What are the signs of a toxic relationship?

[tea]

How do you know if a relationship is toxic or not? Wether it’s a partner or a friend.

There’s another thread that talks about letting your friend know when you think something might be wrong, but what if you’re the one in the relationship? What kind of things should you look out for? And what can you do if you find yourself in a toxic relationship?

[champagnepapi]

I only have experience with one type of toxic relationship, so I’m going to speak to that. We didn’t really fight but the big arguments we had never seemed to get resolved. We were also quite emotionally codependent. The highs were really high and the lows were quite low, to the point that I felt I would never get out of that cycle. I would urge people to watch out for these more subtle signs that something isn’t quite right.

[tea]

How were you able to move past that relationship @champagnepapi? I’ve been in a few, intimate and non-intimate toxic relationships and it’s always taken someone else to notice something is wrong before I ever ‘woke up’ to what was going on. I found the leaving hard because I was often co-dependant too and lost a sense of self while I was in these relationships. Do you think people normalise fighting in relationships?

[Nurse_Nettie]

Thanks for bringing up this topic @tea. It’s not always easy to recognise the signs of a toxic relationship, especially if you don’t have much to compare it to The Line is a great place to find more information about health vs unhealthy relationships.

[YogiGirl]

Such an important question @tea! I haven’t been in a toxic relationship myself but I think of my experience, anything that brings you down and makes you question yourself is a sign that there might a negative sign. You want the other person to make you feel safe, supported and like the best version of you 🙂

[champagnepapi]

@tea I wouldn’t say we moved past it, it kind of crashed and burned when they cheated on me. So that’s that haha. It took me a while to get over it but I wouldn’t trade the lessons I learned from that relationship for the world. It also put me in a much better position to give advice to my friends on recognising red flags and just overall ensuring that they’re in healthy relationships and being treated well by their partners.

In terms of fighting, I think it’s really important to have constructive arguments and some degree of conflict. I’m a bit skeptical of any couple who manages to go through life without disagreeing at least a little bit. What do you think?

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