I’m a dysfunctional Golden Retriever with loyalty issues.
In the past, I invested too long in draining relationships.
Sometimes people leave you nothing but sad options. They push you to choose between allowing their negative speech and behavior to continue to damage your soul or disconnecting from them.
No matter how many negative words or actions bit me, my twisted sense of faithfulness kept me in unhealthy relationships. I’m facing this issue again in our current cultural civil war. People in my life are passionately trash-talking individuals and ideals that I value. The current hostilities, complete with dump-and-run social media posts and divided families and friends are sadly reminiscent of the dark COVID days.
So how do we know when it’s time to take a break or even end a relationship? Even as I write it, that sounds awful. Unfortunately, it’s the only healthy choice that some people will allow. I’ve been pondering this topic and found some good quotes that describe how I’ve felt in some relationships.
“If there is a particular person in your life that is repeatedly choosing not to honor you and is causing you more sadness or pain than they are joy - it might be time to release that friendship back to God and trust that it is not where you belong.” Mandy Hale
“Toxic people attach themselves like cinder blocks tied to your ankles and then invite you for a swim in their poisoned waters.” John Mark Green
“People inspire you or drain you. “Hans F. Hasen
“Stop hanging out with toxic people just because you’ve known them a long time.” Unknown
“Letting go means to come to the realization that some people are a part of your history, but not a part of your destiny.” Steve Maraboli
Letting go. Sometimes it’s easy and other times it’s a dumpster fire to try to place new boundaries on an old relationship. Letting go may be as simple as scrolling past someone’s social media posts or as painful as disinviting someone from a holiday. Anything in that wide range hurts my heart. I remember days past when that person and I lived on the same page. We loved talking and being together. Now…. not so much.
What if the person regularly dropping toxins into your life is a family member or spouse? Or a co-worker or fellow church member or anyone that you must encounter regularly? Then what? Since I’ve earned low grades in this in the past, I searched for wisdom from other believers with higher marks. This problem is huge. I found A LOT of books. Here are a few by authors I know or who come with high recommendations along with my impressions.
Lysa walked through a betrayal of marriage vows twice, with the same man. His repentance during the first round seemed so sincere, they renewed their wedding vows in grand style. To be betrayed again, after that, was devastating. I’ve not read this book yet but I did read her book, “Forgiving What You Can’t Forget,” by her and it helped me grow much larger forgiveness and grief processing muscles. I expect this book will be very practical and helpful.
I was considering purchasing this series but then found the sermon below. I’ll bet the series would be a great thing to do with a group
This sermon was soooo good. I expect it’s a condensed version of the video series. I like his simple statement as to how we should evaluate any relationship. Does it drain you or energize you? I am certain that too many of us have been giving too much time and emotional energy to draining relationships. We need to change that. Honestly, I wonder if it’s part of why so many people are tired all the time. Draining relationships.
This book was free on Kindle Unlimited and I’m halfway through. I can see that some of my past painful relationships involved narcissism. I’ve listened to teachings about narcissism before and this added new information to my body of knowledge. For example, did you know that narcissists are so gifted at creating their alternate realities, in which they are the lovely, charming people all the time, they will often not retain any memory of the terrible things they say and do to others? I did not know that! That right there makes reading the book worthwhile. And the tough news is that folks in the mental health fields are reporting that narcissism is at an all time high in our culture. I strongly recommend this book. At some point every one of us will need to engage with one of these exotic birds, and it’s wise to have some protective tools before that happens.
This book comes with great recommendations and so I started to read the sample available online. I LOVE her introduction. She tells the story of how, when she set aside a nine-day sabbatical from her counseling work to work on this book about toxic relationships, a toxic situation unexpectedly happened in her home. A clogged pipe in her septic system caused brown waste to flow out into her office, waiting room and all the surrounding storage rooms. Ugh. She put in a huge amount of work to undo the damage and sanitize or replace so many items. God used that disaster to show her the similarities between cleaning that kind of mess out of her life and cleaning up emotional messes in our lives. I found her writing style very easy on the brain.
Your situation with your difficult person is unique yet I think there are common experiences and principles represented in these resources that can help anyone. God wants to give us discernment, wisdom, knowledge, understanding, and compassion for the sandpaper people in our lives. Some only need extra grace and forgiveness. Others may require stronger boundaries but can still be in our lives. Then, there might be some that we need to release.
Jesus set a perfect example of when to talk, when to be silent,
when to stay and engage and when to walk away.
Check out all his stories in the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, in the Bible. He was a 5D chess player when it came to relationships.
I hope, like me, you feel some fresh inspiration to follow his example more closely.
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