Name: Why People get into Unhealthy Relationships
Uploaded: 2025-08-01T18:27:31.000Z
Duration: 3 min 24 s
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Adverbs of degree

One of the saddest symptoms of not having been treated well in childhood is a remarkable tolerance – indeed an appetite – for not being treated entirely nicely by partners in adulthood. As graduates of rocky pasts, we are at high risk of ending up recklessly passive around partners who don't appear to have too much interest in our true needs or aspirations. Where others would read a sharp risk in such neglect, we simply sense normality. Where others would be plotting an escape, we settle in for the long term.

Transition words & phrases

Where others would despair of intransigence or meanness, we see every chance of being able to change a partner – so long as we keep quiet and hope. It can take an awfully long time until we are in any position to realise that all told, the situation does appear a little strange and somewhat irrevocable. That it may not be entirely to our advantage to be told again and again that we are mad for wanting greater gentleness, or demanding for seeking a deeper connection, or crazy for wondering why a partner spends so much time on their phone or out drunk with friends. We could be compared to a giant fish, a tuna perhaps, whose had its fins cut off and lost any powers of navigation, so that it bobs helplessly on the current, hoping against hope that it will be taken somewhere nice, but unable to exert any influence on its course. The famous expression runs, when people show you who they are, believe them. But it's hard to be very clear-eyed about who is good and bad when you happen to grow up with a heavy disincentive to perceive certain awkward truths about your own parents, because you were five years old, trapped in a house with them, and love wasn't readily available from anyone else. Our entire perceptual mechanism may have been twisted as a result. Like an animal that can't perceive certain frequencies of light, our emotional eyes may have grown up unable to see difficult traits for what they are. Coldness now just looks like honourable absorption in more important tasks. Sarcasm is read as wit. Being belittled feels like care. We're always more likely to think of ourselves as bad for failing to elicit kindness from a fundamentally lovely person whom we'll continue to adore and admire, despite one or two signs of trouble, as opposed to conceiving that we might have fallen in with a jerk. We may be deep into our lives before we decide we might have had enough of suffering, and start to be curious about what kindness and presence might feel like. We may ever so slightly determine that though our partner may be using every ounce of their considerable logic and charm to secure the status quo, they might in the end just be taking us for a long ride. We don't have to be here. We are, astonishingly, not five anymore. If we're not happy, we can run.

Modal verbs - B1

We are free. This is what being an adult should always have been about.