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
   - Low self esteem is what attracts the unhealthy relationship in the first place, since our relationships are an external projection of our inner state of being. Therefore when we lack self love, self respect and self confidence, we tend to attract partners who mirror that, by treating us in ways, that show just how little self love, self respect and self confidence we actualy have. So the low self worth is what attracts / creates these relationship dynamics. The reason why we tend to stay in them, is because people in general tend to compensate their lack self love, self respect and self confidence by seeking external acceptence, attention, validation and or love and adoration even though it might be at a great cost. Therefore in many cases the relationships become addicive for the individual who lack healthy self esteem since the relationship / their partner is the external source of the feelings they can´ t yet give themselves. As time goes on, it becomes more and more addictive because such individuals tend to enter the relationship with low self esteem, causing them to tolerate disrespectfull behaviour, which makes their already low self esteem even lower, making them need the relationship even more, leading them to tolerate even worse behaviour, causing and so on, and so forth, causing a cycle, that is difficult to break.
2. Nervous system that has normalized chaos
   - Our body naturaly gravitates towards what´ s familiar. Therefore if we´ ve normalized chaos / 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 and what's familiar is safe, and therefore comfortable. Whereas unfamiliarity causes the exact opposite feelings. This 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.