Have you ever looked back on a relationship and wondered why you stayed when something didn’t feel right? Why you gave someone another chance, overlooked a warning sign, or walked toward something you suspected might hurt you?
Sometimes, that’s one of the hardest parts of healing from an unhealthy relationship: looking back at our own choices and trying to understand them. We might recognize the moments when we ignored our intuition, made excuses for someone’s behavior, or hoped that things would turn out differently. And that realization can bring up a complicated mix of emotions: regret, frustration, sadness, embarrassment, and even anger at ourselves.
But recognizing our choices doesn’t have to mean punishing ourselves for them. We can acknowledge what happened, give ourselves permission to feel everything that comes with that realization, and decide what we want to do differently moving forward.
That’s the feeling at the heart of my poem, “deathtrap,” from my poetry collection Hearts Bruise Never Break. It explores the moment when we begin to recognize our own agency—not to blame ourselves for someone else’s actions, but to remember that our experiences can inform the choices we make next.
deathtrap
you were venomous
yet, i allowed you
to sink your teeth into me
you were poison
yet, i drank you
until I was unconscious
you were toxic
yet, i touched you
anyway.
When You Realize You Had a Choice
There’s a particular kind of discomfort that can come with looking back on a relationship and recognizing that, somewhere along the way, you had a feeling something wasn’t right. Maybe a person’s behavior made you uneasy, but you wanted to believe the best in them. Maybe you noticed inconsistencies but accepted the explanations you were given. Maybe you recognized a pattern that hurt you, yet you stayed because you loved the person, felt connected to them, or hoped things would change.
These experiences are deeply human and you re not alone. We don’t always make decisions with the clarity that hindsight gives us. Our choices are influenced by our emotions, hopes, fears, needs, and understanding of the situation at the time. And when we’re emotionally invested in someone, it can be difficult to separate what we hope is true from what we’re actually experiencing. We might focus on someone’s good qualities, remember the moments when things felt wonderful, or believe that if we love them enough, something will eventually change.
Looking back, we might wish we’d made a different decision. We might feel frustrated that we didn’t listen to ourselves sooner. We might even wonder how we could have let ourselves end up in a situation that hurt us. Those feelings deserve space. We don’t have to pretend that every decision we made was the right one or that we have nothing to learn from our experiences. But we also don’t have to turn that reflection into a reason to shame ourselves.
Taking Ownership Isn’t the Same as Taking the Blame
One of the most important distinctions we can make when reflecting on an unhealthy relationship is the difference between acknowledging our choices and accepting responsibility for someone else’s behavior.
You can take ownership of your decisions without taking the blame for how another person treated you.
If someone manipulated you, mistreated you, or repeatedly crossed your boundaries, their behavior was their responsibility. Choosing to love someone, trust them, forgive them, or give them another chance does not make you responsible for their decision to hurt you.
At the same time, you can look back honestly at your own experience. You might recognize that you dismissed your discomfort, accepted behavior that didn’t align with what you wanted in a relationship, or continued investing in a situation that wasn’t good for you. And that is information you can take forward in life.
Instead of processing with a mindset of, “I should have known better, and I deserved what happened,” try telling yourself, “I can see things differently now, and I want to make different choices in the future.” One keeps you stuck in self-punishment. The other gives you something you can actually work with.
And if you’re still struggling to understand what happened, you don’t have to force yourself to reach a conclusion before you’re ready. Reflection takes time, especially when emotions are complicated. If a relationship involved emotional abuse, it may help to learn more about what emotional abuse can look like. Understanding harmful relationship dynamics can help you make sense of your experience without assuming that you caused another person’s behavior.
How Can We Learn From the Choices We Make?
The purpose of looking back isn’t to find every moment when we could have done something differently. It’s to understand ourselves a little better and consider how our experiences might shape our future decisions.
1. Pay Attention to the Feelings You Once Dismissed
Think about the moments when something didn’t feel right.
Maybe you felt anxious before seeing someone. Maybe you found yourself making excuses for behavior that hurt you. Maybe your words and actions began to change because you were afraid of how the other person might react.
A single uneasy feeling doesn’t always tell us everything we need to know about a person or situation. But patterns are worth paying attention to, especially when our discomfort repeatedly comes from the same place.
Rather than judging yourself for not listening to those feelings in the past, you can become more curious about them now: What were you noticing? What were you hoping would happen? What made it difficult to act on what you felt? These questions are opportunities to understand yourself.
2. Recognize the Difference Between Potential and Reality
Sometimes, we become attached to who someone could be rather than who they consistently show us they are. We see their kindness, their humor, their vulnerability, or the moments when they make us feel loved. We imagine what the relationship could become if certain behaviors changed or certain problems disappeared.
Hope isn’t inherently a bad thing. People can grow, and relationships can change. But we can become so invested in the possibility of what might be that we lose sight of what we’re actually experiencing. Looking back, you might recognize that you were waiting for someone to become a person they weren’t choosing to be. That realization can hurt, particularly when you genuinely cared about them.
Still, recognizing the difference between someone’s potential and their present behavior can help you make future decisions based on the relationship as it exists, rather than only on what you wish it could become.
3. Give Yourself Grace for What You Didn’t Understand Then
Hindsight can ben soooo unforgiving! Once we know how a relationship unfolded, earlier moments can seem obvious. We might replay conversations, reconsider decisions, and wonder why we didn’t connect the dots sooner. But you didn’t experience the relationship with the knowledge you have now. You were living through it in real time, making decisions with the information, emotions, and understanding available to you.
Remember:
- You can acknowledge those realities without insulting the person you were at the time.
- You don’t have to agree with every past decision to treat your past self with compassion.
- If you recognize that you would make a different choice today, that matters. It means your understanding has changed.
You Don’t Have to Keep Making the Same Choice
We can’t go back and change the choices we’ve already made. We can’t undo the time we spent in a relationship or erase the emotions we experienced. But our past doesn’t have to dictate every choice we make next. One of the most empowering things about recognizing our agency is understanding that a past choice doesn’t have to become a repeated pattern.
Maybe you once ignored a feeling that something wasn’t right. The next time, you can give yourself permission to pause. Maybe you stayed because you believed someone would change. The next time, you can pay closer attention to their consistent actions rather than only their promises. Maybe you kept giving chances because you loved someone. The next time, you can remember that loving someone and choosing a relationship with them are not the same thing.
These aren’t guarantees that we’ll never get hurt again. Relationships are complicated, and we cannot control every outcome. We also won’t always recognize a harmful situation immediately. But we can become more aware of ourselves, our decisions, and the patterns we want to change. We can accept that we are human beings who sometimes make choices we later regret. We can learn without condemning ourselves. We can take responsibility for what belongs to us while leaving responsibility for other people’s actions where it belongs. Most importantly, we can remember that we still have choices ahead of us.
When Words Help Us Feel Less Alone
Sometimes, we understand an experience more clearly when we finally encounter the words that describe it. We might spend months trying to explain a feeling, only to read a poem that captures it in a few lines. Suddenly, something that felt confusing or isolating becomes recognizable. We realize that someone else has felt something similar, and we no longer feel quite so alone in it.
That is one of the things I love about poetry. It doesn’t need to offer an answer or tell us what to do. Sometimes, it simply gives us a place to recognize ourselves. It lets us sit with an emotion, see it reflected back to us, and acknowledge something we may have struggled to put into words.
If you’ve ever looked back on a relationship and experienced the complicated emotions that come with recognizing your own choices, I hope the poem I shared above, “deathtrap,” gives you the space to reflect without judging yourself.
The poem “deathtrap” comes from my poetry collection, Hearts Bruise Never Break. If it resonated, I highly recommend the book. This collection explores the emotions that can accompany heartbreak, unhealthy relationships, self-reflection, and the process of making sense of what we’ve experienced. It’s for the moments when you’re trying to understand your feelings, process your difficult experience, and feel your way through healing.
You can find more poetry and reflections on the All With Heart Blog where the focus is on making space for self-expression, reflection, and living with greater intention. And remember, you can’t rewrite every choice you’ve made. But you can learn from your experiences, offer yourself compassion, and decide what you want to choose next. Sometimes, that is where a new chapter begins.
If you’re in a relationship where you’re concerned about your safety, you don’t have to navigate that alone. The National Domestic Violence Hotline’s safety-planning resources can help you explore options and find support. Your safety matters, and you are not responsible for another person’s abusive behavior.
If you have any questions or want support in your self-development journey, feel free to email us itsallwithheart@gmail.com or explore our journaling workshops and coaching programs. You can also check out our additional, free resources like our Spotify Podcast, our Founder's Instagram Page, and our Youtube Channel.
With love and pumping blood,
The Heartbeat