Have you ever witnessed someone in a destructive relationship that they couldn’t seem to get away from? For whatever reason, this couple didn’t seem to work. They were constantly fighting with each other or maybe one of them was physically or mentally abusive to their partner. The point is, it didn’t work. The relationship was bad.

Looking at the situation from the outside, it’s easy for you to recognize when your friend, family member, or loved one is in an unhealthy relationship. And because you’re a third party person, you know that you can help your loved one out. Because you’re able to see how much harm this relationship is causing and because you don’t like seeing someone that you care about in pain, you decide you can help them by giving them some advice. You’ll probably try and get this person to see how destructive their relationship is. Maybe you might bring to your friend’s attention how much happier they were before they were in this relationship. Or perhaps you bring up different examples of when your friend’s partner behaved disrespectfully towards them.

Finally, after hours and hours of you trying to convince them that they’re in a bad relationship, your friend decides to listen to you. They take your advice and they leave their partner. And now that your friend’s boyfriend or girlfriend is no longer a part of their life, you finally start to see your friend act like their old self again. They’re happy and laughing and enjoying life now that they’re out of that relationship, and you’re happy and laughing and enjoying life because your friend is.

Everything seems to be going well until your friend tells you that they’re back in a relationship with their ex. They tell you that it was a mistake to ever break up with them and that they’re going to give them another chance. Besides, their relationship wasn’t bad all of the time. They just went through a few rough patches, and they’ve worked everything out and now they can be happy together in their relationship.

You know better. But trying to tell your friend this again will inevitably be fruitless. Your friend has gone back to an unhealthy relationship again, and since you know that they’re not going to listen to your advice again, you just have to wait around until they figure it out for themselves.

Even if you’ve never been in an unhealthy relationship or even if you’ve never been the friend who was trying to help your other friend get out of their unhealthy relationship, I’m sure that you’ve been in a situation where you have tried to go back to a less than favorable situation thinking that going back wouldn’t do too much damage. The thing is positive thinker, a bad situation is a bad situation for a reason. If you were able to leave that situation, you can’t go back there thinking that the situation is magically going to get better or bring you the positive result you were searching for from that situation in the first place. You left that situation because you were unhappy, so going back isn’t going to make you happy all of a sudden.

If you ever find yourself in a situation where you want to go back to an unhealthy place that you have left behind, try remembering a time when you made the decision to go back. We’ve all done it, but we can all also say that going back probably wasn’t a very good idea. Do you remember how you felt? Was it good? I’d be willing to bet that it wasn’t. And if you can’t remember a time that you went back, then try and remember a time when someone else went back. And remember what they went through when they decided to go back.

Positive thinker, you can’t keep going back to the same bad situation over and over again and expect something good to come from it. You have to put yourself into a situation that is nothing like the one that caused you pain. That’s how you’re going to find happiness. Learn from the mistakes of your past and find something that’s going to bring you joy instead of pain.

And always remember, “Stop looking for happiness in the same place you lost it.”