Have you ever stopped to think about how good the relationships you’ve had so far have been for you? If you’re in a relationship right now, have you asked yourself how you feel in that relationship? If you don’t like to think about it, you might want to read on. There’s a reason you want to avoid the subject. You could be in a toxic relationship and not even realize it.

What are toxic relationships

Toxic relationships can be defined, very briefly, as those relationships that drain you of energy and vitality.

There are people who bring out the best in you and people who bring out the worst. With the latter category toxic relationships usually form.

When you feel like you are no longer taking care of yourself, physically or mentally, you are in a toxic relationship. When you realise this, you begin to realise how much you’ve been losing yourself all this time and, as much as it hurts, you have to fight the temptation to deny reality. Denial will only delay solving the problem.

The behaviour of toxic people

Toxic people usually want to be in absolute control. The result is that everyone around them feels insignificant, ignored and disregarded. Everything a toxic person does is aimed at keeping their partner submissive. The toxic person achieves this goal through criticism, value judgement, insults and aggression (physical or verbal). Whenever the partner “allows” him/herself to disobey, the toxic person will retaliate virulently to discourage further disobedience.

Toxic people have learned to do this since childhood, when they either saw one parent behaving aggressively and critically towards the other parent (and, even if they pitied the perceived victim parent, they chose to become like the aggressor, because no one actually wants to be a victim), or they were praised too much and did not learn what empathy is (thus developing a personality disorder).

What frequently emerges from a toxic person’s behaviour is a complete lack of concern for the effects this behaviour has on other people. The toxic person is unable to see anything beyond their own wants and needs.

Toxic people usually choose open and affectionate partners because they are the ones who will fight hardest to keep the relationship. The non-toxic partner will work harder and harder to improve the relationship and make it work and the toxic partner not only knows this but also relies on it to ensure they keep control of the other.

Signs of a toxic relationship

1. You always feel exhausted, physically, mentally or emotionally. A good relationship should give you a sense of contentment (even happiness) and increase your productivity and zest for life.
2. You live more with the memories of the good times that happened long ago and less with what’s happening between you now. A relationship doesn’t take place in the past but in the present and the fact that you prefer the past shows that there is something wrong with the way things are now. Memories can be very nice but they can’t be reasons to stay together if other reasons don’t exist.
3. You don’t trust the other person or they don’t trust you: a relationship without trust is like a faulty elevator. You can push the button all you want, it still won’t get you where you want to go.
4. Passive aggression: when one or both partners are passive-aggressive, this disrupts normal communication and escalates tension to the point of conflict.
5. Differences between you are not accepted and each tries to change the other: the relationship itself is not flexible and able to adapt to the changes that inevitably occur in life.
6. Jealousy
7. Repeating the same fight over and over again: a toxic relationship does not allow for conflict resolution and as such the two partners end up having the same fight over and over again without resolving the dispute in any way.
8. Criticism and contempt: Criticism and contempt are part of the “Horsemen of a Relationship Apocalypse”, namely 4 factors that John Gottman considers to be predictors of trust for ending a relationship. When our partner constantly resorts to criticism, we feel disappointed, discouraged and it’s as if nothing we do is right. When this criticism is also mixed with irony and when it is addressed publicly (in front of friends or other family members) the impact is even greater because the feeling of shame is amplified.
9. Continued hostility: A relationship is supposed to give you security. Hostility, however, means insecurity and a constant state of alert that will end up exhausting you physically and mentally.
10. Avoid each other: You’re always finding excuses not to spend time together and you haven’t had sex since you don’t know when.
11. Refusal to change or seek to solve the problem: If your significant other refuses to admit there’s a problem in the relationship and isn’t even willing to discuss it (let alone couples therapy), the solutions that remain are very limited: basically, you’re left with nothing but hoping the situation will miraculously resolve itself.
12. Insults: If you have ended up hurling insults or swearing at each other, the tension is already at a very high point, from which it can hardly go down.
13. You can’t behave naturally: If you change your tastes, opinions and preferences in each other’s presence, then the relationship you’re in is a toxic one. In a healthy relationship the two come up with their own opinions and habits and thus enrich each other’s lives: one doesn’t give in because the other won’t admit to not being like them. If the other decides what friends you can have, what clothes to wear, what job to choose and so on, the relationship is completely unbalanced. And it doesn’t tilt in your favor.
14. Emotional blackmail: Emotional blackmail works because it triggers guilt in the other person. Romantic feelings or gestures should not be contingent on something the other person does. If any small token of affection comes with a price tag (and usually that price tag is steep) then you may wonder if “the other side was cheaper”.
15. Sexual blackmail: if you don’t get your way, your partner is no longer sexually available. It may come as a surprise to you, but it’s not just women who resort to this manipulative tactic.
16. Hiding your relationship from friends or family: Friends and family immediately notice toxic behaviour (because it’s easier to see from the outside) and are thus inclined to criticise your partner or advise you to break up. Because you don’t want to listen to this advice (especially since it might be correct), you begin to avoid bringing up your partner or including him or her in outings with friends or family dinners.
17. You give more than you get: an unbalanced relationship can’t bring you long-term satisfaction.
18. Control tendencies: when one partner is constantly trying to control the other.
19. Drama and drama: a healthy relationship doesn’t look like a soap opera.
20. Feeling like a prisoner in the relationship
21. Victimization: a relationship cannot grow if one partner is stuck in the past.
22. Insincerity: the relationship degrades with each new lie told.
23. It’s all about the other person, never about you: you have opinions and feelings but the other person never listens to you. Instead of listening to you, they contradict you and explain why you’re wrong until you finally give in and the other person has the last word.
24. You don’t stop paying for past mistakes: if you are still being blamed for things you did 5, 10 or 20 years ago, the relationship is toxic. The reason you are being blamed for those mistakes is no longer anger about what you did – it has become a means of control and oppression.
25. The relationship is managed like a sports match, with a scoreboard. “You did this to me, I’ll do that to you”. It’s all a game about who has done more wrong (and, of course, who is more innocent and, as such, superior to the other).
26. Don’t rely on each other for understanding or help, but turn to other people.
27. The other tries to isolate you from family or friends.
28. When you say NO, the other person ignores your refusal. In fact, they generally don’t take much notice of any of your opinions: if you’re in the car and you tell them to slow down, they ignore you or even step on the gas even harder and eventually imitate you and make fun of you.
29. He’s not interested in your moments of success or even goes out of his way to downplay them.
30. Makes jokes about leaving you and tells you about what his next wife/husband will be like.
31. Your life together seems to have gotten out of control: you spend more than you earn or the other spends money without telling you.
32. You can’t discuss important topics such as marriage or conceiving a child.
33. You lie to cover up irresponsible behavior because you are ashamed to tell the truth. For example, you might say he’s busy at work and that’s why he’s not on time for a family event, when in fact you’re not even sure what he’s doing.
34. One or even both of you compare the other to other people and the comparison does not benefit them.
35. Has exaggerated expectations and is never satisfied: there’s always something you could have done better. The expectation is to satisfy his needs even to the detriment of your needs: he might ask you to give him your undivided attention, to answer the phone whenever he calls you (no matter what you are doing at the time, you have to drop everything to answer it).
36. You can’t say that you have influenced each other in any positive way (e.g. by learning from each other) but you have influenced each other in a negative way: drinking alcohol, smoking and so on.
37. The other does not make you feel good in your own body. If you’re a woman you might find to your astonishment that your breasts are saggy or too small, your bottom too big and so on. A man might have the “pleasure” of being informed that he’s had a tummy tuck and goes saggy.
38. You have already broken up several times. This troubled relationship history shows that, despite the evidence, at least one of you is stubbornly trying to save the relationship.
39. One partner involves the other in unethical or illegal activities, such as making false statements, stealing or forging documents.
40. You are in a much worse state than you were at the beginning of the relationship, on all levels.
41. There are times when you avoid going straight home after work because you need to relax and that’s not all you get at home.
42. You feel lonely when you’re together.

Why people stay in toxic relationships

1. From the idea that you have to fight for your relationship
   Like people, not all relationships are equal: some hurt you, both physically and mentally. Ask yourself if it makes sense to fight for something that hurts you.
2. Because they ignore their intuition
   When I talk to a patient about the toxic relationship they’re in, we always find that the warning signs were there all along: they just chose to ignore them. Why did he do this? For various reasons: maybe he needed to believe he had found his other half, maybe for some other reason. The fact is that the problem is not that he didn’t see the signs, but that he chose to ignore them.

Your intuition is an extremely important tool. People have become accustomed to ignoring it because most people don’t trust themselves enough. The price paid for disregarding intuition, however, is often high.

3. From the idea that love is suffering
   Only an unbalanced person can tell another person that they are hurting out of love. And only a person who doesn’t respect themselves enough will believe it.

If you think love is suffering, you’ve either read too many romance novels or you’ve learned the wrong lessons from your own childhood. You will have to correct these definitions in order to have a normal relationship.

4. Because the toxic person always blames the other person
   No matter what they do, it’s always the other person’s fault for overreacting, being too sensitive, too boring, too mature, too serious, too country. For the toxic partner, there’s nothing wrong with constantly insulting the other person, it’s just their fault for taking things too seriously and not knowing the joke.
5. From romantic misconceptions: “completes me”, “is my soulmate”, “is my other half”
   There is no soulmate and you are not half a person but a whole person. Because you are complete, you don’t need complements. Stop believing everything you see in the movies.
6. Because they have already invested in the relationship
   This behavior is similar to the psychology of the gambling addict: even if he has already lost a huge amount of money, he doesn’t stop because he still hopes that he will eventually recover his loss. The only way he can stop is to accept that he has lost that money, or that it was the price he paid to learn a lesson about gambling (for example, the lesson that only the house wins in the end). Likewise, the person trapped in a toxic relationship refuses to leave because they have already invested time, energy and feelings into the relationship. This is a trap they have willingly fallen into and one they can only get out of if they accept this.
7. Because they hope it will be okay in the end
   Hope is a wonderful thing but not when it keeps you in a relationship that does you no good. For things to get better, you would both have to change your behavior and even if you knew how, you would still have to and want to. If your significant other hasn’t ever given you any sign that they’d be willing to change, your hope that they will at some point doesn’t make that thing happen.

There’s another unhealthy habit: deluding yourself that everything will be okay after something happens. That something is usually a child but it can also be buying a house, changing jobs, getting a promotion and more. Such major changes in one’s life are actually a source of additional stress (even a happy event like the birth of a child). Being a source of stress, they cannot be the saving solution for a relationship that is not working anyway even in the absence of those extra pressures.

Why you should leave a toxic relationship

You should leave a toxic relationship in the first place because, most likely, it won’t get better. As I often tell my patients, just because you want something to happen very badly doesn’t make it happen. If you want to keep lying to yourself that positive thinking will change reality, no one can stop you from doing that. But the result will be an increasing deterioration in your health (physical and mental).

When in a toxic relationship, people tend to do more (or more often) the things that at one time seemed to work: they try to be more affectionate, and more attentive, and more flexible. They don’t realise that this tendency is the problem.

One reason people stay in toxic relationships is that, every now and then, the other person offers them proof of affection or behaves “nicely”. This personality disorder dynamic is called “I love you-hate you” and is what causes Stockholm Syndrome in the abused person. Stockholm Syndrome means attachment (paradoxical if you look at it from the outside) to the abuser. This unhealthy attachment, combined with the hope that the toxic person will change (because they are capable of affectionate behavior, as shown by the rare evidence of affection they offer), is what can stop you from leaving. This “with a twinge” normality shouldn’t fool you: all the toxicity of the relationship isn’t undone by a few good moments if the relationship as a whole is destructive and damaging.

Toxic relationships ultimately lead to social and emotional isolation. Couples without friends are usually in a toxic relationship. In the long run, these relationships cause anxiety and panic attacks, depression, chronic illnesses (especially diabetes, ulcers, cardiovascular disease and cancer) and can even lead to suicidal thoughts or attempts. If even the extremely serious threat of these conditions can’t persuade you to leave, it’s probably only the threat posed by the partner themselves that can: toxic relationships often lead to domestic violence. If you’re in a toxic relationship and want to find out how to get out, you can find out more about my guide ‘How to get out of a relationship that’s hurting you’ here.

When trying to break away from that relationship, the feeling is that it hurts no matter what you do: the harder you try to leave the worse it hurts and if you stay, you know you’ll continue to feel bad. What you need to understand is that it is not the process of breaking up that is the source of the pain but the relationship itself. Yes, it’s usually worse before it gets better. But it will be better in the end if you choose to walk away and take care of yourself.

In closing

Now that you know what toxic relationships are and how to recognize them, I have one more question for you. Because that’s what it’s like at the psychologist’s, like in the Colombo show: just when you think you’re off the hook, he comes back and says “sir, one more thing…”.

The question is: in general in your relationships so far, who has been the toxic element, you or the other?