Leaving a toxic relationship: Alexandra’s testimony

Interview conducted and article written by Margaux Damain, podcaster and writer specialising in mental health and science communication.

You can read the transcript of the interview or listen to the podcast 🎧 (in French)

To read the interview, click on the links in the table of contents to go to the section that interests you 🎯

👉 Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Deezer and YouTube.

Summary: Alexandra’s testimony on how to leave a toxic relationship

Discover Alexandra’s testimony about her past controlling relationship — a sincere and luminous conversation of great depth. In this interview, Alexandra tells us about the painful yet transformative journey that led her to leave a toxic relationship of eight years, to understand her family’s emotional legacy, and to rebuild a healthy relationship with herself. Read or listen to this essential testimony to concretely understand the mechanisms of coercive control, the role of childhood wounds in our romantic choices, and the power of self-love.

Alexandra describes with precision the signs of a toxic relationship: love bombing, exhausting emotional swings, progressive devaluation, and the fear of abandonment that kept her trapped for years. Her journey sheds light on the weight of transgenerational inheritance: family patterns passed down from generation to generation, often without our awareness, that profoundly shape our romantic relationships.

Recovery began with an intense and varied therapeutic journey: Recall Healing, family constellations, micro-physiotherapy and inner child therapy. Alexandra emphasises the importance of listening to one’s body and emotions as compasses, and the necessity of setting boundaries in order to respect oneself.

Today, Alexandra lives in a healthy relationship, built on emotional security and authenticity. She testifies with conviction that self-love is not a luxury but a prerequisite for making different choices. This account offers a message of hope and concrete keys for those who are going through — or have been through — a controlling relationship.

When intensity looks like love

Alexandra spent eight years in a controlling relationship. Eight years with the father of her child. Eight years confusing emotional intensity with true love.

At first, everything seemed perfect: a charming man, mornings filled with love songs, poems, a world built just for the two of them.

“He made me feel like the most important person in the world. There were conversations that only we could understand. We were creating our own universe.”

But very quickly, the emotional swings began: moments of tenderness, followed by unexplained anger. Moments of warmth followed by sudden coldness. An exhausting cycle that was difficult to name.

“For me, I equated this intensity with life, and with how love is supposed to be.”

This is one of the most common traps of toxic relationships: the autonomic nervous system, constantly stimulated, is mistaken for passion. You feel alive and believe that this is what loving deeply means. The butterflies in your stomach are read as passion, rather than as the emotional insecurity of a relationship that is, in reality, deeply unstable.

Psychological coercive control in relationships: understanding the mechanisms

Psychological coercive control in a relationship doesn’t always look the way we imagine. It isn’t necessarily physical violence. It is sometimes more subtle and harder to identify.

The signs that should have raised alarm bells

Alexandra identifies them today with clarity:

• Love bombing: a behaviour that manifests as an overwhelming excess of love very early in the relationship, followed by periods of avoidance or even ghosting. In her relationship, Alexandra explains that it appeared very early on, and was a mechanism at work every time her ex-husband sensed that Alexandra was pulling away due to emotional insecurity. An exhausting and confusing push-and-pull dynamic.
• Unpredictable swings: Alexandra describes it as a rollercoaster. Moments of intense tenderness are followed by moments of unexplained coldness or anger.
• A refusal to welcome the other’s emotions: “If I tried to express what I was feeling, he would say: I already have enough problems right now, don’t add yours to the mix.”
• Progressive devaluation: “He admitted at one point that he felt inferior to me, and so in everyday life, he would put me down.”
• The strategic return: with every attempt at a breakup, he would come back with a new wave of love.

The trap of avoidant attachment

Alexandra would later come to understand that her partner had an avoidant attachment style. Meaning that the more emotional intensity grew between them, the more he withdrew emotionally. This withdrawal triggered in her an abandonment anxiety that pushed her to stay, to keep trying, to question herself: “There was a fear of abandonment on both sides.” And it was notably this fear — long unconscious — that trapped Alexandra in an abusive relationship for 8 years.

Why does it last so long?

Because a controlling relationship is not experienced as constant suffering. There are highs, and moments that are beautiful and real. And it is precisely this mixture that makes leaving so difficult.

Transgenerational inheritance: when family history dictates our romantic choices

This is one of Alexandra’s most profound realisations. Her romantic choices were not solely her own. They bore the imprint of entire generations.

What our family passes on without saying it

In her family, women had always carried the household alone. Her mother earned more. Her mother held everything together. Alexandra reproduced this pattern naturally, without realising it

“I was the one renting the flat. He moved in without paying for anything. Today, I tell myself that’s not normal. But at the time, I was unconsciously reproducing things that had been considered normal in my family.”

And more profoundly still: men had been associated with danger throughout her lineage. Her grandmother had lost her own mother at the age of four — a woman who died from a forced termination of pregnancy carried out by her husband, in unsanitary conditions.

“It was through therapeutic work that I came to understand that I had internalised the belief that men are dangerous, to the point of being able to kill me.”

This trauma, Alexandra had inherited without knowing it. It unconsciously coloured her relationship with love, with safety, with men.

What exactly is transgenerational inheritance?

It is the idea that our ancestors transmit to us, across generations, unresolved emotions, beliefs, and behavioural patterns. This transmission occurs through family stories, things left unsaid, and behaviours observed from childhood. Science has also shown that it occurs through our genes.

Alexandra discovered these mechanisms through two types of therapy: Recall Healing and family constellations. And this discovery changed everything.

Listening to your body: the key no one teaches us

One of the most striking aspects of Alexandra’s journey is the place she gave to her body in her healing process.

She recounts a specific example. Just after her separation, she is talking with her mother about her ex. Her mother finally expresses what she thinks of him. And at that moment, Alexandra suddenly has a sharp pain in her ear.

“I said to myself: why does my ear suddenly hurt? Maybe because I don’t like what she’s saying.”

She tries to understand, to put words to the emotion. Through her therapies, she had come to understand that naming her emotions could be enough to ease physical and emotional pain.

But here, the pain persists. She continues searching for the reason behind this physical discomfort. She eventually understands: it isn’t anger, it isn’t nostalgia. It’s shame. The shame of having stayed so long.

“The moment I realised the emotion was shame, the pain disappeared immediately.”

The body knows. It stores emotions, and often physical discomfort persists until we have become aware of its cause. Through her therapies, Alexandra makes a decisive discovery: learning to listen to and name her emotions means accessing information that allows her to move forward and make better choices in life.

The 3 therapies that changed everything

Recall Healing

This method establishes a link between our physical ailments and our repressed emotions, tracing them back to their family or biographical origins. It is based on the idea that all our emotions and experiences are stored in the body, and that understanding their origin can be enough to release them. It particularly explores the cycles of repetition in our lives.

“I had a relationship of 7–8 years, then 3 years, then 8 years. In fact, we repeat certain things that happen in our lives.”

Recall Healing taught Alexandra to observe her body and to make the connection between physical pain and a buried emotion.

Family constellations

Family constellations are overwhelming experiences. Within a group, strangers embody the members of a family in order to bring buried truths to the surface, uncover emotional legacies, and release unconscious loyalties.

For Alexandra, it was a foundational experience.

“It resonates with everyone in the room. Everything that happens during the day of constellations shifts something inside you. It’s an extraordinary experience.”

It was during a constellation that Alexandra saw, for the first time, the pain of her great-grandmother. And understood where her own fear of men came from.

Micro-physiotherapy and somatic therapy

Later, a micro-physiotherapy session allows her to dislodge a deeply buried belief: I don’t deserve to be treated well.

“I was just sitting on the treatment table, doing nothing. Observing my body. And it came out.”

Micro-physiotherapy is a gentle manual therapy that detects, through touch, the traces of physical or emotional shocks stored in the body, in order to release them and restore balance.

Unearthing this deeply buried limiting belief was pivotal for Alexandra. She finally understood why she had a tendency to abandon herself, to re-experience relationships of emotional neglect and coercive control. Two weeks after this discovery, she met someone who would treat her the way she deserved.

Loving yourself in order to choose differently

Leaving a toxic relationship requires deep inner work. Without inner work, one risks reproducing the same patterns with someone else. Alexandra knows this. She lived it.

A long-conditional love

In her family, love was tied to achievement. Good grades. A successful career. No missteps.

“I only loved myself when I succeeded. And I kept achieving things — but at what cost? I put enormous pressure on myself.”

The day a therapist asked her “What do you do when you do nothing?”, Alexandra was stunned. This was the beginning of a new learning process: giving herself time, appreciating her own company in moments of “nothing.” She asked herself what would do her good. Little by little, she reconnected with the childhood passions she had set aside for years: writing and dancing. Two passions that also help her regulate her emotions and find balance in her life.

Learning to set boundaries: an act of love towards oneself

The more she loved herself, the more impossible it became to stay silent, to deny her own needs.

“The more I loved myself, the more it became impossible to hold that in, to stop setting the right boundaries.”

She started small: with strangers, in the early stages. “At the time, I was single, I was going on dates. I told myself that if there was something I didn’t like, or that might cross one of my limits, I would say it. There was nothing at stake because I had only just met this person.”

Alexandra then continued to assert herself with her colleagues, her friends, her family. And with every boundary set: no catastrophe. No violent conflict. Just respect.

🔎 Also read: Toxic relationship: the ultimate guide to understanding and taking action (in french)

Inner dialogue: changing the voice

The therapies also helped her discover just how harsh she was being with herself. She learned to observe her inner dialogue and to change it gradually. Before, a broken glass was unacceptable! Today, Alexandra is far more compassionate and gentle with herself.

“If I make a mistake, I say to myself: right, that’s how it is. Let’s move on.”

This shift in inner voice, as small as it may seem, is revolutionary. You cannot love others well if you are mistreating yourself.

What a truly healthy relationship looks like

Alexandra is today in a relationship she describes with a touching simplicity.

What has changed

The difference from the previous relationship? It can be summed up in a few words:

• No ambiguity: “We do what we say. Our emotions are clear, we know how to express things.”
• Emotional security: “I feel safe, both emotionally and physically.”
• Space to be oneself: “I don’t walk on eggshells.”
• Unconditional support: “He told me: I love you and I support you, whatever you do.”
• Shared emotional regulation: “We don’t withdraw during conflict. We stay.”

Intensity vs security: the real distinction

Alexandra says it clearly: in a healthy relationship, there are also unpleasant and intense emotions. The difference from a toxic relationship lies in how they are handled.

“In a healthier relationship, you feel safe. Your heart, your body is relaxed. You know you can say things when you don’t agree.”

Passion is not incompatible with security. But security must be there. It simply wasn’t there before.

What Alexandra’s story teaches us

Leaving a toxic relationship is rarely a decision made overnight. It is a long journey, filled with doubts, setbacks, and gradual moments of awareness.

Alexandra’s story tells us several essential things:

• Toxic patterns have deep roots, often reaching much further back than the relationship itself
• Transgenerational inheritance shapes our romantic choices without our being aware of it
• The body and emotions are compasses: they inform us of our needs
• Alternative therapies can be profoundly healing (Recall Healing, family constellations, somatic therapy)
• Self-love is not a luxury — it is the condition for attracting and accepting a healthy relationship

“Once you love yourself, accept yourself, and are much more gentle and loving towards yourself, your energy no longer attracts the same people.”

About the Author and Project

This article was written by Margaux Damain, founder of Sous le tapis and a writer specialized in mental health. Margaux relies on scientific studies (systematic reviews and meta-analyses) as well as works by psychiatrists and psychologists to make knowledge about psychological well-being accessible. She transforms expert research into content tailored for the general public. Her goal? To democratize mental health and encourage everyone to practice self-care.

About this article:

This article was written in the context of the Erasmus+ KA210- YOU small-scale partnership project “comPASSION is sexy” (Project Code: 2024- 3- FR02- KA210-YOU-000295806), co-funded by the European Union. The project is a collaboration between Les Philentropes (France) and Olotites (Greece), focused on compassion-based approaches to youth empowerment, inclusion, well-being and mental health awareness.

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are, however, those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

Want to learn more ?