TOXIC RELATIONSHIP

Toxic Relationship contaminates your self-esteem, your happiness and the way you see yourself and the world. A toxic person will float through life with a trail of broken hearts, broken relationships and broken people behind them, but toxic relationships don't necessarily end up that way because the person you fell for turned out to be a toxic one. Relationships can start healthy, but bad feelings, bad history, or long-term unmet needs can fester, polluting the relationship and changing the people in it. It can happen easily and quickly, and it can happen to the strongest people.

A toxic relationship is any relationship that is unfavorable to you or others. The foundations of any relationship, healthy or not, are most commonly established upon mutual admiration and respect, but can, in time, become remarkably unhealthy. It is the poisonous atmosphere that distinguishes a merely bad or troublesome relationship from a toxic relationship. Toxic relationships can prevent those involved from living a productive and healthy life. Well don't just take my words for it;

Dr. Lillian Glass, a Californian based communication and psychology expert who says she coined the term in her 1995 book Toxic People, defines a toxic relationship as "any relationship [between people who] don't support each other, where there's conflict and one seeks to undermine the other, where there's competition, where there's disrespect and a lack of cohesiveness."

While every relationship goes through ups and downs, Dr. Glass says a toxic relationship is consistently unpleasant and draining for the people in it, to the point that negative moments outweigh and outnumber the positive ones.

Dr. Kristen Fuller, a Californian based family medicine physician who specializes in mental health, adds that toxic relationships are mentally, emotionally and possibly even physically damaging to one or both participants. And these relationships don't have to be romantic: Glass says friendly, familial and professional relationships can all be toxic as well.

One thing to keep in mind is that, when I say you are in a toxic relationship you are either a victim or you are the toxic partner in that particular relationship, which may either, be intentional or unintentional.

"no one has to feel more entitled than the other" when one person starts to take things for granted and feel more entitled than other one, the poison starts to spread in a relationship, lack of respect to each other or lack of respect toward the relationship itself will, constantly lead to a toxic relationship.

One thing you have to understand is that no relationship is ever going to be perfect, even the healthiest relationships have ups and downs, and bad enough there comes sometimes in a relationship when either of the partners or both looses touch. During these times even the fun things you use to do together sounds retarded and not fun anymore, or in other cases things starts to look ordinary and you get used to the situation.

When this happen the partners has to figure out how to spice and switch things to give a relationship its taste again. This has to be done by both partners it is not one partner's job to spice the relationship up.

However some people in a relationship will consistently undermine and cause harm to their partners, sometimes through lies, abuse, fake promises, carelessness, abuse of trust, selfishness, ego, unreliability and in most cases cheating (in romantic relationships).

People who consistently undermine or cause harm to a partner, whether intentionally or not often have a reason for their behavior, even if it's subconscious. Maybe they were in a toxic relationship, either romantically or as a child. Maybe they didn't have the most supportive, loving upbringing, or sometimes they just lost the taste of the relationship they are in and they don't know how to work it out. They could have been bullied in school. They could be suffering from a non-diagnosed mental health disorder, such as depression or anxiety or bipolar disorder, an eating disorder, any form of trauma. In other cases some people just can't stay in a healthy relationship for long they get bored, however weird this may sound it happens to some people when there is nothing more to spice up the relationship.

To sum it up, there are a million of factors which may drive any healthy relationship into a toxic and unhealthy one; Lack of respect (to a partner and to a relationship), despising and ignoring other persons feelings and emotions, consistently harming and hurting other person or each other, not making any effort to develop and improve the relationship, series of unstopping conflicts and misunderstanding, repetition of same mistake and wrongs, lack of active communication between partners in a relationship, Abuse (mental or physical), obsession and unlimited control of fellow partner, abuse of trust, demise chemistry, ego issues, etc.

However some relationships are toxic from the beginning, this may be caused by several issues; either being in a relationship with someone who doesn't want to be in the same relationship, being in one sided relationship, hidden agendas (money chase, material needs), unfaithfulness.

Some relationships results from mutual agreement while others occurs naturally i.e. family relationships. Relationships which occur as a result of mutual agreement may have what we call Consideration which acts as a benefit which the parties to that particular relationship gains. In such circumstance when the so-called consideration demises that particular relationship loses its taste and is more likely to be toxic.

Does this sound familiar? You're in a relationship with someone who's just plain bad for you. You fight all the time, you're constantly complaining about each other, and your friends and family members can't stand them. But every time you think about breaking up (and you think about it a lot), you just can't bring yourself to do it, because it just seems like more effort to leave than to stay.

In most cases having doubts and thinking that you are in a toxic relationship, is the first and foremost sign. In very few cases would someone be in a toxic relationship and not realize. To be honest most of the time someone who is in a toxic relationship would in one way or another notice it, however finds it hard to quit for a number of reasons, I will elaborate more about this later.

Constant misunderstandings and conflict; having conflicts and misunderstandings is part of any relationship, and doesn't exactly mean that the relationship is a toxic one. But if the conflict and misunderstanding happens most of the time, with constant arguments which doesn't end with any resolution, then that's the train.