Ignoring the signs of a toxic relationship can happen when you’re so afraid of feeling alone that you can’t break up, and co-dependency on your toxic partner clouds your mind.

If you end up breaking up, you’ll find that you both feel lonely and can’t stop thinking about each other. The food has no flavor and every song sounds sad. You will never get a single break from the heaviness in your chest.

Sometimes, you wonder why you’re here.

If this happens every time you break up with someone, and you only feel better with others, then you are probably in a toxic relationship, leading to a life of loneliness and codependency, and I feel for you.

I had no family, no husband, no significant other, and maybe not a single friend.

I felt like I was completely at sea, completely untethered and adrift, transporting myself back to the past for more connected, better, happier times. My identity has been one hundred percent lonely and unhappy for most of the past five years.

Since becoming a widow, the main question for me has been how to make my life feel anything close to right again.

A brief flirtation with a married man did not help. Well, no. I can’t quite say that. He sent me on an educational mission, during which I discovered the concept of pathological loneliness.

What is a disease unit?

Pathological loneliness is essentially severe loneliness. It’s the loneliness that says, “Unless you find the right kind of support in your life, you’ll never feel right, and you’ll never feel happy again. Period.”

Pathological loneliness is a feature of dependent relationships.

The wonderful codependency expert Jerry Wise defines loneliness as feeling, “I don’t deserve to be with you,” as in, “I don’t deserve to be alone with you.”

Pathological loneliness is one reason why people with codependency do not leave when it is clear that they are being abused or mistreated by someone who is not interested in changing.

This doesn’t just apply when you’re in a relationship with someone who doesn’t want to change, like an alcoholic, a drug addict, someone who beats you, or someone who takes advantage of you while you pay all the bills. If your husband is counting on you to make the marriage bearable, and you can’t bear the thought of living without him, then your desire to stay in the relationship may be something you need to consider.

Pathological loneliness often leads to codependency and keeps people in unhealthy relationships long past the point where a healthier person would have left.

People feel so helpless, so depressed, and so afraid of being alone, that a miserable (or even dangerous) relationship is better than no relationship at all.

According to codependency expert Ross Rosenberg, author Kathleen Dowling Singh, and my observations, there are factors in your life that indicate you may be pathologically lonely, so settle for toxic relationships.

Here are 13 signs that you are still in a toxic relationship because you are afraid of feeling lonely:

Feeling extremely lonely

Introverted people will feel very lonely, and if you are an extrovert, you feel worse when you are alone than introverted people. Either way, if you feel the weight of loneliness on your heart, it’s not a good sign for your relationship.

Constant thinking about the past

When your loneliness in a relationship triggers memories of an old situation in the past, it may be a sign of past trauma that is still affecting your current life.

Some deeper emotional issues may make you feel alone along with a toxic relationship. Something other than just living without human companionship.

Exposure to cognitive distortions

Telling yourself something that is not true about your loneliness.

For example, you want to be in a relationship but you always tell yourself: “I will never meet anyone again.” You end up cheating yourself because there’s no one else there, so you stay in an unhealthy relationship.

Boredom takes over

When you don’t have something you like to do when you’re alone, boredom can set in and increase feelings of loneliness.

It is highly recommended to find an activity that is better when done alone, such as drawing or writing, to help process the feelings of the relationship and the activity.

You are surrounded by toxicity

You know you could develop closer friendships and social support, but you don’t. Isolation is often a result of extreme loneliness, especially when the only options available to you are unhealthy.

Over the past five years, almost everyone I’ve met has been either toxic or inappropriate, so I don’t develop a relationship with them. Knowing myself and my needs helps me choose and become close to the people who will support me.

You can’t entertain yourself

You can do things on your own, but you always think you can’t because you “need someone to keep you company.” Here’s another trick of extreme loneliness and isolation working together to keep you in an unhealthy relationship.

However, you may discover a sense of independence that you didn’t know you could find if you got out with yourself.

Inability to calm down and feel better

When you’re upset, you can’t comfort yourself. This could be caused by neglectful parenting in very early childhood, or perhaps from some mental illness. For example, some people with borderline personality disorder also have this reaction. However, this can also be a condition for the buildup of unexpressed feelings in a toxic relationship.

Some people need someone else to help them release intense feelings or emotional buildup, whether the help comes from holding them in comforting arms, or needing a voice of reason to “talk to you.”

Worrying about the future

This can be built from the pressures of unexpressed feelings. You feel worried about yourself if something bad happens.

What if help is needed, but there is no one to help?

You are playing into the social stigma of being single.

Movies and television show us the stereotype of lonely people who intentionally avoid others and feel sorry for themselves.

What’s worse is that we, the only people, think this of ourselves and then beat ourselves up about it.

Feeling depressed and feeling a loss

Conditions such as grief or depression make this worse, especially for older people, who may have lost most of the people they knew in recent years. Sadness makes loneliness more apparent.

My great-aunt just turned 95 years old. All her brothers and sisters and many of her friends were already gone, and all her other relatives were scattered across the country.

When you lose everyone, you want to stay even with someone who is not good for your well-being.

Feeling like you don’t deserve help

If you are lonely and need someone to come and rescue you from your distress, you may see it as a drain on someone else, when what you want is to contribute.

You want to have something to offer, to be valuable and wanted, rather than for someone to give up spending time with you because you’re needy.

You feel useless to those you love.

You have this idea and you are so sad and you have nothing to offer anyone anyway.

If you’re sad or depressed, you can’t provide others with the joy that makes them want to be around you, so you may decide that you don’t want to attach yourself to anyone else.

People need to feel useful. I’m sure there are many older people in nursing homes, staying at home, or living in supported accommodation who will feel the truth about this.

Feeling guilty for not loving them

You have the idea that if you’re not depressed, you don’t love the person you’re with, so you must have fallen out of love with them and don’t love them anymore.

Then you feel guilty or confused about it, and you think to yourself, “If I didn’t have these big, dramatic feelings anymore, would I still love this person?” This can lead to you blaming yourself and trying to continue to be the only person in the relationship to make things work.

Here are 13 signs that you are still in a toxic relationship because you are afraid of feeling lonely:

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