toxic relationships

By: Yara Tarek

As Bryant McGill -Human Potential Thought Leader and best-selling author- once said: “Some people will suck you into their hellish world if you let them. They will keep you there forever, for drama after drama, as their emotional support, as their prisoner.”

If you’re in a relationship, you need to identify whether it’s toxic or not because the consequences can be catastrophic. The longer you stay, the worse it gets over time. If you find that any of the below signs apply to you, leave before it’s too late.

1. You Feel Drained Most Of The Time

Do you ever feel like you don’t have any more energy left in you to do anything? Is your partner making you feel drained? If you constantly fight or feel like you constantly need to solve their endless-problems (never-ending drama), you’re the one who’s always giving and never getting anything in return. Do you feel uneasy after seeing them or calling them and not know why?

2. Isolation

Do you feel isolated from other people because you only have that specific person and they’re filling up your life so much that you don’t have the energy to deal with other people? Or that you can’t go to work or accomplish anything, because your partner is weighing you down?

3. Walking on Eggshells

It’s alright to have your own codes in the relationship that you both agree on, but always feeling scared that your partner might discover something, or being terrified of making mistakes or saying the wrong words that you constantly need to choose your words otherwise you’ll be punished in a way or another, is not healthy.

4. You’re Mentally Unstable

In any relationship, there will be spells of bad times where you’ll feel sad and face problems. If you always feel insecure, have self-doubts, feel judged or scared of being judged, your self-esteem is lower than ever, you’re stressed most of the time, you’re experiencing anxiety attacks, you’re happy but afraid of the next time things go bad, that’s not OK.

5. Enduring Hurtful Comments

In a fight, does your partner tend to solve problems or inflect damage? Do they focus on how big the problem is or on how to solve it? We all get angry and it’s fine to communicate our frustration to our partners, but repeating negative comments like “It’s all your fault because you’re a bad person”, or “You only think about yourself, you’re weak, you never understand, you don’t appreciate..etc”, can destroy you.

Toxic people tend to say these things to protect themselves. It’s not healthy to get labelled by your partner, to feel like you have to get down on your knees and beg them for forgiveness. When they realize they broke you, their behavior will change. They will give you love and apologize because at that time they feel safe to give it to you.

6. Revenge

When you do something that makes them feel insecure, they won’t tell you how vulnerable this made them feel. They will turn it into a fight and might even seek revenge, like doing something behind your back which they know will upset you or make you feel jealous.

7. Feeling Guilty

You never seem to be understood or appreciated no matter what you do, you are always hurting them. You’re always the one with problems, you’re always the one who has to change for this relationship to go on. You’re the source of all evil. They might actually deny every hurtful comment they ever said to you or accuse you of making it all up in your head, making you feel crazy.

8. They Bring Out The Worst In You

Do you see yourself turning into something you hate? Are you becoming overly-aggressive, always angry and tired, the least thing they do nowadays makes you erupt like a volcano? You’re becoming a very pessimistic person; you reactions are no longer familiar to you. You’re turning into someone you don’t recognize anymore.

9. They Invade Your Life

At some point you begin to feel that you’re in charge of everything in their lives; you’re the one who makes their decisions, you’re the one who feels their pain, their worry, their sorrow, their fear. You’re the one who’s thinking on their behalf, suffering instead of them, until you begin to lose yourself in the process.

10. Passive Aggressive Behaviors

Ignoring your presence, refusing to answer your calls or questions, throwing insults in the form of jokes so you think it’s OK, honestly isn’t.

We all come into relationships with imperfections, but we need to feel safe in a relationship. We need to feel loved, accepted, and genuinely happy. We need to try together to be the best version of ourselves, like a team, without judgement, isolation, fear or burdens.