toxic shock

Why is that we keep toxic people in our lives?  I am a firm believer that we choose the relationships that give us something that we need.  People don't just "fall" into toxic friendships and relationships.  Most people I know who complain about toxic friends or lovers have had a long string of them.  On some level, the dynamic is filling an actual need; is a fabric that is as familiar as a worn childhood blanket.

When I can look at a friendship and realize that it gives me more grief than happiness, why is it so hard to let that friend go? There should be a mathematical equation in which I can plug in x=happiness, y=misery, and if y>x, then z= dump the friendship already. But, as a flawed human being who does not always respond to logic and behave as a robot, I will drag dead, toxic horses behind me for years.  This tells me that there is a mysterious other variable, a, that represents that unconscious "thing" that this dynamic provides me.  So, somehow, (x + a) >y. 

And, since I am, indeed, unhappy with my toxic friendships and relationships, I have to identify variable "a" and then remove it from the equation.

I do not believe that people easily change.  Further, I believe there are certain toxic personality types that are highly resistant to change.  And, if behaving a certain way produces the same reaction from a toxic person every time, expecting another result from the same behavior is a pointless exercise.

What good is it to be an intuitive, to be able to read people, if you don't do a damn thing with the knowledge you intuit?  Far better to be naive and clueless than to be cynical and know the score and then continue to behave stupidly.

Again, it comes to the kid.  Whenever I am trying to make decisions in my own life, I try to think about how I would advise the kiddo when she is an adult.  If I could not recommend my course of behavior to her, then I cannot recommend it to myself...

And now, to simply follow through. There are 4 billion people on this earth.  It should take little effort to find a few healthy, ethical people with a pool this large.  I just need to figure out this mysterious variable a.