A toxic relationship is scary.

The thought of loving someone and giving them your everything only for the relationship to end up emotionally, and sometimes even physically, destroying me terrifies me. Growing up, I thought toxic relationships were uncommon. I'd see this fairytale type of love perpetuated in the media and I thought that was how every relationship was. However, the older I get, the more I begin to realize how uncommon these fairytale-type relationships are.

Screw the fairytales for a minute though, because I've begun to realize how uncommon a healthy relationship really is.

I'm lucky enough to have many friends, and most of these friends are in relationships. Being the single friend is something I've grown used to and honestly, I don't mind it. Besides being the single friend, I've also been the friend many of my friends turn to to rant about their boyfriend or just to get relationship advice. After being this friend for a long time, I've begun to realize one thing - many of my friends are in toxic relationships. In fact, when I think of all my friends who are dating, only one or two couples are in healthy relationships.

This is scary. To know that such a small percentage of the relationships I know pretty well are healthy terrifies me and how I'll go about my future relationships. Many of these relationships started out in natural, "healthy" ways, but they've quickly changed.

I've watched these toxic relationships emotionally destroy my best friends and that's been really hard for me. I've done what I can to try and get them out of the relationships, but that's come with little success. After watching this toxic behavior rip apart so many people I care about, it's no surprise it'd strike such an emotional chord with me, causing me to be okay with the thought of never dating again.

To think that it's becoming more likely that I'll end up in a toxic relationship than a relationship that is healthy honestly makes me never want to date again. I would rather live my life as the single girl or just have a bunch of flings than lockdown to someone who could end up toxic.

And sure, nothing ventured does lead to nothing gained. I'm sure the right person could change me. But for now, I'll just keep doing my single thing forever and work on helping my friends escape a good love that turned bad.