Toxic relationships will cause tremendous harm to people, families, and workplaces, but they are not necessarily the terrain of the weak, oppressed, or insecure. Strong, healthy, independent people can find themselves in the grips of a toxic relationship.
Likewise, relationships that seem to start strong because of “Oh my God, we love you guys so much,” can disintegrate into nothing but ashes and legal fees that could have bought a castle on the Seine if they weren’t used to split them in half. Your assets are more “half laid”.
Related: 3 Extremely Toxic Expectations That Kill Your Relationship
Relationships develop.
They change and grow. Sometimes they crash and burn. We never know what things will be like when each other’s less-than-adorable awful habits start showing up in public, or under the influence of alcohol or in-laws.
Some relationships are all wrong shades from the beginning (“Darlene, you’re so beautiful. You’re the picture of my ex. See? This is her picture. You can keep this picture. I have so many — in my wallet, as my screensaver, on my bedside table, in my house.” Mom, on my desk, on my refrigerator, and yes, everywhere. Sometimes I hold her in front of me and run backward and pretend like she’s chasing me ‘Do you want to get some tequila, baby?’)
Some start with promise and all the right ingredients, but somewhere along the way, the right ingredients are replaced with resentment, jealousy, history, and hurt.
We love love.
Of course, we do. Love sends us to joyful and noble heights from which we never want to descend, but the same heart that can send us into the ecstasy of love can trip us up and make us fall into something much more toxic.
The relentless pursuit of love can be blinding.
Worse still, sometimes it’s not until you’re both kids and have a mortgage in the relationship that you realize something’s been missing for a while, and that something is you.
What is a toxic relationship?
A toxic relationship taints your self-esteem, your happiness, and the way you see yourself and the world. A toxic person will float through life with a trail of broken hearts, broken relationships, and broken people behind them, but toxic relationships don’t necessarily end that way because the person you fell in love with turned out to be toxic.
Relationships can start healthy, but bad feelings, bad history, or long-term unmet needs can fester, tainting the relationship and changing the people in it. It can happen easily and quickly, and it can happen to the strongest people.
Can I fix it?
All relationships are worth fighting until they aren’t. In a toxic relationship there will always be repercussions:
Moody, anger, and unhappiness become the norm;
You avoid each other more and more;
Work and relationships outside of the toxic relationship begin to suffer.
If the relationship is toxic, all the fighting in the world will likely change nothing because one or both parties have changed emotionally. Maybe they weren’t there in the first place, or maybe they weren’t the way you wanted them to be anyway. Worse still, if your relationship is toxic, you will get more and more damaged by staying in it.
Fighting to hold on to something that doesn’t fight to hold on to you will destroy you. Sometimes, the only thing left to do is let go of grace and love and move on.
What are the signs that I am in a toxic relationship?
Realizing that a relationship is toxic is vital to protecting yourself from being broken. Staying in a toxic relationship means keeping your hand hovering over the self-destruct button.
It’s not easy to leave all toxic relationships.
Recognizing the signs will make it easier for you to take back your power and draw a heavy, bold line about what is allowed into your life and what is closed.
Toxic behavior is widespread.
Related: I Stayed In A Toxic Relationship Because Of Love — Big Mistake
All people and all relationships do some of these things sometimes, but that doesn’t make them toxic. A toxic relationship is defined by consistency, intensity, and damage.
