Some relationships end, but continue leaving destruction in their wake. Some don’t end, and you suffer through the daily drip-feeding of emotionally abusive behaviors until you lose your sanity.

When there’s no way away from all the toxicity, what can you do?

Some relationship challenges feel insurmountable:

Maybe the relationship ended, but the abuse hasn’t.
Maybe you share custody with someone who continues to make your life miserable.
Maybe you’re dealing with ongoing legal battles, smear campaigns, or a relentless ex who won’t let go.
Maybe you’re caring for a family member who treats you terribly, but you can’t just walk away.

These are the situations where standard advice falls short. People tell you to “just leave” or “cut them out of your life,” but that’s not always possible. Sometimes you’re even legally bound to interact with someone toxic. You might have responsibilities that keep you tethered to a harmful situation.

When you’re in the thick of it, still dealing with the fallout, still fighting battles you never wanted to fight, the path forward isn’t clear. You’re not looking for motivation or inspiration. You’re looking for a way to survive another day, another lawsuit, another custody exchange, another attempt to destroy your reputation.

The reality is that some situations don’t have clean solutions. Some people won’t stop being toxic just because you’ve set boundaries or left the relationship. Some battles continue for months or years, draining you emotionally, financially, and mentally. And when you’re in the middle of it all, healing feels impossible because the wounds keep reopening.

Accepting What You Hope Isn’t True

One of the most empowering shifts you can make is to stop hoping the other person will change. This sounds defeating, but it’s actually the opposite. When you accept that things won’t change and the person will never be anyone else but who they are, you stop waiting for something that will never happen. And you stop putting your future in someone else’s hands.

Hope can be a trap.

When you keep hoping they’ll finally see reason, feel remorse, or finally stop attacking you, you stay stuck. You wait for them to do something different so your life can improve. But what happens when they never change? You will feel like you wasted months or years hoping and waiting instead of moving forward.

Accepting that they won’t change doesn’t mean giving up. It means shifting your focus from what they might do to what you can do. Since things won’t change, what do you need to do instead? Since this is how it will be from now on, what’s your next step?

This mindset shift takes you out of a reactive position and puts you back in control of your own life. You’re no longer dependent on their behavior changing for you to feel better or move forward. You’re taking responsibility for your own path, regardless of what they do.

The abusive person believes they’re right. They take this belief into everything they do.

When someone repeatedly does harmful things, it’s usually because they honestly believe they’re justified. Even if they know they’re being awful, they don’t see themselves as wrong. This is why waiting for them to change is futile. They don’t think they need to change.

People who listen to advice, seek help, and do research are trying to figure out how to handle their situation. But the person causing the harm? They’re not doing any of that. They’re stuck in their ways, convinced of their righteousness. And if they’re not seeking help or don’t think they need it, almost nothing you do will make them change.

When you finally accept this reality, you can start making decisions from a place of power instead of from a place of fear and hope. And you will stop disempowering yourself by waiting for someone else to do something so your life can improve. You will also start asking yourself what you can control, what you can change, and what steps you can take today.

When You’re Just So Drained

When you’re dealing with ongoing toxicity, especially after a divorce or separation that hasn’t truly ended, you need to find small pieces of energy and empowerment wherever you can. These aren’t grand gestures or major life changes. They’re tiny acknowledgments that give you just enough strength to get through another day.

One sliver of energy and empowerment is knowing that this will end someday. Even if it doesn’t feel like it now, even if it seems like it will go on forever, it won’t. There will be a day when you’re no longer the target, when the legal battles are over, and when you don’t have to deal with this person anymore. Holding onto that knowledge, even when it feels distant, can give you a small piece of genuine hope to carry forward.

Another sliver is recognizing that when you’re no longer their target, someone else will be. This isn’t about wishing harm on others. It’s about validation. When an abusive person moves on to their next victim, the people around them start to see the truth. They finally understand what you were dealing with. They believe you. Though that validation may not come for a while, it will come.

Your support system is crucial during this time. If you’re dealing with legal matters, having attorneys or professionals who act as a buffer between you and the toxic person is essential. You need people who believe you, who support you, and who can help you navigate the practical realities of your situation. These people become your lifeline when everything feels overwhelming.

Another important consideration is your foundation – the pillars of your emotional well-being and sanity. Building a different kind of foundation becomes necessary when your emotional and psychological foundation has been shattered. You’re not healing in the traditional sense because you’re still being attacked. But you can build resilience. You can document everything. You can keep records of emails, texts, and interactions. You can create a paper trail that protects you and provides evidence if you need it.

When the relationship is over, but the abuse hasn’t ended, never communicate verbally if you can avoid it. Verbal conversations like phone calls leave no record unless you’re in a state where you can legally record them (if it’s legal, recording abusive behavior would certainly be recommended).

Every interaction should be in writing so you have proof of what was said and when.

This isn’t paranoia. This is protecting yourself from someone who will twist your words and use anything against you.

The emotional foundation you build after being abused for years will be different from the one you had before. It’s not built on trust and love. It’s built on self-protection and survival. And that’s okay. You’re in a battle you didn’t choose, and you need armor, not vulnerability.

When you’re in the middle of ongoing abuse, even after separation, people may tell you to let go of your resentment and find closure. But how can you find closure when it’s still happening? How can you heal when the fire is still burning? You can’t make the burns go away while you’re still being burned.

This is why it’s so important to accept that healing may be limited while you’re still struggling inside the abuse cycle. I don’t say that to make you feel defeated. I just want you to be prepared. If you’re prepared, you have a head start.

A relationship that ends is supposed to set you free. But that’s not always what happens. When the abuse continues, you might not be able to fully process all the emotions that are going on inside you. You might get and stay angry for a while, and that’s understandable! If you’re dealing with lawsuits, custody battles, smear campaigns, or whatever form the abuse is taking, who wouldn’t be angry, hurt, and exhausted from all of that?

It’d be great to tell you how to be calm through something like that, but the truth is, you will need to grab moments of peace while you can. Trying to maintain any sense of calmness or quiet while you’re under attack is unrealistic. Again, I say this to prepare you. There’s nothing worse than surprise after surprise, taking you off guard and making you feel completely helpless. That’s what we want to avoid.

Resistance is Exhausting

One of the most difficult but powerful things you can do is stop resisting reality. When you resist what’s happening, you create inner conflict. You tell yourself, “This shouldn’t be happening. This isn’t fair. This needs to stop.” And you’re right! But resistance itself can keep you stuck in suffering.

Resistance is the gap between what you want and what actually is. When you spend your energy fighting against reality, wishing things were different, hoping the other person will stop, you drain yourself. That energy could be used to move forward, but instead it’s trapped in the resistance.

Accepting what is doesn’t mean you like it or approve of it. It means you stop fighting against the reality of your situation and start working with it. You acknowledge that, “This is happening, this is how they are, and this is what I’m dealing with.” Then from that place of acceptance, you can make clearer decisions.

When you accept that the other person will continue being toxic, you stop being surprised when they do toxic things.

You stop getting your hopes up that ‘this time will be different.’ You stop giving them the power to disappoint you over and over again. You expect the worst to be able to handle whatever comes close to that.

This doesn’t mean you become cynical or bitter. It means you become realistic. You see them clearly for who they are and what they’re capable of. And from that clarity, you can protect yourself better.

There’s a certain freedom that comes from accepting the worst-case scenario. When you stop fighting it, when you think to yourself, “Fine, this is how it is, bring your worst,” something shifts inside you. You’re no longer afraid of what might happen because you’ve already accepted it. You’re no longer trying to control the uncontrollable.

This acceptance can actually reduce your anxiety. When you’re constantly hoping things will change, you’re on an emotional roller coaster. Every interaction becomes a test: will they be different this time? When they’re not, you crash. But when you accept that they won’t change, you get off that roller coaster. You know what to expect, and you can plan accordingly.

The goal isn’t to become numb or to give up. The goal is to stop wasting energy on things you can’t control and redirect that energy toward things you can.

You can’t control their behavior, but you can control your response.
You can’t make them stop, but you can protect yourself.
You can’t change the past, but you can decide what you’ll accept moving forward.

Prepare for When It Finally Ends

In the post-separation/post-divorce stage of an ongoing emotionally abusive relationship, they’re probably occupying your thoughts constantly. Every decision you make is filtered through how it will affect them or how they’ll react. They’re in your mind minute by minute, day by day. Again, exhausting! And unavoidable when you have to deal with them because of obligations or other ties to them.

But your life will change dramatically when they’re no longer occupying your thoughts. When you’re no longer the target of their abuse, when the legal battles are over, when you don’t have to think about them anymore, real healing can begin.

That’s when therapy might be most helpful. That’s when you can process everything that happened without being in survival mode. But, as you deal with the day in and day out of what comes next, you stay in survival mode. And while there, your main job is to get through each day, each interaction, and each new attack. And as much as that really, really sucks, you will survive. Even though no one wants to live in a survival-only space, remember, you don’t need to be healing perfectly or processing everything in real time; you just need to make it through.

Building resilience now will help you later. Every time you get through another difficult interaction, another court date, another smear campaign, you’re building strength. You might not feel strong, but you are. You’re doing something incredibly difficult, and you’re still here. That resilience will serve you when this is finally over.

When the abusive person is no longer in your daily life, you’ll have space to think clearly. You’ll be able to reflect on what happened without being triggered constantly. You’ll be able to rebuild your sense of self without someone tearing it down every day. And you’ll be able to make decisions based on what you want, not based on managing someone else’s behavior.

That day will come. It might not be today or tomorrow or even next month. But it will come. And when it does, you’ll be a different person. You’ll be someone who survived something incredibly difficult. You’ll be someone who knows their own strength, who can recognize red flags and make different choices in the future.

The experience you may be going through now, as terrible as it is, is teaching you things. You’re learning what you will and won’t accept. You’re learning how to protect yourself and discovering who really supports you and who doesn’t. You’re realizing that you’re stronger than you thought.

I know these lessons come at a high cost. You’ve lost so much. You didn’t ask for any of this. But when you’re on the other side of this, you’ll carry this new knowledge with you. You’ll be able to spot manipulative behavior immediately. You’ll be able to set boundaries without second-guessing yourself. And you’ll be able to walk away from situations that don’t serve you.

For now, focus on getting through. Use whatever support system you have. Document everything. Keep yourself as protected as possible. Accept that this is how things are right now, but they won’t be that way forever. And find those small slivers of energy and empowerment wherever you can.

Know that you’re not alone in this. Others have been where you are and have made it through. You will too. It won’t be easy, and it won’t be quick, but you will make it. And when you do, you’ll have a new foundation built on your own strength, not on someone else’s approval or behavior.

Stay strong. This will end. And you will become a different person because of it – a person who never tolerates this kind of treatment again; A person who knows their worth and demands respect; A person who can look back and say, “I survived that, and I’m still here.”

This article is for educational purposes. Pick your battles wisely and use The M.E.A.N. Workbook to assess your relationship.