But that comes with a very big yes. A toxic relationship can change if and only if both partners are equally committed to overcoming it with a lot of open communication, honesty, self-reflection and, possibly, professional, individual and together help. It will require each of you to examine your actions and do some inner work. If you or your partner aren't willing to make a real effort, the relationship won't change and should end.
Relationships may start out healthy, but bad feelings, a bad story, or unmet long-term needs can worsen, contaminating the relationship and changing the people in it. Leaving a relationship is never easy, but staying too long in a toxic relationship will ensure that any strength, courage and trust in you are reduced to nothing. A toxic person will float through life with a trail of broken hearts, broken relationships and broken people behind them, but toxic relationships don't necessarily end that way because the person you fell in love with turned out to be toxic. Standing on a dance floor doesn't make you a dancer, and being physically present in a relationship doesn't mean you're making an investment in that relationship.
Toxic relationships often involve gaseous lighting, a cognitive strategy that creates a subtle and unbalanced power dynamic that seeks to control the timing of the relationship. At the beginning of my relationship with my ex, he told me details about his former sexual partners and their performances in bed, it made me feel bad and during the 3 years of the relationship I didn't forget what he told me without me asking him. I know that I couldn't set clear relationship boundaries at the time and I should never have entered into a relationship.
