He said he would never hurt me. And those are the words we always want to hear, right? When we’re feeling vulnerable and alone, it’s hard to ignore when someone says you’re their whole world, and that they would do anything for you. The flattery and grand gestures somehow make it easier to sweep the uncomfortable moments under the rug.
It’s hard to recognize a toxic pattern when you’re in the throes of it. In my case he’d swept me up so hard that I felt as though he had all the power. I was hooked — addicted, even — to his attention, his touch, and his words of affection.
But when you finally realize what’s happening and that this person is bad news, you learn to read the relationship and trust your intuition. You learn to see the signs so it never, ever, happens again.
Looking back, there were so many red flags that I should never have let slide by. But I did, and I learned the hard way what to avoid.
Here are a few ways to recognize that you or someone you know is in a toxic relationship.
They want you all to themselves.
He waltzed into my life and gave me lots of attention from the start. First red flag? He wanted me all to himself, all the time — and for a while that was everything to me. He was charming, attentive, and confident.
It was nice to feel wanted and I immediately got swept up in it, having just moved to town and started a new job. He had a similar job working for the same company, so I saw him fairly often. Deep down I had a gut feeling that he wasn’t right for me, but I chose to ignore it because I didn’t want to be alone. Funny how the fear of being alone can lead us into the deepest, darkest places.
In the beginning, it can be natural to want to spend all your time with someone you’re falling for — but a problem arises when it becomes a “them or me” situation.
He became clingy and controlling, but I didn’t realize it for months because he continually blamed it on his infatuation with me. He’d claim that he couldn’t help but want to be with me all the time. And if he wasn’t with me, he’d want to know what I was doing.
He’d question me if I didn’t respond to his text messages right away, and if I made plans with anyone else, he wanted to know who it was and if there were going to be other guys there. All the while he’d turn it around and make it seem like he was being rational and I was the one acting defensive, because he was “only being a concerned boyfriend” and I was getting irritated over nothing.
“A partner who insists on being hyper-close and doing everything together — or doesn’t allow you to be by yourself and is constantly monitoring or questioning your whereabouts and intentions — is indicative of a toxic relationship.”
— Gary Lewandowski, professor of psychology
My ex would say things like, “Our relationship is a work in progress” or “We’re not perfect but we are still getting to know each other”, and “Relationships are hard, but we’re worth it”. Out loud I would agree with him, but in reality I was thinking, “okay, but a relationship shouldn’t be this hard, should it?”.
But I continued to let it go because he was there for me, and I didn’t want to upset the peace. I still felt like I needed him.
Your friends don’t like them.
My friends definitely didn’t like him, and this should have been the second red flag. Pretty soon after we started officially dating, they didn’t want to hang out anymore, but at the time I assumed it was just because I was spending so much time in my new relationship.
When my best friend told me hesitantly she thought he wasn’t a good idea, I didn’t want to hear it.
I laughed it off. No big deal, I thought.
Like I said, his attention was addicting, and he made me feel like the most important woman in the world. For a while it felt like a dream. So much so that when he started mentioning things about my friends he didn’t like, I went along with him. Yes, she’s a tad dramatic sometimes, I agreed, yes, he can be a bit annoying, I suppose. Whatever.
All the while these people were the ones who truly had my back.
But once again I didn’t think too much of it and defended him.
When they brought it up, I didn’t give my friends the time of day. I got defensive, and chose to stay with my ex because he had the power to make me feel good.
“Your natural instinct is to try to filter out what they’re saying and react with ‘Don’t tell me what to do’. But before you do that, [she recommends] taking a deep breath and asking them a simple question: ‘Why do you feel that way?’”
— Jane Greer, PhD, author and marriage and family therapist
I didn’t ask them why. I simply dismissed it, thinking that because he said he loved me, of course he cared. Of course he wouldn’t treat me badly.
It took him saying atrocious things behind my back (and those things getting back to me) for me to finally realize he’d never had my best interest in mind. He’d been manipulating me all along, and I’d let that become my normal.
My friends had been right, as I should have known. So take it from someone who nearly burned some very treasured bridges — if your friends don’t like your partner, there’s probably a good reason. You might not be able to see it from within the relationship, but it’s there.
They don’t admit fault and always “play the victim”.
Also called gaslighting. This is a form of emotional abuse in which a person manipulates you into questioning your own thoughts and reactions. In extreme cases they force you to question your own sanity.
My ex would tell me constantly that I was overreacting, that he had no choice but to act that way, that it was never his fault. Everything happened to him, and often he’d twist words to somehow make me feel bad about something he had done.
- “It’s just because I need you so much.”
- “I’m not trying to control you — that’s insane. I’m just making sure you’re safe.”
- “Why don’t you want to see me? You always make me so jealous — you must be with someone else.”
- “Yeah I know I shouldn’t have looked at your phone, but I had to because you wouldn’t tell me who you were talking to. If you had been honest, I wouldn’t have had to look.”
- “You can be mad, but we both know whose fault that really was.”
- “Babe, that’s love. You don’t know because you haven’t had a real relationship before. This is what it means to love someone. I’m just being protective because you’re important to me.”
- “You’re the one who tried to break it off with me. It made me crazy — you can’t blame me for reacting this way. I love you, I can’t let you go.”
- “I don’t get why you say I’m scaring you. That’s insane, you know I would never hurt you. You have to just give us a chance.”
- “Yeah, well, sometimes I want to drive my car off a cliff. That’s how you’re making me feel. I don’t know what I’ll do.”
In a relationship (and in life), everyone makes mistakes. But it’s a huge red flag when your partner can’t admit they were wrong or shouldn’t have said or done something. It’s also a huge red flag when they can admit it — but always blame it on you.
Gaslighting is never healthy, and in a relationship it can be especially damaging. It can range from toxic to downright emotionally and psychologically abusive.
Regardless of how serious it is, anyone who constantly manipulates you into questioning your own thoughts, feelings, and sanity is bad news.
They bring out the worst in you.
On the night before I broke up with him, my department had their annual social event. It was something my coworkers and I looked forward to for months. My ex wasn’t invited because it wasn’t his department, so I figured I wouldn’t see him that night because the party usually went pretty late (and we didn’t live together anyway, so it wasn’t a big deal).
But to him, me being away from him and out with other people, was a big deal.
Long story short, in the span of the next few hours, he sent me seventeen texts, called me ten times, and left me voicemails spewing profanity while at the same time professing his love for me. All because I had asked him to stop texting me and let me have a PG-rated good time with my colleagues (most of whom were in relationships too). He demanded to know when I was coming back, who I would ride with, what exactly was I doing, etc.
This brought out a rage I never knew I had.
When I finally talked to him on the phone, he tossed one insult after another at me, told me he’d been monitoring my texts for weeks and had taken screenshots of texts I’d sent my best friend about guys (from before we were even dating, mind you). Random messages about life and dating that he had somehow taken incredibly personally.
Before that night, I had never in my life full-on screamed at anyone on the phone. I had never yelled insults and cuss words just to hurt someone because they were hurting me. Before him, I had never slammed the car door so hard I thought I’d cracked the window. Before him, I’d never come so close to punching someone in the face or slashing someone’s tires. None of those are me.
And that’s definitely not someone I want to be.
I didn’t know I had that monster inside me until he brought it out. And once it was out, he somehow still seemed to have control over it. It was a long night.
But the point is — if someone who claims to care about you is bringing out the worst feelings you’ve ever had, and making you say and do things you’ve never done before, that is not healthy.
Throughout our relationship I became someone I didn’t even recognize, and that was scary in itself. I’d somehow lost myself in his version of reality, and it was really hard to come back. But I did.
You can, too. Learn to recognize the signs.
It’s one thing to fight with your significant other, it’s another thing entirely to constantly feel like you’re the most negative, aggressive, or depleted version of yourself around them.
Being in a toxic relationship isn’t necessarily the same as being in an abusive one, but it certainly can be. Abuse isn’t always physical. It can come in a lot of different forms, and sometimes it can be really hard to recognize — especially when you’re in the thick of it.
Even though I know I didn’t deserve that treatment, I still feel shame when I look back at all the terrible decisions I made while in that relationship, and the shell of a woman that I became. In my case it went far deeper than him simply being clingy. But the bottom line is that I was able to get the hell out and end it, and that that is never going to happen again.
Unfortunately there are always going to be people in the world who want to manipulate you, control you, and turn you into someone that you’re not. But you can learn to understand the signs of a relationship that is toxic or abusive.
If your partner is controlling, overly judgmental, never takes responsibility for their words or actions, gaslights you, brings out the worst in you, or is someone your friends and family don’t like being around — you might want to examine your relationship.
You deserve someone who will love, trust, and respect you for you, not the version of you that they want to create for themselves.
Because in the end, if they don’t respect you, they don’t deserve you. And if that’s the case, it’s truly their loss.
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This post was previously published on Medium.com.
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