“I really am a firm believer that you have to try to work everything out and understand why the person is toxic. You may be able to live with it — but on the other hand, you may not. If you cant, you’ve got to get out of it. We have to not put ourselves in that position. With few exceptions, human beings want to be emotionally and physically close to each other. Life seems better shared. And yet no area of human endeavor seems more fraught with challenges and difficulties than our relationships with others. Relationships, like most things in life worth having, require effort.Think of it this way:  Even good relationships take work. After all, our significant other, our close friends, and even our parents aren’t perfect (and, oddly enough, they may not see us as perfect either). We have to learn how to accommodate and adapt to their idiosyncrasies, their faults, their moods, etc., just as they must learn how to do the same with us. And it’s worth it.

Some relationships, however, are more difficult and require proportionately more work. We are not clones but individuals, and some individuals in relationships are going to have more difficulties, more disagreements. But because we value these relationships we’re willing to make the effort it takes to keep them.

And then there are toxic relationships. These relationships have mutated themselves into something that has the potential, if not corrected, to be extremely harmful to our well being. These relationships are not necessarily hopeless, but they require substantial and difficult work if they are to be changed into something healthy. The paradox is that in order to have a reasonable chance to turn a toxic relationship into a healthy relationship, we have to be prepared to leave it. As I always say, Relationships have never been easy and they never will be.