What keeps people in toxic relationships

People who find themselves in toxic relationships often tend to struggle with leaving, although they might know / feel that the relationship isn´ t healthy for them, they still feel some kind of "pull" towards it. This tends to be due to two main reasons:

1. Internal lack of self love, self respect and self confidence
   - When we lack a healthy amount of self love, self confidence and self respect we ten to attract unhealthy relationships because our relationships are an external projection of our internal state of being. Therefore in this case, such relationships show us just how little self love, self confindence and self respect we actualy have. The reason why we tend to stay in them is because when we lack self love, self respect and self confidence we tend to compensate for the lack there of by seeking external acceptence, attention, validation, adoration and love, amd since we lack healthy self esteem we take even the tiniest bits of what we get, even though it might be at a great cost. So the relationship serves as the external source of the feelings we lack internally, causing the us to be hooked on the tiniest signs of attention, validation, acceptance, love and adoration. 
2. Nervous system that has normalized chaos
   - Our body naturaly gravitates towards what´ s familiar. Therefore if we´ ve normalized chaos and the highs and lows that come with a toxic relationship, at a certain point it becomes natural / familiar to us and our nervous system. Therefore after leaving such an enviroment, calmness and stability can feel unconfortable, because it´ s not familiar. The natural pull towards what feels familiar / comfortable is the second main reason why many can not leave a toxic relationship and or why they go from one toxic relationship to another.

It is important to realize what holds us in the unhealthy relationships or in some cases what causes us to go from one unhealthy relationship to another, because the lack of understanding, of what is actualy going on, often causes individuals to romanticise the whole situation by making up stories / telling themselves, that "they are ment to be together and therefore they constantly feel the pull towards them" and or falling into victim mentality, in those cases individuals tend to say, that "they are simply just unlucky when it comes to relationships" when in fact the root cause of the problem is their inner state of being (their lack of healthy self esteem and or disregulated nervous system). Therefore it´ s important to aknowlage it, because once we aknowlage the problem, we can take responcibility for it, and with responcibility we take control and that´ s exactly what we need to change the whole situation arround.