Unhealthy relationships: signs by which you can recognize them

Trying to change another person

When entering into a new relationship, people most often see only the good in their loved one. But some time passes, and the rose-colored glasses have to be taken off. Real habits, goals and desires come to light that irritate you.

Instead of thanking each other for the experience, the stronger partner tries to remake the weaker one taking into account their own ideas about the ideal. This is unacceptable behavior.

Megan Alden, author of an article on toxic relationships, says that a number of mental health professionals recognize them as a type of mental disorder.

Indeed, when we meet an adult who has already achieved something in life, we try to make him comfortable for ourselves. At the same time, we are not at all interested in how he himself feels about it. As a result, the relationship becomes:

• Into the fight if the partner turns out to be equal in strength of character.
• In relationships like teacher-student or victim-executioner, if one of the partners is much weaker.

What to do in such a situation? World relationship psychology recommends changing yourself. A partner interested in preserving and developing the union will follow your example. If the goals do not coincide, the relationship will inevitably fail.

Energy vampirism2

A harmonious relationship implies that both partners act positively on each other. From spending time together, you are filled with new emotions, increased strength and desire to create in all other areas of life.

Very often the exact opposite situation occurs. One person turns out to be a real energy vampire. What does it mean? The partner constantly expresses his dissatisfaction, tries to provoke a conflict, does not try to smooth over corners or compromise.

Regular squabbles exhaust even the strongest personalities. When you come home to your loved one, you don’t want to sort things out. But this is all that an energy vampire needs from you.

He probably works less, earns little money, and feels inferior elsewhere. To overcome the lack of emotions, to increase his own self-esteem, the vampire begins to bully the person who least expects an attack. Recharged with negative emotions, he or she goes about his or her own business in a good mood.

The victim remains alone. The condition is lousy, you feel completely empty. The phrase “squeezed lemon” is now one hundred percent clear. There is neither the strength nor the desire to do anything useful, even for yourself.

Vampirism is always practiced by people who lack self-confidence. Perhaps someone once seriously offended them, their boss made them look like a fool in front of the whole team. A person does not have enough willpower and internal reserves to survive a problematic situation on his own, to gain experience and benefit from it. It is for this reason that he arranges reprisals against his soulmate.

Desire to control each other

Jealousy and resentment poison life: Pixabay
Trust is the basis of healthy relationships between people. If it is not there, the relationship will show the following signs of an unhealthy relationship:

• fear, resentment and jealousy;
• attempts to control every step of the partner;
• increased demands for attention and care;
• constant dissatisfaction and complaints.

The famous psychiatrist, psychotherapist and author of more than 30 books on practical psychology, Mikhail Litvak, said that such behavior is typical of a neurotic. Attempts to control and isolate a partner from other people are a violation of personal boundaries, which causes irritation and even aggression.

Jealousy is often unfounded, and resentment is absolutely childish behavior that is unacceptable in a relationship between two adults. When you feel a pang of jealousy, calmly discuss the situation and draw conclusions, rather than hush it up and don’t turn into a bloodhound looking for evidence of infidelity.

This pattern of behavior can be established in early childhood and adopted from parents. For relationships between two adults, it is toxic and destructive.

Violence and inability to set personal boundaries

In unhealthy relationships, there is always some kind of violence involved. Sometimes this is some kind of overt violence, such as physical violence or insults. But often this is very subtle, imperceptible, unobvious violence.

For example, this is gaslighting. When a person is encouraged to believe that he is “not himself.” And they convince him that what he sees, hears and feels is inadequate.

Or unsolicited criticism and devaluation. Or trying to trick a woman into getting pregnant when she doesn't want to. Some people do not perceive this as violence, seeing their partner’s concern and “serious intentions” towards them in such behavior.

To stop building painful relationships, you need to learn to recognize such non-obvious violence. Our body always senses when violence is being used against us. In response to it, we feel fear and anger. These are protective feelings that prompt us to fight or flee.

It is important to learn to trust your feelings and your body. And with its help, recognize when violence is being committed against you.

It is also important to learn how to protect yourself by setting “personal boundaries.” First, you need to clearly understand what is unacceptable for you in a relationship. And under no circumstances should you tolerate it, but talk about it and break off the relationship if your partner continues to violate your boundaries.

Inability to reach an agreement with a partner

Sometimes it is impossible to come to an agreement with a person because he avoids frank conversations and waits for his partner to guess about his desires, emotions and feelings.

Practicing psychologist, creator of self-development marathons and popular blogger Anna Iotko argues that an attempt to distance oneself from a partner without explanation is a manifestation of toxic behavior. She identifies 15 phrases common to typical manipulators in relationships.

In a healthy relationship, two people are interested in each other:

1. Ready to talk openly about feelings and experiences.
2. They do not try to put pressure on their partner with silence.
3. All issues are resolved calmly and openly.

If one partner expects the other to guess the reason for his silence, then this is a very bad relationship. You cannot move from open behavior to hints; no one is obliged to solve the riddles living in our heads.

There is no need to increase your worth by trying to remain silent; it is important to declare your emotions. A woman needs to simply and clearly explain to a man that she misses attention, flowers, intimate conversations over a cup of coffee, walks holding hands and other romantic things.

A man should not think that by remaining silent, he is behaving like a man. Saying that he needs support, acceptance and sympathy is not weakness, but strength and maturity of the individual.

Unable to agree: Pixabay

The culprit of all troubles3

If your partner is aggressive, run. When you hear accusations against you, analyze the adequacy of the claim. Blames you for all imaginable and unimaginable sins - do not give him the opportunity to instill in you a feeling of guilt.

Most often, the stronger half of humanity suffers from this toxic quality. It is quite difficult for them to admit even to themselves that the matter ended in failure only through his fault.

Men who cannot realize themselves in the profession for a very long time blame their wife for this. Like, if it weren’t for you and our seven children, I would now be performing at Eurovision instead of Sergei Lazarev. And so you had to become a plumber to feed your hungry tribe.

If conversations can be ignored, then assault cannot be ignored. A man hits - don’t even think about forgiveness. Domestic violence is like a drug. He tries, feels his own impunity and is drawn into the process.

Regardless of gender, realize the simple truth - you cannot become the culprit of a huge number of human failures. All this is empty chatter and meaningless excuses for one’s own laziness, incompetence and irresponsibility.

Unhealthy Relationships: Transfer of Responsibility

A happy relationship is a lot of work, in which there is also room for constructive conflicts. It is important to remember that in any conflict there are at least two parties involved, and both people bear responsibility for it. Attempts to evade responsibility or shift the blame onto the shoulders of a partner are infantile behavior that is unacceptable in a relationship between two adults.

You shouldn't take on someone else's guilt. If after communicating with a person you are left with a feeling of total guilt, then most likely your partner is manipulating, violating your personal boundaries.

Arguing for the sake of arguing leads nowhere. It is impossible to create a happy family with a person who considers himself always and in everything right.

Olympic race

There should be no place for competition in the relationship between a man and a woman. If people are constantly racing, then they will go the distance allotted to their love much faster than originally intended.

Some women strive to prove to their men that they are a complete unit in a relationship. That is, without the help of a husband they can earn substantial sums, and also dispose of them at their own discretion.

This usually happens if the girl has had an unsuccessful relationship. She could be completely dependent on her ex-man in the material aspect. Or he daily criticized her mental abilities, moving on to the impossibility of female self-realization in the profession.

The problem is that a man rarely wants to tie the knot with his boss. In his woman he wants to see a kind and affectionate life partner, and not a rude, hysterical middle manager.

Women tend to bring into their home all the negativity they receive in the workplace. In a team, she does not want to appear as a mentally unstable person, as this could harm her career advancement and ruin relationships with subordinates. But there is a devoted husband at home, who still earns less than his wife. And then it begins. Instead of a pleasant evening together with a delicious dinner and watching a movie, you start a competition.

Even the most ridiculous arguments are used. You plunge into the abyss of exploits in domestic matters. Who washes the dishes more often? And who won last month in the “I regularly take out the trash” category. By and large, it makes no difference who does what more often. The distribution of responsibilities in the family is best based on the principle of “who has the time and opportunity.” Then there will be no competitive moment. The main thing is that both partners treat this responsibly.

Blackmail and threats

In some couples, relationships are built on passion, constant conflicts, showdowns and threats. People arrange emotional “swings” for each other, in which they feel either unbridled joy and pleasure, or all-consuming melancholy and pain.

Mikhail Labkovsky believes that good sexual compatibility in such a couple is an illusion. The relationship between two neurotics seems frightening from the outside, but for them they themselves turn into the meaning of life.

It is important to remember that if partners continually threaten each other with corporal punishment, a complete break in the relationship, or suicide, then this is a pathological, destructive relationship. It is impossible to create a harmonious union built on fear.

Scientists have proven that this is not love, but an adrenaline addiction that occurs due to constant jumps in the level of hormones in the blood, like on a roller coaster. Such extreme connections will never give you happiness and confidence in the future.

Blackmail and threats: Pixabay

Fear of loneliness and loss

One of the things that motivates people to stay in painful relationships is fear. Firstly, there is the fear of losing a partner. And experience that pain, experience the grief that we usually face when parting with a person who is significant to us.

And secondly, this is the fear of loneliness. Fear that another partner will never be found. Or that for some time after the breakup you will have to be alone in any case until another man appears.

For some people, loneliness is so scary that they find it easier to stay in a painful relationship rather than risk being left without a partner at all.

That is, for their psyche, loss or loneliness seems more dangerous than continuation of a painful relationship.

Health problems

If, when entering into a relationship, a person was happy, healthy and full of hope, and over time began to experience health problems, then this is worth seriously thinking about. Sick relationships not only drain all your strength, but can also seriously undermine your health. The result of such interaction can be:

1. Exacerbation of chronic diseases.
2. Psychological and mental problems.
3. A whole “bouquet” of diseases of internal organs.
4. Skin diseases.
5. Diseases of the genital organs, and even infertility.
6. Development of benign and malignant neoplasms.

To the surprise of medical professionals, positive changes in relationships between partners or parting with a toxic person lead to a significant improvement in well-being, even to complete recovery.

What is a toxic relationship

Psychologist Lillian Glass

Lillian Glass, who coined the term in 1995, defines a toxic relationship as any relationship where people do not support each other, there is
conflict, competition, lack of respect and cohesion, and where one negatively influences the other
.

While all relationships go through hard and easy times, toxic relationships are always unpleasant and drain people to the point where the negatives outweigh and outweigh the positives.

In addition, experts say that toxic relationships cause mental, emotional and perhaps even physical damage to those in them.

Destructive relationships and envy of others' successes

In happy couples, people not only allow each other to develop by providing support to their partner, but also sincerely rejoice at the successes of others. In the unhappy, everything happens exactly the opposite. One partner may tell the other that he is not worthy of the benefits that have fallen on his head.

Criticism can be directed at:

• appearance, gait, general style and image;
• career achievements and creative victories;
• future plans.

A destructive partner can show aggression and say to your face: “You won’t succeed.” To any attempts to understand or object, he will note that this is his personal opinion, he has the right to express it.

In fact, it speaks of banal envy. It is much easier not to grow, but to bring your partner down to your level. Criticism instills doubt in any person, even the most self-confident. It is important to listen to yourself, move towards your goal, despite the murmurs of envious people. It is better to distance yourself from an envious and biased partner.

Affiliate egocentrism5

Why are we starting a family? It is stupid to listen to those who talk only about material comfort, having children and the ease of survival as a couple. In fact, a person always strives to be understood and accepted with all his advantages and disadvantages.

If a wife only talks about herself, her needs and desires, but she is not interested in knowing about her husband’s affairs from the word “at all” - divorce is inevitable. We don’t immediately notice when people stop being interested in our well-being and mood. At first, all this seems normal. We all look for an excuse for our loved one. Today she was probably tired at work. Tomorrow I’m meeting my friend, although I have the only day off a month.

Day by day we tolerate the self-centered narcissist. As time goes by, our mood changes too. How can you love a person who absolutely does not care about you? He is no longer interested in dialogue. He knows less about our lives than his colleagues in the office. The result is a painful break in an equally painful relationship. It is very difficult to break off relations with a narcissist, because he was satisfied with comfortable coexistence with a kind of servant and admirer.

TOP 6 types of sick relationships

Unhealthy relationships can be divided into several types. Although there may be much more of them.

• Dependent - when one of the partners seems to dissolve in the other, thereby “erasing” their own personality.
• One-sided - in this type of relationship, one of the partners is completely fixated on himself.

• Disrespectful is a type of relationship in which the other is perceived as a “human punching bag,” that is, as someone who can be accused of anything. Someone you can shout at, blame, humiliate, someone you want to completely subjugate.
• Competitive - in these relationships there is no love, and everything that is typical for a family union. They provide for endless sparring for superiority in the ring of life.
• Idealized - the basis of these relationships is an invented idealized image of a partner, from the series: “I came up with it myself, fell in love myself, was upset that I turned out to be different.”
• Pathological - such relationships are characterized by the fact that one acts as a tyrant, and the other will always be a victim.

An unhealthy partner's love is insatiable.

This manifests itself not only in the usurpation of your free time. Greed may manifest itself in other ways. For example, the other half endlessly disappears in shopping centers, buying clothes, shoes and trinkets. Constant lunches and dinners in cafes, attending social events are also a sign of neurotic insatiability. Sooner or later, a relationship with such a person will drag you into the abyss of unhealthy consumerism.

How to solve a problem? First, turn off the greedy consumer’s own irrepressible engine. When you realize that you live freely and without shopping and entertainment, try to explain your point of view to your partner.

Presence of addiction

If one of the participants in the relationship has some kind of addiction, then absolutely everything will be tied to this problem. Whether it is a craving for alcohol or, for example, gambling addiction, it is not so important; there are enough complications in both cases. The main thing is that the rejection of one of the partners hinders the development of the entire couple. And here, unlike the previous case, men are more often at risk. This vice, like a tree falling in the middle of the road, does not allow you to move forward. How often do we hear reasoning in the spirit of “oh, if he didn’t drink... and then we would...”. Of course, the situation becomes more complicated when a person does not see a problem in his addiction, but even if he is ready to fight, the disease will not go away in one day. Breakdowns are inevitable. Therefore, something like this happens: the whole family saved up for a vacation, but he drank it all away in one night or lost it.