into this.

But everything you’ve put into it is exactly why you need to evaluate it honestly, but people fall victim to the sunk cost fallacy all the time—especially when you factor in sex and emotions.

Effort justification and the sunk-cost effect work together, but they aren’t quite the same either.

Effort justification makes the person seem more valuable because of what you’ve endured for them. The sunk-cost effect makes leaving feel more expensive because walking away appears to waste everything you’ve already invested.

One inflates the value of the person. The other distorts the cost of leaving.

Intermittent reinforcement keeps both illusions alive.

Just when you’re ready to leave, they apologize, become affectionate, or give you everything you’ve been waiting for. You get your high, and for a brief moment, you forget how sick you were before it and how much damage you had to take to get it.

That brief payoff appears to validate every sacrifice that came before it.

References

A Worldwide Test of the Predictive Validity of Ideal Partner Preference-Matching
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39480282/

Sexual Satisfaction Predicts Future Changes in Relationship Satisfaction and Sexual Frequency: New Insights From Within-Person Associations Over Time
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.5964/ps.11869