Young Women Trapped In Toxic Relationships Often Don't Have An Exit: Here's Why

 Society keeps a close watch on young women- monitoring every aspect of their lives continuously. Thus, young women often see freedom to live as per they wish as a cause worth rebelling for. However, life on the other side of this rebellion is not as sweet as we might want it to be. As a result young women often find themselves trapped in situations from which there is no exit for them.

Toxic romantic relationships are one such problem, from which young women can't find an exit even if they wish to. For instance, a woman who is only ‘allowed’ to go straight to college and come back on time, can’t dare to tell her family that she is being troubled by her boyfriend. Here the knowledge that she is in a romantic relationship with a man, could have larger and worse implications on her life than whatever issues she is facing in her love relationship. She doesn't know how to walk away from a toxic boyfriend, nor can she seek help from her family. Eventually, she ends up being trapped in a dual cycle of oppression, with no respite in sight, unless she decides to put her reputation at stake.

Young women in toxic relationships: No help in sight

Getting into a toxic relationship is no one’s choice or decision. It is something that just happens to some of us because we were not able to see the red flags. This tendency to look out for red flags comes with experience and when a person starts dating for the first time, commonly, they are not capable of doing so. Due to inexperience and the impact of pop culture, women often walk willingly into an emotionally draining love relationships because they have assumed that this is the way things are supposed to be. Since love, romance and sex remain taboo subjects at home, they have no one to warn them.

Suggested Reading: Ghosting, Consent, Abuse: Women Share What Was The Last Straw Of Their Toxic Relationship

Generation after generation, Indian parents have denied children their right to choose and live on their own terms. Even today, parents live in denial of the fact that strictness at home will only encourage rebellion and that love and relationships are a natural part of a person's life.

Often parents are stricter with their daughters believing that they are doing so in order to protect them. But dear parents, if you truly care about your daughter then make them resilient. Toxic relationships can come in life of any person, even if it is parents who forged the alliance. Inexperience in how to deal with such relationships then will cause great trauma to woman. But if she is equipped with resources and knowledge that enable her to walk away from such a relationship, she will have a chance to start all over again.

So controlling young women's lives only leaves them more vulnerable to &t=4s">toxic relationships. What parents need to do instead is to create a support system for their daughters which will help them bounce back.

Views expressed are the author’s own.