Your heart is big. And your kindness and compassion, though amazing qualities, can also keep you in situations that are unhealthy for you.
When you’re afraid you’re going to hurt someone by leaving them, there’s a bigger picture to keep in mind.
The hardest part about leaving someone who hurts you isn’t always the leaving itself. Sometimes it’s the guilt that comes after, the nagging feeling that you’ve abandoned someone who needed you, that you chose yourself over them when they were struggling.
This guilt can be so overwhelming that it keeps people trapped in harmful situations for years, even after they’ve recognized the damage being done.
If you’re in a relationship where someone is causing you stress, pain, and suffering on a daily basis, staying for their sake means you’re completely omitting yourself from the equation.
Think about what you’re doing when you prioritize someone else’s well-being over your own in a situation where they’re actively harming you. Essentially, you’re denying yourself the very compassion, kindness, and support you’re trying to give them.
This is where the oxygen mask analogy becomes vital. When you can’t breathe in a relationship because someone is causing constant turmoil, you have to put your own mask on first. Otherwise, you’re suffocating while trying to keep someone else alive. That’s not sustainable, and it’s not healthy for anyone involved.
Of course, the fear of hurting someone by leaving them is real and valid. Nobody wants to be the person who causes pain, especially when they care about someone.
But there’s a critical distinction that needs to be made here: Leaving someone who hurts you isn’t the same as hurting them out of cruelty or indifference.
Protecting yourself from harm is a fundamental act of self-preservation, not an act of aggression.
When you stay in a relationship out of fear of what your leaving will do to the other person, you’re actually enabling the very behavior that’s harming you.
Without consequences, there’s no reason for an emotionally abusive person to change. They might promise to do better, they might apologize, but if you always stay no matter what they do, those promises become empty.
Change requires motivation. And sometimes the only motivation strong enough is the real possibility of losing someone important.
Let me repeat that because it might be the one thing that changes everything for you:
Sometimes the only motivation strong enough for an emotionally abusive person to change is the real possibility of losing someone important.
Consider what happens when you finally do leave. The person who’s been hurting you suddenly has to face the consequences of their actions. This can be the wake-up call they need to actually examine their behavior and make real changes.
Many people don’t recognize how destructive they’ve been until they lose something significant. That moment of clarity often comes too late to save the relationship, but it can save future relationships if they’re willing to do the work.
Your leaving doesn’t mean you don’t love them.
This is also important thing to understand. Loving someone and staying with someone are not the same thing. Sometimes the most loving thing you can do for both of you is to leave, because staying in a toxic dynamic hurts everyone involved.
When you stay out of guilt or fear, you’re not showing love. Instead, you’re showing them that their behavior is acceptable, that there are no real consequences, and that they can continue treating you poorly without losing you.
The guilt you may feel about leaving usually comes from a distorted sense of responsibility. If you’ve been in a relationship where someone has been hurtful or abusive, you might have been conditioned to believe that their happiness is your responsibility.
Maybe they’ve told you that you’re the only one who understands them, the only one who can help them, the only one who makes them feel loved. This creates an enormous burden, one that no single person should have to carry.
But their emotional well-being is not your job. They are responsible for their own healing, their own growth, and their own choices.
When you take on that responsibility, you’re actually preventing them from developing the skills they need to manage their own lives. It’s like doing someone’s homework for them every night. They might pass the class, but they never actually learn the material.
Doesn’t Leaving Mean It’s Over?
Believe it or not, separation can be incredibly healthy for both people in a dysfunctional relationship. Distance allows each person to remember who they are outside of the dynamic they’ve created together.
When you’re constantly managing someone else’s emotions or walking on eggshells to avoid conflict, you lose touch with your own thoughts and feelings. Everything becomes filtered through the lens of how they’ll react.
Time apart gives you space to think clearly. Without the daily pressure of managing their moods or anticipating their reactions, you can finally hear your own thoughts. This clarity is essential for making decisions about what you actually want, not what you think you should want or what someone else wants you to want.
During the separation, they can start to think clearly as well. The person who’s been causing harm sometimes has a genuine realization about their behavior when you’re no longer in the picture. If you’re not there to absorb their dysfunction, they have to sit with themselves.
Some people will use time apart as their time to reflect, seek help, and maybe actually work on the issues that led to the problems in the first place.
And, of course, some people won’t do any of that. Some people who hurt others simply don’t feel the desire to change who they are or who they show up as in relationships. If that happens, it tells you everything you need to know about whether reconciliation is possible.
If the person who hurt you only wants to change when you’re threatening to leave, that’s not real change.
Real change for an emotionally abusive person comes from an internal recognition that their behavior is wrong, not from a desperate attempt to avoid consequences.
When someone changes only to keep you from leaving, they’ll likely revert to old patterns once they feel secure again. This is why so many people get caught in cycles of leaving and returning, each time believing that this next time will be different.
The question you have to ask yourself is whether you’re willing to be unhappy for the rest of your life as things are, or whether you’re willing to take a chance toward happiness.
Staying in a bad situation because you’re afraid the alternative might be worse is a form of self-sabotage. At least if you leave, you give yourself the opportunity to find out what else is possible. Staying guarantees that nothing will change.
This doesn’t mean I believe you should leave. I don’t want you to be hurt. But I also believe that some people need to know just how much is at stake before a relationship ends. Some abusive people need to know that if they continue hurting others, the consequences for their behaviors may be fully realized with others no longer want to be in a relationship with them.
I fully support having the hard conversations that create change to improve the relationship. But if changes aren’t made, then you may have no choice but to honor yourself and walk away.
Staying Too Long Isn’t Your Fault
Many people who write to me about their situations reveal that they’ve never fully trusted their partner from the beginning. They might say something like, “I’ve never trusted them since we met,” yet they stayed in the relationship for years.
This is a dysfunction in itself. Choosing to stay in a situation that violates your core values, like the need to trust your partner, creates constant stress and prevents you from ever feeling truly fulfilled or happy.
Dysfunction, in this case, isn’t necessarily a choice. It’s a result – either from conditioning from the abusive person in your life, or from childhood and your upbringing, or both.
Learning that you’re in a relationship that doesn’t align with your values means it’s time to address what you’ve learned. It might be time to decide you need to either work to resolve the issues until trust is restored, or you need to make other decisions about your life.
Staying in a relationship where you can’t trust someone means you’re not following through with what you know to be true about yourself and what you need. That’s choosing to remain in a situation that causes ongoing stress and prevents you from being as fulfilled as you could be.
Some people stay because they have obligations or commitments. They own a house together, they have children, they’ve built a life that feels impossible to untangle.
These are real considerations. But they shouldn’t be the only considerations. At what point do you start making changes for your own fulfillment? When do you become self-honoring enough to show up differently in the world?
If you’re not in a relationship where you can fully trust someone, you’re always on edge. When trust is off the table, it’s one less thing to worry about, but in a bad way. It means you’re constantly calculating, constantly vigilant, constantly preparing for the next betrayal or hurt. That’s exhausting, and it takes energy away from everything else in your life.
No, It’s Usually Not Easy To Leave An Abusive Situation
The aftermath of leaving an abusive or harmful person is complex. Many people experience residual guilt and shame even after they’ve done everything right, even after they’ve taken all the necessary steps to protect themselves.
This happens because they’ve been conditioned to think the way the other person wants them to think. The abuse doesn’t end right away when the relationship ends. Your brain is still operating in the patterns that were created during the relationship.
Understanding that you were programmed to feel guilty is the first step toward breaking free from that guilt. The person who hurt you wanted you to feel responsible for their emotions, their actions, and their life. They trained you to believe that leaving them would be the worst thing you could do. But that belief was installed in you for their benefit, not yours.
After a breakup or separation from someone who’s been harmful, you get to see whether they’re actually going to change.
They’ll either be the same or worse, or they’ll have genuine reflections and choose to heal. This is when you find out if the person underneath all the hurtful behavior is capable of empathy and growth.
Some people, when they finally lose someone important, snap out of what I call their emotionally abusive “trance.” It’s like they’ve been on autopilot for most of their life. Then, when they actually break from that trance-like state, they wake up to the reality of what they’ve done and genuinely commit to becoming different.
But, as you may already know, not all abusers change. Some might even double down on a victim narrative, blaming you for leaving, painting themselves as the one who was wronged.
If that happens, it tells you that they really haven’t learned anything and that perhaps they’re not capable of the self-reflection necessary for real change.
When someone can’t take responsibility for their own behavior even after losing a relationship because of it, they’re showing you exactly who they are.
The choice to leave isn’t about being selfish.
Protecting yourself from harm is not selfish.
Choosing to no longer accept treatment that damages your mental, emotional, or physical health is not selfish.
These are acts of self-respect and self-preservation. The word “selfish” has been weaponized in many relationships to keep people from setting boundaries or leaving harmful situations.
If you’re asking yourself how you can forgive yourself for choosing yourself over someone who hurts you, you’re asking the wrong question.
The better question is: How can I feel better about protecting myself in a dangerous situation?
Reframing the question changes everything. One version makes you sound like the bad guy. The other acknowledges the reality of what you’re facing.
When you’re with somebody who is emotionally abusive toward you, choosing yourself is the empowering, self-loving thing to do. There’s no question about it.
This doesn’t mean you don’t care about them or that you want them to suffer. It means you recognize that staying in a harmful dynamic doesn’t help either of you.
Sometimes the most compassionate thing you can do for someone is to let them experience the consequences of their actions.
Your leaving gives them the opportunity to reflect and choose to heal. That’s actually a gift! It may not feel like a gift to them, but it truly is one because they’ll actually have the chance to choose different behaviors and get better results in their life.
In my experience from the people I’ve worked with in my Healed Being program, every single one who joined to work on their emotionally abusive behaviors while still in a relationship were grateful they got the ultimatum of “Change or I’m leaving.”
Many have told me that if their partner wasn’t on their way out the door, they may never have stopped the behaviors.
Yes, it’s sad it has to get to that point. But that point is often the moment that change occurs, no matter how much you might hope they would choose to change on their own.
And that kind of change, one where the hurtful person gets an intense reality check, almost always shakes the foundation just enough to finally alter the trajectory of the relationship.
Without a catalyst like, “Change or I’m leaving,” many people never change. They continue the same patterns in relationship after relationship, never understanding why things always end badly. As much as they should choose to change on their own, if they don’t, leaving may be the only way to see change happen if it’s going to happen at all.
The fear that you’ll hurt them by leaving is understandable, but consider what you’re doing by staying. Every day you remain in a harmful relationship, you’re teaching them that their behavior is acceptable.
And every time you forgive without real change happening, you’re reinforcing the pattern. Don’t accidentally enable someone to hurt you by absorbing their dysfunction without consequence. This doesn’t mean it’s your fault. It means they may never stop as long as they believe you’ll never leave.
The path forward requires you to prioritize yourself in a way you may never have done before.
It isn’t about becoming selfish or uncaring. It’s about recognizing that you matter, and that your well-being matters. Your happiness matters!
And when you finally internalize those truths, the guilt about leaving may begin to fade. When it does, what replaces it is clarity, relief, and the beginning of real healing.
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Paul Colaianni
Paul Colaianni is an Emotional Abuse Expert and Behavior and Relationship Specialist who has been analyzing complex relationship dynamics since 2010. As the creator of the Healed Being program and host of the top-rated Love and Abuse and The Overwhelmed Brain podcasts, with over 21 million downloads worldwide, he specializes in helping people recognize hidden manipulation, navigate emotionally abusive relationships, and empower themselves to make informed decisions.
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