Loyalty is not staying where you are repeatedly dishonored.

Loyalty is a real virtue and it was never meant to require enduring humiliation. Staying somewhere you are consistently disrespected is not faithfulness; it is often just habit or fear wearing loyalty’s language, sometimes encouraged by people who benefit from your staying. Real loyalty runs in both directions. When only one person is being asked for it, something else is going on.

Ask what you are actually being loyal to: a person as they are now, or a version of them, or your own reluctance to start again. Loyalty to yourself is not a betrayal of anyone. It is the thing that makes the rest possible.