There is a difference between healthy and unhealthy relationships. Healthy relationships are not always rainbows and butterflies, but they are nurturing and fulfilling. On the other hand, unhealthy relationships or toxic ones can be catastrophic and sabotaging. They can break the strongest, powerful, and intelligent humans to feel insignificant, insecure and worthless.
What is a Toxic Relationship
Toxic love sets the tempo of the downfall of a person or the people involved in it. It can be abuse. Not all abuses are to do with physical ones, emotional or psychological abuse is real, painful and can oftentimes go unnoticed because of the lack of awareness or acceptance around it.
Many individuals in toxic relationships think of it as a part of life and do not even find it wrong. The problem is that toxic love and relationships birth trauma, which can be passed down to generations, it can be so deep-rooted that the people involved in it can start finding the toxic relationship to be “normal” or worse “healthy”.
Toxic relationships can include controlling behaviors, dominance, insecurities, and self-centeredness. They make one feel depleted and exhausted. The toxicity in relationships can be between partners, between or among individuals in a family, and in friendships.
Also Read: 5 Reasons Why Women Leave Men Even When They Are Truly In Love
Here are 6 Signs of a Toxic Relationship
1. There is no effort
Just because your partner is physically available does not translate into being ‘there’ for you. There can be an absence of spending quality time or discussing issues that matter to you. All the love, compromise, and work come from your end.
2. Physical or verbal abuse, or both
Name-calling, criticizing, insulting behaviors, or degrading the other person is a sign of abuse. Verbal abuse can be as painful as physical abuse and both should not be tolerated in any manner
3. Feeling drained
If the relationship makes you feel exhausted, it is time to re-evaluate it. Constant doubting of or by the partner, lack of trust, constant judgment, disrespect, or passive behaviors like ignoring, neglecting, and indirect attacks can make you feel drained.
4. Gaslighting
Gaslighting involves manipulative behaviors used as tactics to dominate the other person; the victim of this psychological abuse can often question their own sanity and doubt themselves. For example, your partner always makes you feel that you are at fault and plays the victim card.
5. Lack of boundaries
The concept of privacy and boundaries do not exist. Toxic relationships do not have any clear channels of boundaries and are often enmeshed. Partners are emotionally dependent on each other and need constant reassurance and validation from the other person. Constant checking and prying on your partner, excessive spamming, and questioning can be examples of this.
6. Competition and Ego
Toxic relationships can feel like a competition, and one’s ego can come in between the relationship. The partners can keep a scorecard and often feel jealous of each other’s progress and prosperity. Ego to initiate conversations can also be a sign of a toxic relationship
Also Read: 6 Tips on How To Maintain Long Distance Relationship
If You Are in a Toxic Relationship
If you find yourself in a toxic relationship then it is time you take a step forward to end it. Doing so can be hard and painful but it is needed. Or you can also go for premarital counseling at ReGain to give it a last try. Identifying that your relationship with your partner is toxic is a step in itself. If you find it difficult to come out of it then seek help, talk to a therapist about it, and tend to the trauma that toxic relationships leave you with. You are not alone. Remember, you are amazing and brave.
And Finally
Toxic relationships can feel like a nightmare, they can shatter your self-confidence. Do not think that being in a toxic relationship is your ‘fault’ because it is not. You deserve to feel loved and worthy. You matter.
Being in one of these relationships as with one of your other articles that I have enjoyed reading about is very interesting and resonates with parts of my life. But although we are past the point of therapy and pretending to like one another for the sake of our children has all been stripped down to the last thread, we don’t pretend pretend anymore. I’m always in the wrong and I understand that it’s all down to me now, as she keeps telling me at every opportunity she has, but how does this roundabout work if you are from a very traditional old school mentality and although separating is normal for today’s children, it is still a bad thing for my generation (pre millennium born).
I understand your point of explanation but some cultures don’t allow you to separate, as it’s a case of make it work and if it does not work this time then try again until you either die or one falls terminally ill.
What would be the best advice you can give to me?