A toxic relationship is not just bad and unhealthy. The truth is: Toxic relationships can make life hell. Escaping from it is anything but easy. Only a few managed to jump off unscathed. How to tell if you are caught in a toxic relationship and how you can break free. We explain to you 6 Important Signs of a Toxic Relationship.
Toxic relationships are tricky. The sad thing is that people who are in a toxic relationship mostly know about their fate and yet cannot change anything about it. Here, you can find out why this is the case and which tips are available to free yourself from this emotional captivity.
What is a Toxic Relationship?
It is important to look out for signs of a toxic relationship. It might be the partnerships that cost us strength and energy. In which we argue constantly. A relationship in which we are mostly sad and dissatisfied. So, in conclusion, toxic relationships are connections to people who make us unhappy instead of making us happy. This means that the relationship per se is not poisoned, rather it is the behavior of the partner that can have a poisoning effect on a relationship. We show you in this article 6 important signs of a toxic relationship.
Who is a Toxic Person?
You can tell relatively quickly whether you are dealing with a toxic person. Because a toxic person always leaves us with a bad feeling, without we being able to describe exactly what triggered it. We just instinctively feel that the contact wasn’t good for us.
What is Toxic Behavior?
Among the toxic behaviors include:
- Escalation of conversations
- Stubbornness, unteach ability, unreasonableness
- Crossing borders and pretensions
- Allocations of guilt
- Spreading lies
- Applying emotional pressure
- Manipulation
- Jealousy and resentment
- Ruthlessness
Toxic behavior is fundamentally wrong. And yet most of those affected endure it. Because they don’t manage to break away from toxic people. A clear sign that they are in the middle of a toxic relationship.
How do you recognize toxic relationships?
You feel bad in toxic relationships, but you still don’t manage to break free of them. If the person opposite threatens separation, you even panic for fear of suddenly being alone. Because without realizing it, you have slipped into an emotional addiction. The first sign of a toxic relationship. But there are numerous other indications that are examined in more detail below.
You should know about these 6 important signs of a toxic relationship:
- Dependence
- Change of heart
- Premature expressions of love
- Egoism
- Control addiction
- Devaluation, insults, humiliations, insults
1. Dependency
This is one of the most important signs out of the 6. In a toxic relationship, many things no longer happen at will. Like:
- We are no longer ourselves and are always anxious to please our partner to appease him
- Trying to let go of a lot more than we should is what we think is good to save a relationship.
- Enduring insults, looks, reproaches, breaches of trust, lies, and much more is the everyday thing.
- Aggression is always tolerated which is never ok.
- Blame games are played during every fight.
- Wanting to go out for an evening with our friends again or do our hobby is just limited in our thoughts. Even if we did, the partner accuses us of not spending enough time with him. And instead of going about our needs, we back off and let our date go. Although this desire for more time for two puts us under enormous pressure.
2. Change of character
Also, personality changes suggest a toxic relationship back. While we were happy, extroverted, and balanced at the beginning of the partnership, over time we become more closed, sad, tense. You can’t do anything right in a toxic relationship. The other person makes us small and dependent. Our self-esteem is on the ground. We stamp through life like a mourning dumpling.
3. Premature expressions of love
Eternal love and the three magic words – who doesn’t want that from a relationship? Yes please, but not after three weeks. How credible can a person be who seems to know after a short time that it is great to love? That there is a kinship? And you can never be without the other one again? Having a crush is a wonderful feeling, butterflies in the stomach are completely normal in the love phase. But big oaths of love are exaggerated, not authentic, and, above all, not honest. This idealized idea only exists in the head of the toxic partner.
Read our article on How To Say “I Love You” To The Person You Love.
4. Selfishness
Sovereignty rests with our partner. His opinion, his principles, his rules are what matters. If we manage to gain freedom of speech for a moment, the toxic partner will immediately nip this attempt in the bud. He will find a way to regain the attention he has lost for a split second. The conversation immediately becomes one-sided again, our feelings and our opinions don’t matter.
5. Control
The toxic partner is a good listener. But be careful, this impression is deceptive. First and foremost, he only wants one thing: to know everything about us so that he can control us. He asks our needs and satisfies them. It gives us the feeling “I am the right one.” We should feel complete. And when we do that, the toxic partner opens up other sides and makes life hell. He will have us for us alone encapsulates us from our friends and families, especially when they realize that something is wrong with us.
6. Emotional Stress (Devaluation, Humiliations, Insults)
Toxic people will finish their partner emotionally, stress them out. Leave him alone with her problems at night, rob him of sleep. A toxic person will hurt his partner, take out his frustration with him, not clear up misunderstandings, make no concessions, make him small and ridiculous, question his skills, destroy him. Be aware of one thing: Whatever you do, you are guaranteed not to do anything right.
These 6 signs are the most important signs you should be knowing if you think you have a toxic relationship.
Why on earth do people slip into a toxic relationship without realizing it?
How do toxic relationships develop?
It sounds paradoxical, but: toxic relationships start wonderfully. Too good to be true – no other saying goes so well at the beginning of a toxic relationship. There is an intensive amalgamation into a “we”, we experience the feeling of having arrived and even though everything started so wonderfully, we will soon experience martyrdom. The partner will start to nag at us, constantly criticize us, blame ourselves, or be angry, and it will not take long and he will put it the once perfect relationship in question.
A toxic partner becomes distant, almost unreachable. All security and liability disappear. The healthy partner gets into a whirlpool of despair, nervous stress, and emotional distress. The toxic partner will take advantage of this uncertainty and will now start off with nasty things. He will put down his counterpart so that he can later rebuild and bind him. And he will make it completely clear to his partner that he is to blame for all the chaos, that he can be happy that he has not yet separated, thankful that he is still with him and endures him. And the healthy person will think that everything has to be up to him, he is the hard one in this relationship, complicated, and worthless. That he has long been the victim of pathological, and manipulative behavior.
Why do people behave toxically?
Toxic people are a mess. They hate themselves, but instead of dealing with them, they transmit these bad feelings to their partner. The partner acts as a kind of projection surface. He transfers his state of mind so that the partner feels humiliated, guilty, worthless, and desperate. The toxic partner does this to get rid of everything he hates and to get what he lacks: strength, life energy, and attention. He knows that the more he hurts his partner, the more he gets back. Toxic people hardly feel themselves and transfer their unmanaged pain to others. Everything that you cannot feel yourself, let your partner feel it. This enables a toxic person to survive: he disposes of all repressed content and emotions.
A toxic relationship, what to do?
It is important to first check the above listed 6 signs in a toxic relationship. Healthy people simply cannot believe that something is done to them that people are capable of such emotional abuse at all. That the person who should actually love them is capable of such cruel deeds. So, any attempts to explain the part of the healthy partner are unnecessary. The toxic partner will twist the words, roll his eyes, and make it clear that there is no need to speak. A toxic partner is never about resolving a conflict. A healthy person cannot clear up these injustices, knots, and twists, but he still tries again and again. How can the circle be broken?
Wake up and question
Wake up! Go inside yourself. Instead of wanting to get rid of your negative feelings and fears, accept them, become one with them, and face them. Check what you want in a relationship. A list of all good and bad aspects proves to be helpful. Formulate your expectations of the partner. If you see a contradiction between your wishes and the current state, ask yourself whether you really want to accept it.
Play over the past two months. What was good, what was bad? Are the good and bad phases in a balanced relationship? The 80:20 rule applies here. If the majority of the time is afflicted with grief, stress, and pain, the relationship gives you nothing (good). Ask yourself these questions first and answer honestly: “Does he/she bring out the simplest in me?”, “Is there more criticism than compassion in my relationship?”, “Is he/she good for me?”
Stay strong
A toxic relationship is blind. Consult your family and friends and let them open your eyes. And very important: stay strong. Once you’ve realized that separation is the only way then hold on to it and don’t buckle if the toxic partner wants to persuade you to stay. Nothing will change! Draw a line with everything that goes with it. There is always a risk of relapse. Does your ex-partner want a friendship? Absolutely no way. A friendship only hurts. Cancel the contract. Last but not least, grieve. As long as you have to. Just don’t forget to look ahead again at the end of your grief. Psychotherapy can help you deal with all the negative events and strengthen self-esteem.
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