We’ve all seen it from the outside: what was once a healthy, happy relationship has turned toxic, and it now brings your loved one more grievance, stress and negativity than happiness. And yet they stay.

But why? Why do people stay in relationships long past their expiry dates? No one needs a boyfriend or girlfriend, after all.

To those of us who’ve never found ourselves in such a situation, it can seem like a bit of a mystery. Is it simply a fear of being alone?

People have now been speaking out and explaining why they stick with their partners when they know it won’t last.

“The love just faded away, not suddenly some sharp ping then ‘oh I don't love you anymore’,” one man wrote in a particularly moving post on the Reddit forum,

“One day I am doing the dishes and I realised I was happy because she wasn't coming home tonight, working later again. I suspect she is seeing a work colleague, an old bf she still gets on with, they'd known each other for years before I came along.

“The funny thing is I don't feel angry or hurt or betrayed. There is just a gentle relief that she is happy and I am happy without her. I always thought I needed a relationship but now as this one bleeds out on the floor I just feel content to watch it gasp and die.”

Sometimes it’s not that the relationship has turned completely toxic, it’s just not happy anymore, as the man pointed out.

Someone asked why he didn’t leave her, to which he responded: “Emotionally I fear it's like I've been slowly stabbed and if I pull at that knife everything is going to hurt so much.”

It’s a painful and powerful simile.

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Others shared their experiences after having finally seen the light and ended their relationships.

A common situation in long-term relationships is where each person has changed, but they still care about the other: “The thing is, I know we love and care about each other, but we became different people than the people we fell in love with,” said one person who’d just ended a six year relationship.

For some people, it’s the external pressure from others who don’t realise a partnership isn’t as happy as it might seem.

“We stayed together a year longer than we should have because everyone else thought we were a great couple and neither of us wanted to be the bad guy who ended the relationship,” said one woman about her ex-boyfriend.

“I also really liked his family,” she added, which always makes a break-up harder.

But another person pointed out that an outsider can never really know what’s going on in a relationship: “My sister thinks me and my husband have a dull relationship of convenience.

“In fact we are deeply in love, have great respect for each other and are very happy to be together for the rest of our lives.”

That’s not the case for everyone though, and one woman admitted she knows her boyfriend doesn’t really love her: “He doesn't love me, never has, and I know it. Didn't stop me from falling in love anyway.

“We keep going because I have no self-respect or self-control. And he is too lazy, and I'm too convenient for him to look elsewhere. We are best friends. It's hard to draw the line when we always have such a good time together.”