Perhaps the hardest thing I’ve had to do is watch my friends stay in destructive relationships. I’m sure everyone has dealt with this at one point or another. I often struggle with deciding whether to speak up about it, or allow them to make their own decisions. Often, though, I don’t even have the luxury of making that choice, because there is nothing anyone can say or do that will make them realize how damaging their significant other is.

I tried to understand why they stayed with someone who treated them so terribly. I understand it’s nice to feel wanted, to be paid attention to, and to always have someone around, but what if that person isn’t a good person? Often they would declare they knew their relationship wasn’t healthy, but they stayed because they “needed” the person. This concept was even harder for me to wrap my mind around: how can one develop so much dependency on a toxic person? Now, I can’t completely empathize or speak against their feeling of needing someone because I have never felt like that, so I can’t understand or speak about where it comes from. What I do know, however, is that even though they may feel and swear up and down that they need a toxic person, they don’t.

No one in the world ever needs to be degraded, to have someone be overly controlling, someone who manipulates them, or someone who feeds off the others' insecurities. No one needs that in their life; some may even go as far to say you are better off with out those things.

If you are in a relationship, or even a friendship, where the other person makes you feel lesser, or makes you confused, scared, and sad more often than they make you happy and you claim you need that person, it’s not a real relationship and I promise you don’t need them. You have lived parts of your life without them and you were fine, possibly better, you can be without them again. You will be fine.

If you don’t know what you would do without them, I’ll tell you. You'll wake up and you go about your day the way you would and always have. You are enough on your own; you don’t need anyone, especially someone who makes your life harder.

You may think you need them, and it may take time for you to realize you don’t, but I’m going to remind you anyway, that you don’t. You don’t need them if they bring you down.