Grateful to Be Out of a Relationship Because...

One day while surfing the web, I came across a forum where people were talking about, what was one thing they didn't miss about being in a relationship anymore?  I was expecting to read comments like, "I don't have to listen to his snoring...don't have to visit her relatives anymore..." you know simple things like that.  However, I read things like, "I don't have to take her physical and mental abuse...The beatings."  What!?  I thought, some people in this forum are fresh out of relationships that had been causing them so much mental and physical suffering.  Just think, you are grateful to be out of a relationship because you don't have to worry over getting hit on the head, shoved, spit on, kicked, or cursed out in front of people.  But I also thought, "How much damage have these people suffered and will they be abusing the next person they get involved with?  Have they sought any help?"

Some of you who are in relationships who have simple issues, don't know or truly understand what it feels like to be in a relationship filled with drama.   While some of you can't wait to get home to be with your partner, there are those men and women who resent going home.  Many couples are walking on eggshells.  They don't know from one day to the next what to expect.  "Will he act like a fool and lose it if I tell him something?  Will she start crying and hitting me if I tell her I don't want to be with her any longer?"

So many of us make decisions in our lives that leave us feeling hurt, confused, and abused.  We wish that things would be different, but the more we wish, the more things stay the same or get worse!  There are those of you who are in relationships right now that are wearing on your nerves.  You said that this would be the year that you would end the relationship.  Some of you are making plans now to prepare to end the relationship the following year.  Will you make it until then with your mind still intact?  Promise yourself you will get out of your dead-end relationship before suicidal thoughts, depression, anger, resentment, guilt and more get the best of you!

Maybe one day you will be one of those people who can sit down in the quiet of your home, free of a difficult partner, and just say, "I am so grateful to be out of this relationship because..." you fill in the blank.

Nicholl McGuire is the author of Laboring to Love an Abusive Mate, When Mothers Cry and Laboring to Love Myself on Amazon.com