My all-time most popular post on PT is about 50 signs of a healthy relationship.
Today, we cover the flipside - warning signs of a toxic relationship. While many relationships may display one or two of these signs, toxic relationships will often feature a lot of these alarm bells.
Where I've written "your partner" read it as it as "you or your partner".
Relationship Warning Signs
1. Cheating.
2. The other “C” word…. Crazy. If you call each other crazy during arguments, it’s a pretty bad sign. It shows you’re not willing to listen to the other person’s point of view because you’re just writing it off as irrational.
3. Your partner actively tries to cut you off from your support network e.g., your friends and family.
4. You never turn to each other for emotional support. You always turn to other people first.
5. Your partner implies that you are dumb or stupid, and they are the “smart one” in the relationship. For example, they might dissuade you from trying something because “you probably won’t understand it.”
6. Your partner doesn’t ever respect your answer when you say “No” to something.
7. Your partner implies you’re only good for one thing e.g., you’re only attractive or only good at earning money.
8. You can’t identify any ways you’ve positively influenced each other. For example, you haven’t adopted any of each other’s interests, or learnt any new skills from each other.
9. You can identify many ways your partner has negatively influenced you (or vice versa), particularly habits that harm your health like drugs, sloth, smoking and heavy drinking.
10. Your partner doesn’t make you feel good about your body e.g., they point out your saggy underarm skin.
11. You don’t have a sense of relationship security - you’ve broken up or almost broken up numerous times.
12. You end up doing things you’re ashamed of in the course of interacting with each other e.g., screaming at each other in front of your kids.
13. Your partner is dismissive of your emotions when you say you’re scared e.g., drives too fast or erratically and won’t slow down when you say say it’s scaring you.
14. Your partner involves you in unethical or illegal activities e.g., lying on forms you both sign.
15. You feel worse about yourself as a person than when you started the relationship - you’re less confident and can see fewer positive qualities about yourself.
16. You don’t have a sense of being able to get your partner’s attention when you want to talk about something. For example, their head is always so wrapped up in work, they’re not interested in talking about anything else.
17. Your partner mocks you e.g., takes off your voice or facial expressions in a mean way.
18. Your partner doesn’t seem interested when you experience successes, or belittles your successes.
19. You don’t have a sense of being able to confide in your partner. If you reveal something that you’re sensitive about, you’re not sure if they’ll react respectfully or helpfully.
20. Your partner makes jokes about leaving you in the future e.g., “I might’ve traded you in for a younger model by then.”
21. When you’re not physically together - it feels like “out of sight, out of mind.” For example, your partner is on an international trip and tells you they’ll call when they’ve arrived safely at their hotel, but doesn’t follow through.
22. When you and your partner disagree, your partner says either do it my way or leave. It’s their way or the highway. You don’t have a sense that where you disagree you’ll find a way of coming together.
23. You’re not sure how dependable, supportive, or reliable your partner would be in a situation in which you really needed them. For example, if you or a close family member got cancer.
24. You blame your partner for why your life isn’t as satisfying as you’d like it to be (or your partner blames you for this.)
25. Your partner is dismissive when it comes to your interests and projects. They judge the things you do by how important they perceive them to be, rather than how important they are to you.
26. Stonewalling - you or your partner flat out refuse to talk about important relationship topics, such as the decision to have a baby.
27. You don’t think your partner would make a good parent.
28. There are times you avoid coming home because going to a bar or Starbucks is more relaxing after a stressful day than coming home to your partner.
28. Your life together seems out of control. For example, you both spend much more than you earn.
29. You can’t think of any ways in which you and your partner make a great team.
30. Your partner is the source of negative surprises e.g., large unexpected charges on your credit card.
31. You catch your partner lying repeatedly.
32. Your partner goes out and doesn’t tell you where they are going, or fails to arrive home when expected and has no explanation.
33. You worry that your partner might do something terrible e.g., you worry they could get so angry they’d hurt you.
34. You have a sense of being trapped in the relationship.
35. When you argue, one or both of you always just gets defensive. You can never acknowledge that the other person has some valid points.
36. When you argue, you tend to just blame each other rather than each personally accepting some blame.
37. You’re very critical of each other. You feel constantly nitpicked about the ways you’re not “good enough”/
38. Your partner bad mouths or complains about you to their friends.
39. You find yourself lying to other people because you’re ashamed of your partner’s behavior e.g., making excuses for why they haven’t shown up to an event as planned.
40. You feel lonely when you’re together.
41. If you had to rate your partner on a scale of 1-10 in terms of qualities like warmth, trustworthiness, and dependability you would rate your partner less than 5.
42. You can’t recall a time when your partner has compromised so that you could take up an opportunity.
43. There is an absence of affection in your relationship e.g., you don’t kiss, touch, or smile at each other.
44. Your partner is coercive when it comes to sex.
45. Your partner sees themselves as having a much higher "mate value" than you. They think you're lucky to have them, but not the reverse.
46. Your partner keeps you at arms length emotionally. You don't have a healthy sense of interdependence.
47. Your partner frequently makes unfavorable comparisons between you and other people e.g., Brian's wife is so much more fun than you.
48. When you argue, it quickly esculates to threats e.g., if you don't..., I'll...
49. You can think of several friends or colleagues who you'd rather be in a relaitonship with.
50. Relationship violence.
Purchase my book
Notes
This post was influenced by various scientific models of relationships, including work on Emotion Focused Therapy, Gottman Therapy, and Garth Fletcher's Ideal Standards Model. Photos used with permission under CC Zero license.
