Intelligent Girls Date Toxic Boys Too

You are not stupid for falling for someone toxic. Even if there were warning signs. Even if your head begged you to keep your distance from him and you decided to listen to your heart instead.

You might have known he was trouble from the first moment you spoke. Your friends might have told you to stay far, far away from him. You might have debated leaving a few times yourself. But you stayed — not because you are stupid. Because you were in love.

Your love for him convinced you he was a good guy deep down. It convinced you he was capable of changing if you stuck around for long enough. It convinced you he was a treasure you were lucky to discover, not a piece of trash you should have strolled right past.

At the time, you had no idea what you were getting yourself into. Or maybe a part of you did know, but you ignored your gut because you were distracted by the butterflies fluttering through your stomach. Back then, you thought he would be worth the tears, worth the sleepless nights, worth any pain you had to endure. You didn’t care what you had to go through as long as that meant you would have him.

You might feel foolish now that you have seen what he has done to you, how much he has broken you, how he was able to walk away without any  hesitation — but your love eclipsed your common sense. That does not make you stupid. That makes you human.

Intelligent girls date toxic boys too. They make mistakes, they choose incorrectly, they let their hearts lead them astray.

And when the relationship ends, when the reality of the situation sinks in, intelligent girls are hard on themselves. You feel like you should have known better. You hate yourself for sticking around for so long, for putting up with so much, for allowing your standards to drop so low.

In the past, you have silently pitied friends who have stayed in bad relationships because you couldn’t imagine sacrificing your self-worth for some guy. And now, you are that girl. The girl who shoved aside her priorities for his. The girl who cared more about the boy she loved than about her own sanity. The girl who completely lost herself in a toxic relationship.

You might be mad at yourself for settling for him, but you cannot blame yourself for what remains in the past. You have to move into your future with higher expectations. You have to remind yourself love is complicated and sometimes your heart is going to push you in the wrong direction.

Stop being so hard on yourself. Stop insulting yourself for having feelings. You are not stupid for falling for him. You are not stupid for giving him a chance he never deserved. You are not stupid for having your heart shattered by him.

But you would be stupid for going back to him.