What is a toxic relationship mean?
Any relationship between two individuals where they face a lot of conflicts amongst them, where one dominates or suppresses the other, where there is no support for both of them, where there is no harmony and respect is understood as a toxic relationship. Toxic relationships are those relationships where the negative experiences weigh more than the positive experiences between two people. This relationship takes out all the positive energy in an individual and always impacts negatively in every sphere of their lives. Toxic relationships are not just between a couple, they can be between a boss and an employee, a parent and a child, and several others. To have a better understanding of what a toxic relationship is, it is important to know what is a healthy and loving relationship. A healthy relationship is where both individuals experience security, safety, respect, and a mutual sense of growth and achievement. This kind of relationship is dedicated to imprinting confidence, love, and understanding that makes both individuals feel happiness and peacefulness around them.
Anyone who has been or is in a toxic relationship knows how they felt in that moment but what is difficult to answer for them are questions like, why didn’t they do anything about it? Why did they let it happen to them? How did they not know that this is what was going on in their lives? Why couldn’t they stop it from happening to them? All such questions only remind them of their past but the important part is to be aware and provide support to those who have been through such toxic relationship experiences so that they don’t experience such things anymore.
Kinds of Toxic Relationships:
There are several types of toxic relationships, some of them are as listed below:
Belittling – When one partner makes fun of and belittles the other partner in front of anyone and everyone, to feel pleasure and happiness. The toxic partner does such things to still have a sense of being “lucky enough” in another partner that they have in their lives. A toxic partner makes you doubt everything that you do, believe in, and want to proceed ahead with.
Overreacting – When you feel upset about something that your toxic partner did and try to confront or convey what you felt, they start overreacting and make you feel that it was all your fault and they have been putting up with you. This way you’re feeling of sadness towards them is replaced by the question in your words “have I been that tough on you?”, “do you still love me?”, and several others. Your feelings are not addressed and instead, you feel more burdened to make them happy.
Intimidation – Toxic partner has a bad temper and the other person in the relationship is always fearful of what might trigger their toxic partner. A toxic partner always portrays an image of being a joyful person and the one whom everyone would love socially so that if their partner ever tells someone else how they were treated by them, no one will believe their words.
Possessive – Here, the toxic partner is so possessive that they will question everything that you do, and try to control everything in your life. They justify it by saying that they care for you and want the best for you but they are actually only getting dominance and control over your life by knowing every single activity of yours.
Inducing Guilt – Toxic partner always shows disappointment and hurts the other partner whenever things are not done in a way that they wanted to induce guilt. The toxic being doesn’t always do this by themselves, they sometimes use other people to make you feel guilty about the things that you did. The toxic being sometimes even makes you feel that you did a good thing so that you feel not guilty at that moment and this all gives the toxic being control over you.
Using you – This toxic relationship is about one being the provider and the other being the receiver and this title will not be changing ever. It is like when you are the only one who is doing things to make the other one happy and what you want is not considered. The toxic being here always gets their way and also shows that they can move on if you are not able to give them what they want to someone else who might be able to do it in a better way.
Coping with Toxic Relationship:
Although it may seem hard to come out of such toxic relationships it is possible to do so if both the partners are willing to resolve these issues and work on their relationship together.
Being responsible – Taking responsibility for your past behavior and becoming aware of the patterns in the past that made this relationship toxic.
Initiating conversation – Communication requires an effort to listen and absorb the point of view of another being. It also requires an understanding vocabulary to convey what you want to say sincerely and without hurting the other person. It is important that the couple is willing to invest their time and effort for the same.
Moving forward – Not being stuck on what happened in past and moving ahead with a hopeful outlook. Addressing things that bothered you but with a focus on how to move towards a better future.
Transition to understanding – Being open to not blaming the other person and being understanding about how they felt about what you were contributing to that toxic relationship.
Taking help from others – Sometimes the efforts of the couple themselves are not enough to bring change thus going to therapy is beneficial in such cases.
Conclusion:
Toxic Relationships have a negative impact on all spheres of our lives and we need to be careful and knowledgeable enough to identify the toxic patterns leading to the path of a toxic relationship.
