Toxic Hope: Have you ever wondered why optimistic women with bright smiles and big hearts always end up in unhealthy relationships?
Although there may be many reasons why a relationship is toxic, hope is the only reason that keeps women from leaving.
Falling in love seems magical. There is something about love that makes us feel alive and gives our lives meaning. We feel valued, cared for, and validated. It boosts our self-esteem and removes our insecurities.
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Being in a healthy relationship can make us feel more optimistic in life.
However, for some women, this optimism tends to remain strong, even when the relationship becomes unhealthy and their partner becomes toxic.
Addiction medicine specialist Dr. Sheila Daniels explains: “Optimism is important in life! The same applies to relationships: one hopes that when things are dark, they will also get better. However, this is no reason to stay in an abusive relationship.
Adds Donnels: “Don’t allow anyone to abuse you physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, financially, or in any other way, and do nothing but hope they change. You stay out of harm’s way.”
Optimistic women find it hard to believe that their once-perfect love story has turned sour and desperately hold on to hope in their hearts. They blindly hope that things will get better, that their partner will change, and that they will feel the same euphoria they felt at the beginning of the relationship.
This false hope is what makes them work harder to maintain the relationship, to please their partners, and to make them happy. It makes an optimistic woman desperate and insecure.
When they begin to become exhausted from all the efforts they have put in to “fix” the relationship, they realize it is time to let go and end the relationship.
However, optimism makes it difficult for them to leave their toxic, and sometimes abusive, partners, leaving them trapped in the relationship.
Life coach and toxic relationship recovery specialist, Sarah K., explains: Ramsey, saying, “She doesn’t leave because she’s optimistic. A toxic partner knows how to keep her trapped in her optimism.”
Narcissistic, abusive, and manipulative partners often know that even though they treat their optimistic partners poorly, they will always try to make things better. She will believe that her toxic partner loves and cares about them.
The narcissistic partner knows that there is too much hope in her heart and that she will always ignore the real problems in the relationship and instead find fault with herself. She will always try to fix herself first so that he doesn’t get upset or angry with her. She will always fail to realize how toxic her partner is.
“The toxic person knows that they’re hoping for the best, so they can avoid giving it their best shot,” Ramsey adds. “The toxic person knows that when he finally says something nice or reaches out to her, she’ll say, ‘Oh!’ finally! The true version of you has returned, and forget the anger of the previous day.
Even though she may be aware of how hard she is trying to make things go well, she will ignore her inner voice. She will waste the best years of her life on someone who enjoys being a toxic person.
These confident and optimistic women will continue to believe that love, hope, patience, and a lot of effort will lead the way to the perfect relationship – the relationship they have always dreamed of, even if the person they love is toxic.
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They will continue to believe that they need to keep holding on to the toxic relationship a little longer. Unfortunately, this belief will persist for years to come.
Sarah Ramsey writes: “Optimistic women don’t give up easily and persevere when things are tough. They are self-motivated and willing to keep getting back up even when life (or their relationship) knocks them down. These women believe that life and relationships get better with time.”
She adds: “Optimistic women find the silver lining no matter how dark things get. They stay in unhealthy relationships despite being treated in ways that seem unimaginable to others.”
The truth is that these women need to stop being optimistic and start being realistic. Too much optimism can be harmful to your relationship.
A 2013 study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology revealed that excessive optimism in a relationship can lead to unrealistic expectations and ineffective coping skills for relationship problems.
The research has shown that although optimism is viewed as an asset and encourages beneficial coping efforts in life and relationships, certain types of optimism “can be a liability because expecting the best may prevent individuals from taking proactive steps when faced with difficulties.”
He adds, “The results suggest that while universal forms of optimism may represent an asset in a relationship, specific forms of optimism can put couples at risk for marital deterioration.”
Quite simply, when optimistic women fail to acknowledge problems in their relationships and mistakenly believe that everything will be fine when in reality they are not, it can easily create distance between partners. This can be especially true when one partner is more realistic than the other.
Although this doesn’t mean you have to be a pessimist to enjoy a healthy relationship, it can be helpful if you are more realistic and consistent.
“In my study, no one scored low enough to be considered a pessimist, and I didn’t expect it to be good for relationships,” says co-author of the 2013 study, psychologist Lisa Neff of the University of Texas. “It’s great to be optimistic, but keep it at a lower level.” Realistic.
Perhaps this is why optimistic women find themselves in toxic relationships more than others.
Is being optimistic so bad?
The problem here is not being optimistic. It’s about not being realistic enough and inflating expectations.
“As a rosy picture of the future, optimism can allow you to remain ignorant of what’s going on around you. This can cause problems,” marriage counselor, ADHD expert, and author Melissa Orloff writes in Psychology Today.
An optimistic woman has this inner belief that if she puts in enough effort and changes herself, she will be able to improve the unhealthy relationship. Since they are trying so hard to work on themselves, their toxic partners take advantage of this and make them believe that they are the problem in the relationship.
Thus, these women begin to believe the lie that they are the ones who need to change.
As she continues to desperately try to work on herself, she will fail to realize that her toxic partner wants her to change so that “the toxic person doesn’t have to change,” as relationship expert Sarah K. Ramsey explains.
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She adds: “Her optimism blinds her to what is happening, and the mask of a toxic partner and their intermittent reward system prevents her from seeing the truth: She is in a game she does not realize she is playing.” A game where her powers are used against her. It’s a game where optimism is a weakness.
This unrealistic optimism is known as optimism bias. It is a cognitive bias that makes us believe that we have greater chances of succeeding at something and lower chances of encountering misfortune than we do.
We believe that our relationships will be perfect without any problems and that we will be happy in life.
However, this rarely happens. “Optimism bias is essentially a false belief that our chances of experiencing negative events are lower and our chances of experiencing positive events are higher than those of our peers,” says Kendra Cherry, MS, author and educational consultant.
This psychological tendency makes us believe that everything will get better, despite how difficult things are right now.
This belief often leads to making poor decisions, such as choosing to stay in a toxic relationship for longer than we should, because we tend to overlook threats and risks.
