<!-- bryant-content-generator:start --> # The most dangerous relationship is therefore not... > The most dangerous relationship is therefore not necessarily the one containing the most hatred, but the one containing the cheapest harm. {{The deepest danger in a toxic relationship is not hatred. It is zero-priced harm.}} A person insults you and keeps your companionship, betrays you and keeps your confidence, humiliates you and keeps your loyalty, violates a boundary and keeps the same access, disappears when you need them and returns to find the door standing exactly where they left it; eventually the nervous system on the other side receives the lesson even if nobody consciously announces it. {{Every time someone harms you without losing anything, they learn something about the price of harming you.}} {{What you repeatedly absorb without consequence becomes information about what can be done to you.}} This is why pleading can fail even when the plea is perfectly understood, because comprehension and deterrence are different things: the other person may understand exactly how much something hurts and have simultaneously learned that your pain changes nothing important for them. {{The person who repeatedly crosses your boundary may understand it perfectly. They may have simply learned that crossing it is free.}} That is the moment when kindness becomes subsidy, forgiveness becomes financing, reconciliation becomes restored access at the old rate, and your tolerance becomes a discount offered to the person purchasing your suffering. **Source:** [[books/Chimping Out|Chimping Out]] ## Share on Social Media ``` “The most dangerous relationship is therefore not necessarily the one containing the most hatred, but the one containing the cheapest harm. The deepest danger in a toxic relationship is not hatred. It is zero-priced harm. A person insults you and keeps your companionship, betrays you and keeps your confidence, humiliates you and keeps your loyalty, violates a boundary and keeps the same access, disappears when you need them and returns to find the door standing exactly where they left it; eventually the nervous system on the other side receives the lesson even if nobody consciously announces it. Every time someone harms you without losing anything, they learn something about the price of harming you. What you repeatedly absorb without consequence becomes information about what can be done to you. This is why pleading can fail even when the plea is perfectly understood, because comprehension and deterrence are different things: the other person may understand exactly how much something hurts and have simultaneously learned that your pain changes nothing important for them. The person who repeatedly crosses your boundary may understand it perfectly. They may have simply learned that crossing it is free. That is the moment when kindness becomes subsidy, forgiveness becomes financing, reconciliation becomes restored access at the old rate, and your tolerance becomes a discount offered to the person purchasing your suffering.” — Bryant McGill https://bryantmcgill.com/passages/passages-most-dangerous-relationship-person-purchasing-suffering ``` <!-- bryant-content-generator:end -->