You know it doesn’t feel like love.
Don’t lie to yourself. Don’t lie to me. We both know it.
It feels like anxiety. Like waking up with your stomach in knots because you don’t know which version of them you’re getting today—the charmer who kisses your forehead or the ghost who won’t answer your texts. It feels like double-texting, triple-texting, rewriting a message seventeen times so you don’t sound “too much,” and swallowing your needs like bitter medicine because God forbid you actually need something.
You know it doesn’t feel like love, but you stay.
Why? Because leaving feels like failure, and you’re tired of failing. Because you’ve already spent so much time trying to fix it, and leaving feels like all that pain would mean nothing. Because when they’re sweet, they’re sweet, and you tell yourself that version is who they really are—maybe you just need to love them a little harder to bring that person back.
Toxic love is clever like that. It’s like a slot machine that pays out just enough to keep you pulling the lever, broke and hopeful, every single time. It gives you just enough almost to keep you from walking out the door.
But let’s call it what it is: it’s not love. It’s fear. It’s trauma bonds. It’s the loneliness you’d rather sit with than the loneliness you fear will swallow you if you walk away. It’s bargaining your peace for temporary companionship because being alone scares the hell out of you.
And you know what? You’re not weak for staying. I’m not here to shame you. I’ve stayed, too. We’ve all stayed, rewriting history in our minds, making excuses, telling ourselves it’s not that bad.
But love—real love—doesn’t make you question your worth every day. It doesn’t leave you replaying conversations to see what you did wrong. It doesn’t gaslight you into thinking you’re too emotional, too dramatic, too anything for simply wanting to feel safe.
You’re not crazy for wanting soft love, steady love, safe love.
You deserve that.
And I know you’re tired. I know you’ve given them every version of you, and you’re standing there empty, hoping it’s enough to finally change them. But they won’t change. And you’re too good, too bright, too alive to let yourself wilt in the shadows of someone else’s inability to love you properly.
Leaving doesn’t make you a failure. It makes you free. It makes you brave.
Toxic love doesn’t feel like love because it isn’t love. And you don’t have to keep pretending it is just so you don’t have to start over.
Starting over is terrifying, but you know what’s scarier? Staying in a place that drains the color from your life one argument, one silent treatment, one broken promise at a time.
If you’re waiting for a sign to let go, this is it.
I know it’s hard. I know it’s scary. I know it’s not fair that you have to be the one to walk away, even though you’ve done everything you could to make it work. But let them go.
It’s not love, babe. And you don’t have to keep staying.
