Key Points

Many men and women ignore the early warning signs of a toxic partner.
Some signs to look for early in a relationship include recurring conflict that feels personal and a lack of support for your core values.

Strategies to help guide you toward healthier relationships include slowing down the relationship and letting your mind be your guide.

By Forrest Talley, Ph.D., and Dominique Enkrot, M.S.W.

Almost every toxic romantic relationship starts with passion and the promise of a bright future. But somewhere along the way to “happily ever after,” things go wrong.

Deep feelings of disappointment, betrayal, and confusion arise with alarming frequency. A once-perfect, trustworthy lover becomes a manipulative anchor that weighs you down.

Many men and women struggle to recognize the early signs of a toxic relationship. In these cases, the early signs of trouble are present instead of raising red flags. These concerns are dismissed as the usual “bumps in the road” that occur in every new relationship.

This confusion can be greatly reduced if you understand what to look for as warning signs that a relationship is likely to turn toxic.

Here are eight traits that frequently appear in toxic relationships. The more of these elements apply to your relationship or your partner, the more likely your relationship is to end in grief.

You experience frequent conflict that seems personal and involves demeaning interactions (such as character attacks and intentionally hurtful comments).
Your partner shows a lack of support for your core values ​​or goals and belittles things that are important to you.
One or both people in the relationship frequently ridicule or mock the other.
You frequently daydream or fantasize about ending the relationship or being with someone else.
You begin to dread spending time with your partner.
Your partner interacts with you in ways that you find annoying and that you might be embarrassed to reveal to your best friend.
Your partner frequently uses guilt trips to get their way.
Your partner insists on monopolizing all of your free time.

How to Weed Out Bad Romantic Partners

If you’ve achieved some of the points above, you may be wondering, “How did I get into this mess?” Well, you’re not alone. Most people have been there.

Fortunately, there are some easy-to-spot warning signs in the personality and character of the person you love that can help you avoid making a bad choice.

Narcissism. When the other person has strong narcissistic tendencies, you need to proceed with caution. Narcissism often manifests itself in selfishness, self-aggrandizement, and easily hurt feelings.1

Lying. Meaningful, lasting relationships require trust. The foundation of trust is built on honesty. In the early stages of a romantic relationship, some men and women tend to ignore the initial signs of lying. They justify them as minor infractions, or that the lie was told to someone else, not them. Such thinking is naive and leads to heartache.

Chronic Jealousy. If the person you love is frequently jealous, they are suffering from deep insecurity. Such a person anticipates betrayal and will become more and more suspicious over time. Endless arguments, defensiveness, diminished intimacy, and deep resentment are sure to follow. 2

Excessive selfishness. Healthy relationships require give and take. An intensely selfish person is interested in taking, not giving. Unless you enjoy being treated like an emotional ATM, avoid a selfish man or woman. 3

What Stops You from Seeing the Red Flags

Many people find themselves immersed in a relationship with a toxic partner—or worse, a chronic pattern of toxic relationships—and wonder how they got there. How can they miss the early, obvious signs that the person they are attracted to is extremely toxic?

It’s easy to make a mistake when the dazzling glow of attraction in the early stages of a romantic relationship clouds our better judgment. Warning signs get ignored or ignored.

That’s because intense romantic attraction reduces activity in your amygdala, your brain’s sentinel, or early warning detection system. This small area of ​​your brain is tasked with identifying threats to your well-being. 4

But as your amygdala clings to the heightened emotions of intense attraction and new romance, your defenses go down. Information about your love interest that might otherwise set off alarm signals doesn’t register as a problem.

When the excitement of a new romance overwhelms your senses (and your amygdala), and you no longer see the red flags in a relationship—let alone care about them—you’re more likely to drift off and find yourself in a toxic relationship.

There’s another problem that contributes to missing these red flags. In the early stages of a romance, you don’t know your partner very well. That’s part of the thrill—it can feel like a treasure hunt as you discover more about the attractive individual who’s recently entered your life.

Given the romantic attraction and passion unleashed by the truly good qualities you’ve already seen, it’s easy to unconsciously “fill in” the remaining unknown qualities of your loved one by assuming that all of their other qualities are equally virtuous and desirable.

This is referred to as the halo effect. Halos can be so intense that they blind us to giant red flags that we might otherwise notice if we weren’t so infatuated and able to objectively assess the person/situation.

What to do

Go slow. Yes, slow down. Don’t spend time with your loved one every day. Don’t immediately curl up under the covers. Think about how you’re inviting someone to be more involved in your life, and then hit the brakes. A solid relationship takes time to build. Don’t rush it.

Embrace your prefrontal cortex. Let reason be your guide. If your new partner has been married five times and has had four children out of wedlock, don’t assume he or she is just unlucky. Don’t dismiss what your logic tells you is cause for concern. In the early stages of romance, your limbic system (emotional brain) is fighting with your prefrontal cortex (logical brain). Enjoy the excitement of a new relationship, but keep your logical brain in the driver’s seat.
Borrow a brain. Seek out the opinions of family and friends you trust. When your judgment is clouded by emotion, it’s a good idea to have a sober second or third opinion. If you feel embarrassed or uncomfortable confiding in your friends about a new relationship, that should send a red flag.
Know the things that might ruin your relationship. Everyone has a list of qualities they know their romantic partner must have to make the relationship happy—shared core values, a sense of humor, a love of dogs, and so on. There’s an equally wide range of qualities to assess for potential compatibility. These are the factors that might prevent you from trusting someone or developing a lasting intimate relationship with them.

Toxic relationships take a toll on your life. They drain your emotional energy, take up time you can’t get back, and often leave you feeling bad about yourself and pessimistic about the future. If you’re in such a relationship, it’s important to get out of it and move on with your life. But it’s better to simply avoid getting involved in toxic intimacy in the first place.