In a healthy relationship, you feel that you are growing every day. You find trust, respect, stability, and care without even asking, but in contrast, toxic relationship makes things seem hard to work out.

Love indeed has its flaws, which is why it never forget to give rewards either. If you are in a healthy relationship, it will bring you good fortune; however, if you take one wrong step and end up in a toxic relationship, it will not only bring you plenty of misfortune, but it will also steal all of your good thunder! According to Adlerian psychology, the roots of all problems are interpersonal relationships, which are discussed in depth in the book Courage To Be Disliked. This shows that it’s important to analyze every relationship we are encountering in our life.

What are the Signs of Toxic Relationship?

Disrespect in a Relationship

This is the first step toward making a relationship toxic. Disrespect can happen in many ways.

One stops sharing things, which also means they start hiding things that generally wouldn’t be approved. One doesn’t think before talking and just argues in abusive language, which can really hurt the other person and it happens that one makes their partner feel less in front of other people.

The most blatant example of disrespect is when someone flirts or cheats with another individual.

It happens that one talk or do things according to their convictions, which shows they give less importance to other person’s opinions and feelings.

Playing Blame Game

This is the most common factor in toxic relationship. Many times, it happens that one uses blame-shifting. It is an emotionally abusive tactic in which one has difficulty accepting their flaws, and even if they do accept them, they portray that the other person’s behavior caused them to do so.

For example, if you are or were in a toxic relationship, you must have heard these sentences, “I cheat on you when you are too busy working and can’t seem to find the time for me.” or “I wouldn’t have screamed at you if you weren’t nagging me.”

The person who doesn’t like to accept their own faults always prefers to blame others.

Using Manipulation

It has been seen that in many toxic relationships, gaslighting happens. In this case, one accuses the other for making everything complicated. They act as if they don’t understand, but they do.

One can also convince other that what they claim happened never happened. For example. “No, you’re wrong; the situation hasn’t happened that way.” They deny everything the other person says (correctly).

Finally, one makes the other feel sorry for expressing their thoughts or asking questions.

In a toxic relationship, one can feel it when other person responds to them in the silent treatment, leaving them wondering what they did wrong.

Frequent Arguments

Having a disagreement about one thing between two is common as each individual has a different personality, but later on, leading this argument into daily arguments is definitely not good. Sometimes one has a tendency to react to even the smallest arguments, because of their nature of making everything sound serious, they react too much to such things too.

It happens that toxic relationships have the same fights over and over again. When one person ignores the other’s instructions, it causes frustration in the other person’s mind, which can easily lead to a fight.

Emotional Neglect

It happens that in toxic relationship, a lot of time emotional neglect occurs. It is basically a relationship pattern in which a significant other consistently disregards, ignores, or invalidates, an individual’s affectional needs.

One doesn’t feel safe and secure in this scenario. They feel more alone and lack the support of their loved one. There is a lack of physical intimacy too, and this happens because there is a lack of emotional connection. The one who feels emotionally neglected most of the time just feels there is something missing in the relationship but doesn’t know exactly what!

Make-up sex

In a relationship, intimacy is extremely important. In one case, when there is a big fight, both parties go their separate ways and take their time, but in toxic relationship, couples engage in sex after a fight. But, why do we crave sex after a fight with our partner? According to Dr. Justin Lehmiller, a research fellow at The Kinsey Institute and author of the blog Sex and Psychology stated that, sex relieves stress—”[so] it stands to reason that makeup sex could help reduce feelings of stress and allow couples to move on faster.”

However, it is common for couples to put aside the problem and choose to be intimate after a fight, which may leave problems unresolved later on and lead to frequent arguments. So, make-up sex will be enjoyable only after all issues have been resolved and no grudges remain in heart.

Why It’s difficult to get out from Toxic Relationship?

According to Fugère, the more time a person invests emotionally in a relationship (even if it is overall negative), the more a person will continue to try to make it work (even if it hasn’t been working, resulting in a tricky cycle), and this is why getting out of a toxic relationship becomes difficult.

Also those who have entered the, fantasy bond create the illusion of a perfect connection between their relationships, which eases their fears by creating a false sense of connection.

How Do You Get Out of a Toxic Relationship?

The quality of the relationship is based on people involved. Throughout the time, there is a constant sharing of energy, values, actions, and behavior that keeps happening, which means that if a relationship has become toxic, no single person is to blame. But when you understand yourself better, when you learn how to set boundaries, and how to communicate, you’ll be able to tell whether a particular relationship is helping you grow or dragging you down.

You have the power to destroy your relationship as well as transform it. Whatever you want in your relationship, you first give and then wait and then come the analysis.