How about a situation where you were dating someone who continually took you for granted, attempted to control what you liked and didn't, you never really had anything in relation to one another except a few little things you thought would bring you through a relationship but now realize never really mattered in the long run.
Life pretty well sucks day in and day out, but you're acustomed to the routine, your bills are being paid off, you're surviving..... there's worse people out there, so why risk losing this sort of security? Because it's slowly rotting away at your mind and well being, that's why. The longer you two stay together, the worse both of you will become to one another.
One solution would be to break up the situation, foce one or the other to move out. More stress and work will come your way in this matter, which could be the two steps back part.... not to mention perhaps not having some of the things you are used to being around you anymore, the esteme is pretty low, and the future it unknown......
But now you know what to look out for to avoid this situation again, you build up your self-esteme again, you grow your independance back, you realize you can do it, and do it better this time around.... and then you do, and not only do you get the things back you originally liked in the previous relationship, you also avoided the bad things, and turned those problems into good experiences by your new partner that you both enjoy, and hence.... you move forward again, where as before, you might have chopped up your partner, stored them in freezer bags in a deep freeze in your basement, and then you goto jail for the rest of your life....... fifteen steps back then.
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Or as another example, you are on your way to the hospital because you cut yourself pretty bad with a knife while making dinner..... along the way to the hospital, you walk straight into a low hanging tree branch and jam it into your eyeball.
Now in order to get to the hospital quicker to fix both these problems, you have to take two steps back to pull the branch out of your eye..... then you can take a step forward closer to the hospital.
