How to get rid of psychological dependence on a person?

Each era has its own cult. There are cults that go back to ancient times and still continue to stir the minds of humanity in general and each of us in particular. This is a cult of love. Love does not have a clear definition, and the older a person gets, the more difficult it is for him to understand what it means. Ask a child what love is, and he will definitely give you the answer: it is caring about his friends, the desire to spend time with them and share toys, it is a mother who kisses and hugs you, and you want to kiss and hug her back. This is when the sun is shining and the wonderful weather is conducive to playing in the yard all day, and then eating ice cream on the bench and laughing at jokes - your own and those of others.

Children understand love more simply, and perhaps that is why they see great happiness in it. It’s strange, because it is generally accepted that real awareness of love comes much later!

How to get rid of love addiction

It is deceptive to make all interest in life dependent on such intense feelings as love.
Maria Skladovskaya-Curie

• 1.What is love addiction?
• 2. The nature of love addiction
• 3.Symptoms of love addiction
• 4.Test: Do you have a love addiction? 4.1.Key to the test
• 4.2. Test results 4.2.1.0-5 points
• 4.2.2.6-11 points
• 4.2.3.12-17 points

• Signs that a man likes you
• Why is a man afraid of the woman he is in love with?
• How to seduce a woman?
• Signs that a guy likes you
• How to determine if a man needs you?

Love addiction or relationship addiction

• Love addiction or relationship “addiction” Lack of self-confidence
• Love addiction and breakups

This is the case when you cannot live without a caring partner or without someone who loves you.
Love addiction is when you become completely unable to function alone, always feeling bored or miserable, until someone comes along and fills your life with joy. Although love addiction is classified as the safest addiction, it can still ruin your life.

Allow honesty and truth into your life

Make a solemn promise to yourself today: from now on, you will adhere to a policy of absolute honesty and the pursuit of truth. As you take each next step toward personal growth, remain honest with yourself and with others who can offer you help and support on this journey.

One of the most important aspects of living a healthy and fulfilling life is your ability to show the world who you are. This ability contributes to the formation of intimacy. In the process of recovery, we need to understand for ourselves exactly what intimacy is and exactly what positive impact it has on our lives.

In the case of love addiction, just as in the presence of any other addictions, you constantly adhere to a policy of denial, and in such conditions recovery is, in principle, impossible. If you want to make positive changes, you need to develop the ability to recognize the truth and see what is really happening. Honesty with yourself and a sincere desire to banish the habitual politics of denial from your life is an expression of self-love. On the path to recovery, you need to learn to love yourself, enjoying the newfound freedom and ability to demonstrate the true essence of your personality.

Choosing a policy of absolute honesty is not a task that can be forced upon you. Its value lies in the fact that only you yourself can fulfill it - and solely of your own free will, guided by one single reason: only such an attitude will lead you to the life that you want for yourself. The very CONCEPT of absolute honesty will become the fundamental principle of your life.

Honest perception gives us the opportunity to be proactive in life; such perception is not passive. If you want to free yourself and start living the life you truly deserve, you need to open up to truth and objective reality, even if it doesn't seem very pleasant to you. Once you learn to face reality, it will not be easy for you to fall back into the web of lies and distorted ideas about life. The truth will set you free. It's time to open your eyes and look at yourself and your life differently, and build the healthy and fulfilling relationships that you truly deserve.

Lack of self confidence

Sometimes the main reason for love addiction is lack of self-confidence. In this case, you may need someone to validate you, someone to reassure you that you are a good person, or someone to help you compensate for your lack of self-confidence.

People who are addicted to drugs because they lack confidence think about it this way: “if someone loved me, then I am not worthless, then I am a worthy person,” and therefore they rely on external factors to feel confident rather than being addicted to one's inner self-esteem.

Love addiction and breakups

One of the good reasons for spending is relationship addiction because when you fall in love with someone just because you need them, you may break up with them as soon as that need goes away, and since that need develops from a temporary slump, that we are experiencing, the relationship may fracture in the near future.

Love addiction can usually be caused by other problems in your life. For example, if you have some kind of emotional problem that you cannot solve or that you are running away from, you may develop an attachment to the relationship.

Of course, no method of escape will be as wonderful as escaping from love, you just need to escape into a mood of love where these bad emotions will not be felt at all. One of the simple rules of emotions is that you can only feel one emotion at a time, so when you experience love, you will forget about other bad emotions, or at least bury them for a while.

Since the subconscious mind cannot be fooled, these bad moods will still visit you in the form of unknown bouts of bad mood or even in your dreams in the form of nightmares.

How to overcome love addiction?

The solution to this problem may not be that difficult, you just need to figure out why you feel depressed when you are alone. If the cause was unresolved issues then at least start taking action or if the cause was lack of self-confidence then start building your confidence. Whatever the reason, just find it and then try to take steps to eliminate it, instead of avoiding a temporary addiction that will not solve anything.

The habit of love addiction only accumulates problems, then you will have to face even more problems.

5) “Not all at once” - act consistently

During the recovery process, you should always remember one very wise saying - “not all at once.”

It's so easy to hope for immediate results! You want to feel better right now, you want immediate results - just take it out and put it in! You want to skip the hard work that is vital to recovery, and this desire only further fuels the addiction and leads to relapse. In the near future, all these emotions may become simply unbearable, and you will ask yourself “how is this possible?”

THIS IS POSSIBLE . Therefore, follow your recovery program gradually and consistently, step by step, not all at once! What is available to you today is what every person has today.

You can focus on achieving your goal every day for an hour or even a minute. If you start to feel stressed about the need to perform certain actions leading to recovery, make a to-do list for yourself. Include simple and minor tasks in this list. Take breaks if necessary.

Tasks that only take you five minutes or less to complete can be just as enjoyable and rewarding as more complex, time-consuming tasks—especially when you're feeling frustrated or confused.

Be attentive, especially when your attention is scattered and you are not concentrating on the present moment. When your mind wanders to the future or the past, you can't do anything. Always remember that the only moment when you can do something is here and now.

Introduction to Dealing with Breakups

Do you think your heart will remain broken until you get it back?

Don't worry, in two weeks you will completely forget about the one you loved, even if you are now dying for him.

It's quite disappointing how a relationship that was once the sweetest thing in someone's life turns into great heartbreak and unhappiness after a breakup.

Sometimes relationships don't even have a beginning to have an end. This happens when love is one-sided and one partner suffers greatly while the other never notices.

This is where the famous phrase “I can’t live without you” comes into play. The life of this particular individual stops at a certain point, hoping that his lover will return to him, but sometimes this does not happen and the person becomes depressed.

Don't worry, dealing with rips will be much easier than before once you finish reading this section.

A key factor in dealing with breakups

One of the unknown facts about love is that many times we don't fall in love because we really love the other person, but we fall in love because we need someone to help us get over our bad mood!

Some people seek relationships to cope with the unbearable emotions they experience when alone.

This situation is similar to when someone starts taking drugs just because they don't like their current state of mind or simply because they can't cope with some bad feelings. When people like the state of love and the feeling of love, rather than love for the person himself, you can be sure that they are running away.

This is called love addiction. The state of being unable to live without love just because you have other problems that you want to forget about.

What is really dangerous about this kind of addiction is that no one ever realizes the fact that he is dependent on his partner only because he feels bad, and not because he loves him.

He may even become completely convinced that this partner is the only one, and therefore, if it happens that he leaves him, he will suddenly return to the terrible state he was in before. When a person after a breakup finds himself experiencing terrible emotions, not knowing the facts I just mentioned, he thinks that he cannot live without the partner with whom he broke up.

Some people fall in love to cope with problems rather than to grow. This is called external dependency. The habit of depending on an external factor to feel good or get away from a bad mood.

External dependence is a way that some people get rid of their bad emotions. Whenever they face a big problem, they rush to find a loving partner to forget about all their problems in life.

Love addiction is a special case of external addiction where a person uses love as their preferred method of escape.

How do I know if I am in true love and not in attachment?

Just remember how you felt when you were alone without a partner.

• Have you always felt bad or sick?
• Have you always felt that you won't live a happy life unless you meet someone who loves you?
• Have you ever thought that the solution to every problem lies in your ability to find someone who loves you?

If you answered yes, then there is a high probability that you are susceptible to such an addiction.

The person doesn't matter, his emotions matter.

The good thing about external dependency is that once you find someone who provides you with the same nurturing that you used to get from your old partner, you will feel good and happy again.

For “love addicts,” it doesn’t matter who the partner is who provides them with this care, as long as he meets their unconscious criteria of love.

How to recover from a breakup?

To recover from a serious breakup or one-sided love, you must first realize that you may have been an addict. If you continued to believe that you wanted the person himself, and not the feelings or emotions you experienced with him, then your mind will not let him go.

In my consultations, I often talk about how you can easily overcome breakups simply by understanding the concept of love addiction. Know that if you become emotionally stable and free from love addiction, these breakups will not affect you except for a limited period of time before you fully recover.

If you got into a relationship just to deal with bad feelings, then you'll likely feel depressed until a solution is found. If you find that you are suffering from external addiction and that you cannot live without someone, then it is time to dig into your personal problems and fix them.

It's time to do some digging to find out what's causing this emotional instability that makes you unable to tolerate being alone.

How to feel good?

Another fact that is unknown to most people is that sometimes a person feels bad after a breakup not because he was rejected or lost someone he loved, but because unconsciously he thinks that he was rejected , which means he is guilty, inadequate or not like everyone else.

In this case, it is only your negative view of yourself that hurts you, and not the rejection itself. If you wanted someone to approve of you because you thought approval or love meant you were good, then of course you will suffer after the breakup.

If this is your way of thinking, know that unless you change it, your self-confidence will always depend on external factors rather than internal ones, and you will live at the mercy of others.

It's normal to feel depressed after spending, but it's not normal to spend months recovering.

Of course, it's normal to feel bad after a breakup, but what's not normal is that you don't recover from the breakup after a few months.

After a breakup, people usually go through certain stages of recovery before they feel well again. Be sure to read the links below to quickly walk through all these steps.

After a breakup, you will be left with both bad feelings and some experiences. When the bad feelings disappear, you will feel good as a result of the experience.

Types of emotional dependence

Addiction can be of different types in different kinds of relationships.

• Love addiction
  usually begins with a fairy-tale love story - two people are constantly inseparable, enjoying each other’s company, new sensations, while friends, girlfriends, relatives fade into the background - lovers do not need anyone. Then the feelings subside and a desire appears to diversify the isolated life with hobbies and meetings with friends. Healthy relationships easily cope with this period, but pathological ones do not. The dependent partner begins to feel that he is no longer loved, that he has been abandoned and betrayed, and the main emotions become resentment, jealousy and dissatisfaction. As a result, the initial idyll is replaced by quarrels, accusations and threats.
• Friendly dependence
  is reminiscent of love, with the only caveat that the characters are friends. There is the same jealousy of other people and activities, the fear of losing a friend and an urgent need to communicate with him. If a friend has a loved one or other friendships, the dependent person becomes depressed and feels betrayed.
• Parental dependence
  is a type of dependence that begins in early childhood due to improper upbringing. This usually occurs due to the oppressive behavior of parents who adhere to a totalitarian style of education or who themselves became victims, experienced psychological trauma, or grew up in an incomplete family. Such parents suppress any attempts by the child to become independent; they are afraid of being left alone or abandoned. Their actions have the color of manipulation - they invent non-existent diseases, promise an inheritance - in a word, they do everything so that the child needs them, simultaneously depriving him of the opportunity to develop a sense of responsibility, make his own decisions, and make an adequate assessment of his actions.

Fighting love addiction

First step

Love addiction can not only cause bad feelings after a breakup, but it can also threaten the future and duration of your current relationship.

The first step in fighting love addiction is to understand why we are addicted to love! To be able to break free from addiction, you must first get rid of the root causes behind it.

There are many reasons that could be causing your love addiction, here are some examples:

• Lack of self-confidence leads to a strong need for approval and a desire to meet someone who can make you feel worthy
• Unresolved issues that cause low mood and mood swings can lead to love addiction. In this case, the person needs someone to make him feel better
• Being single or without intimate relationships with friends can make you addicted to love.
• Refusal in relationships. Many people fall in love just because they want to feel loved or approved.

Wrong beliefs about love can also lead to love addiction. Once a person acquires such faith, he will feel the desire to enter into a new relationship as soon as he feels bad. Understand why love is not like in the movies.

There are also many other reasons, but I cannot list them all because each individual may be susceptible to this type of addiction for different reasons. Your first task in overcoming a problem is to determine the cause of it.

Second step

Let's say you discovered that your love addiction was a direct result of your inability to tolerate bad moods, which leads to your unresolved problems.

In this case, you should start facing your problems instead of rushing into emotions. You must get rid of the bad habit of allowing problems to fester while you do nothing about them.

Whatever the cause you discover, the next action must be directed against and deal with that cause. If it was self-doubt then fight to strengthen your self-confidence, if it was loneliness then read about the causes of loneliness to deal with it and if it was a deviation then find the reasons for those deviations then deal with them .

If you are serious about overcoming love addiction, then you must decide to be brave. You should decide that you will not return to a relationship when your life gets hard, and you should also decide that you will go to war against all these things that make you depend on someone else to survive.

There is something very important that you must understand: knowing why you are addicted to a relationship is the key to overcoming such a problem. For example, if you feel unloved due to lack of self-esteem, there is a very high chance that you will look for some quick fix that will help you feel good and guess that a new romance may be such a quick fix.

Love addiction has many causes and unless you understand the cause and treat it, you can always end up in the wrong relationship. In the example I just gave, the only way to overcome addiction is to build self-esteem.

By doing this, you won't need an affair to feel good about yourself, and you'll only enter into a relationship when you're truly in love.

Psychological dependence: what is it and why does it occur?

Psychological dependence on another person is most often associated with raising a child and traumatic childhood experiences. Children always want to be in close contact with their parents, mainly their mother. If for some reason the mother cannot provide reliable healthy attachment, the child will begin to cling to her out of fear of losing her and will try to occupy all the parents’ free time.

As an addict grows up, he will transfer the experience of unhealthy attachment to his love relationships. The psychology of an unloved child gives rise to a strong desire to be nearby all the time, both physically and psychologically, to occupy the entire surrounding space of another person, and the fear of loss plunges into despair. Such people are obsessive, clingy, instantly blur boundaries, and literally tear themselves away from their loved one if necessary, to separate, even experiencing physical pain, they are not able to free themselves from the feelings that engulf them.

Here are the main factors leading to emotional dependence:

• low self-esteem;
• psychological complexes;
• childhood trauma;
• unrealistic fears and fantasies;
• non-adaptive types of upbringing in the parental family;
• disrespectful parental attitude towards the baby;
• high parental expectations that the little person could not meet;
• ridiculous ideas about love: Love is sharing everything in half, being always close, having common interests, thoughts and desires, etc.;
• the desire to merge with another, to become part of something larger;
• incorrect perception of one's own boundaries;
• a masochistic desire to be subjugated by someone;
• the desire to play the role of a child and relive childhood with a parent who will always be there this time.

Developing your coping skills

To properly end your love addiction and ensure that the problem does not return, you need to develop your coping skills. As you may have noticed, the problem can occur because the person does not have enough skills to deal with life's problems or unwanted emotions.

In other words, when people are feeling down, they look for quick painkillers to help them face the pain, and one of the most popular painkillers is love.

Now, even if you have resolved the problem, you may relapse if you do not gain enough skills to deal with the problem.

Learning to stay single

In many cases, relationship addiction occurs because the individual does not have enough emotional capacity to remain single. In other words, as soon as the “addict” finds himself alone, he feels very bad and strives for a new romance.

Now the ability to remain alone can only be achieved if you have studied the psychology of love well, and also know how to properly recover from a breakup without leaving marks in your heart.

When you learn how to recover from a relationship properly, you won't have much of a problem with loneliness until you meet the right person, and as a result, you won't have problems with love addiction.

When should you see a psychologist?

If you doubt your abilities or none of the available methods help you change your position as a dependent person, you should contact a professional.

You need to understand that in addictive behavior you are not living your life, that emotional addiction is not only a state of mind, but also a psychological disorder caused by dislike of oneself.

Addiction destroys people's lives and makes both the addict and his partner suffer. Moreover, if you do not solve the problem with drastic changes, then addictive behavior will accompany you throughout your life, and attempts to build healthy relationships will not be successful. It is necessary to regain self-respect and self-love; this is the only way to health and a new life.

To change the situation, you will have to work long and painstakingly on yourself. An experienced psychologist will help you identify the true causes of addictive behavior and correctly correct them. Remember, if you do nothing, the situation will only get worse.

The famous Roman philosopher Marcus Tulius Cicero said wonderful words with which we would like to end today’s conversation: “Happiest of all is the one who depends only on himself and sees everyone in himself alone.” Let's believe in ourselves, friends!

True love vs love addiction

In other words, this is the case when a person becomes dependent on love itself, and not on a specific partner. This means that a “love addict” will not actually care about who they are with as much as they care about their relationship with their partner.

Most relationship addicts don't know that they are, but instead they just think they are madly in love with one person. As soon as the partner leaves or as soon as something goes wrong with the love relationship, addicts will quickly find another partner to love, also thinking that they are madly in love with him!

By constantly moving from one affair to another, people satisfy their intense need for love connections, confusing their love addiction with true love.

Is this true love or just an addiction to the relationship?

If you want to know if you really love your partner or if it's just some relationship addiction, see if the following criteria apply to your case:

Signs of love addiction

№1:

Not loving him if he doesn't love you: If you have always dated this person but didn't love him until one day you felt that he loved you, then this could be a sign of love addiction

№2:

You always feel depressed when you are not in a relationship. If you feel bad or sick when you're alone, then there's a good chance you're a "love addict."

№3:

You always feel bad being alone. If you always feel bad when you're alone, this could be another sign of love addiction.

№4:

Falling in love often, some people fall in love more often than anyone else. If you're falling in love every few weeks, there's a good chance you might have a problem.

Features of addiction in young people, stages of development

In the formation of love addiction, several stages pass sequentially. In each of them, reverse development and painless separation are possible. The addiction itself can take on a perverted form - the loss of love develops into an attempt to preserve the passing feeling.

Psychologists highlight:

1. Feeling of eternal happiness. A lover lives in delight. Meetings bring indescribable emotional uplifts. You want to be with your loved one all the time, listen to him, look at him.
2. The need to increase the “dose” of love. There is a scarcity effect in relationships. The need for the experienced euphoria becomes more and more significant.
3. Conflict between reality and desires. After some time, the first shoots of disappointment appear in the soul. The ideal image gradually melts, contradictions and suffering ripen inside the soul.
4. Artificial creation of an ideal. Attempts to change the appearance and inner world of another person “to suit yourself” lead to complete disappointment. Guilt complexes, jealousy, and a subconscious desire to take revenge for their own problems develop inside the addict.

Few people realize that in this case we are talking about love addiction.

Do I have a love addiction?

Know that you must find more than two of the previous points to make sure whether you are a relationship addict or not. The more signs you find, the more likely you are susceptible.

Remember that connections that are based on true love are the ones that last? And relationship addiction can lead to unstable relationships between a man and a woman.

The problem with love addiction is that it always leads to bad choices. The typical "addict" always experiences failure and disappointment in his romantic relationships.

You also need to understand that your subconscious mind is usually trying to hide the fact that you have an attachment problem in relationships. In other words, you will always assume that you are truly in love because your subconscious mind doesn't want to tell you that you have a love addiction problem.

So, the difference between true love and love addict will require a lot of courage on your part as you will have to face some unwanted emotions along the way. Reviewing your past is one very effective way to help you differentiate between true love and love addiction.

• Have you always done the same thing in your past relationships?
• Have you been madly in love many times?
• Have you always believed that the person you are with is alone?

By examining your past behavior in your previous affairs, you can easily determine if there was something serious going on or if you were just trying to satisfy this problem.

What is external dependence?

External addiction describes the state of depending on an external object or person to feel good or escape a bad mood.

Some people have become accustomed to facing their problems directly, while others have learned to run away from them, or even better, use painkillers to forget about them. External addiction is the use of an external pain reliever to forget about a problem rather than solve it.

Examples of external dependency

A person who uses drugs to escape a bad mood, one who drinks excessively when faced with a problem, and one who cannot live while they are single are considered people who suffer from external addiction.

Some people smoke to relieve stress, not because they actually enjoy smoking. Others may become addicted to a bad habit not because they really enjoy it, but because it helps them get rid of a bad mood, while a third group may go shopping when they feel bad to help themselves feel better.

The big problem with external addiction is that it prevents the person from ever facing his real problems and therefore they always remain unresolved. As a result of this behavior, problems continue to accumulate and increase until one day the personality is completely destroyed under their influence.

So many bad habits are actually caused by external addictions. Someone may develop a habit simply to help themselves cope with a problem in life that they cannot cope with. For example, a drug addict may use drugs to escape problems at work or any other emotional stress.

A typical person will not actually know that they are addicted to a certain habit due to external addiction. After all, most people would be embarrassed to admit that they use a certain habit to simply escape from something or cope with a situation.

This is why people will usually think that they are addicted to the habit itself, instead of realizing that they are simply using it to change their mood. Porn addiction is an example of a habit, where someone thinks they are addicted to a habit, but in reality they are just using it to change their mood.

The release of dopamine, a pleasure chemical, in large quantities in the brain, like watching porn, can help many people get rid of bad moods, at least temporarily.

External dependence and love addiction

Some people are outwardly dependent on love itself in such a way that they cannot live alone, they are called "lovers of love." Because falling in love releases many chemicals that regulate mood and help an individual feel better (at least in the early stages), some people become drug addicts to escape their problems.

In my consultations, I describe how addiction to relationships can be a major reason why people fail to recover quickly from a breakup. When one becomes overly dependent on a partner to avoid a bad mood, then, of course, breaking up with that partner becomes an impossible task.

One of the truly dangerous consequences of love addiction is that it makes a person vulnerable to any attempts to exploit his weakness. "Love lovers" are the fastest people who fall in love with each other, even if they don't really like the other one. Many people fall in love under the influence of love addiction to escape their problems, but then realize that they never loved the person they married and that they were simply avoiding their bad moods.

External dependence, as we have learned, can ruin your life in the long run. Even if it may help you feel good in the short term. If you are doing any of the previous actions, then it is time to become brave and face your problems. And don't make the same mistakes over and over again.

Contact and make an appointment Read about counseling and qualifications

Psychologist, hypnologist Natalya Korshunova ©

Take and give

A healthy relationship between a man and a woman is a balance between receiving and giving. If we give something - attention, love, support - then we expect to receive something in return.

In dependent relationships there is always an imbalance. Someone acts as a donor (codependent partner), and someone acts as a recipient (in the psychology of relationships there is a term for such partners - counterdependent).

The codependent invests in the counterdependent like a black hole: resources, attention, care. And the counterdependent accepts it with pleasure, but is in no hurry to compensate for the expended energy.

Why does addiction occur? Its essence is the desire to receive compensation for effort and energy.

Characteristics of chemical dependency options

With this type of addiction, a chemical substance (alcohol or drug) causes changes in the functioning of the body, sometimes irreversible. To achieve the desired effect—pleasure and relaxation—increasing doses of artificial doping are required. When the level of a chemical compound in the blood decreases, physical symptoms of addiction appear:

• trembling in the body;
• cardiopalmus;
• fluctuations in blood pressure;
• wandering pains;
• pronounced excitement;
• the desire to get what you want at any cost.

Alcohol dependence is characterized by gradual development with an increase and subsequent decrease in dose. Sometimes just one use is enough for drug addiction to appear. Both types of chemical addiction are difficult to treat. It is possible to achieve a stable long-term remission, but in case of a breakdown, the addiction will return with renewed vigor.

The danger of chemical addiction lies in the combination of psychological and strong physical dependence and requires complex treatment. First, it is necessary to relieve the symptoms of the hangover syndrome or hangover, and only then work with the psychological component for many months and even years.

What is addiction?

Addiction is an obsessive, pathologically strong desire to perform actions that lead to a certain mental state, most often relaxation, pleasure, and calm. What distinguishes this state from habit is the strength of the need, the inability to do anything else until the desire is satisfied, constant thoughts about the object of addiction, and the unconscious performance of certain actions to achieve a goal.

In addition to changes in mental state, physical symptoms may occur, such as rapid heartbeat, sweating, dry mouth, blurred vision, unsteadiness when walking, and weakness. Physical symptoms are associated with a state of nervous tension in anticipation of the fulfillment of a need or the direct action of the subject of the need, for example, alcohol or a drug.

How not to step on the same rake

Working through the true challenges of getting into a toxic relationship will help you avoid making the same mistake.

1. You must accurately determine the causes of the problem (see Causes above).
2. Work through them. Forgive your parents and take responsibility for your future.
3. Work on improving your self-esteem.
4. Deal with your fears and self-doubt.
5. Stop beating yourself up.
6. Get rid of anxious thoughts.
7. Set personal boundaries.
8. Make a list of goals.
9. Make a list of the qualities you want to look for in a new partner.

In addition, you need to learn to identify the symptoms of a toxic relationship in order to cut them off in the bud before they invade your life like a weed.