Welcome to, or back to Talks with Tia.
Today’s blog is on the signs of a toxic relationship.
It’s the second blog I’m writing about toxic relationships, as I plan to cover different topics within that week by week.
Please check out Part 1 for the introduction, if you haven’t already<3
(Part 2)
What are the signs?
Criticism
Criticism is a sign of a toxic relationship, as it lowers your self esteem and worth.
It creates a sense of insecurity, fear and negativity in the relationship, which obviously makes it toxic or unhealthy.
A couple forms that criticism can take are; constant critiques, putting you down or belittling.
Jealousy
Jealousy is a sign of a toxic relationship. This is because jealousy, leads to negative communication and behaviour in the relationship.
The constant questioning of the other person’s loyalty, leads to a breakdown of communication and trust.
Communication and trust are important for a healthy relationship, as both sides should feel safe talking to each other.
Jealousy comes from a fear of abandonment or rejection. This leads to controlling or emotionally manipulative behaviour.
It is a feeling of possession, yet protection. They feel like they need you, like they own you.
This behaviour is toxic as it degrades your emotional and mental wellbeing. You begin to lose control of yourself and reality.
It can also lead to abusive behaviour.
Abusers can use jealousy as an excuse for their actions. In their mind, they can justify how they’ve acted as you did something wrong.
Passive Aggressive Behaviour
Passive aggressive behaviour is a repeated pattern of indirectly expressing negative emotions towards you, rather than communicating about them.
This is a sign of a toxic relationship, as it causes a negative reaction to your actions/behaviours, causing you to feel insecure.
It reflects your partners communication style, avoidant. This creates an unsafe space to talk openly.
Eventually, it becomes a cycle of confusion and conflict. As you want to address the situation, your partner either avoids or argues. This probably leads to the partner using manipulation to lead back to confusion.
Blaming & Shaming
Blaming and shaming is when your partner blames you or others for their wrongdoing or making you feel guilty about yours or someone’s actions towards you.
This is their way of not being able to take accountability for their actions/ emotions. It also a form of manipulation.
It is used to confuse you, your ideologies and beliefs. It becomes hard to distinguish between what you believe is reality.
Abusive Behaviour
Abusive behaviour is behaviour that affects a persons psychological, physical, emotional, economic or sexual wellbeing.
Abusive behaviour in itself, is a huge topic which I would like to speak more about in detail.
It can take forms of shoving, pushing, yelling etc.
If you, or anyone close to you are being abused. Please speak to someone that you trust, and get help.
There are so many websites, organisations and groups of individuals who can help you escape it and protect you.
Controlling Behaviour
Controlling behaviour is repeated actions or tendencies in order to gain control over you and the relationship.
The need for control comes from insecurity, anxieties, mental health issues/ instability or past relationships and many other reasons.
It comes in forms of isolation, manipulation and intimidation tactics.
Financial control is a form of controlling behaviour. It prevents you from having your own freedom and choice of what you spend it on.
Physical controlling behaviour is another form. This is any physical contact, or manipulation tactics used to prevent you from doing something.
Physical controlling behaviour, or physical abuse is something I would like to explore more into in another blog post. As it’s a massive topic, which many people have had to go through.
Emotionally controlling behaviour, is when a person uses non-physical strategies to control you.
They try to make you feel isolated, less than yourself and unable to tell your emotions from their truth.
Examples of emotional abuse are; threats, insults, humiliation, constant monitoring and dismissiveness.
These sorts of experiences can lead to deep trauma. Feelings of hopelessness, fear, being unloved, can really mess with your sense of self -worth.
But there is help available, and my messages are always open for people that need someone to talk to.
We all deserve a safe space to talk.
Isolation
Isolation is a common factor of toxic relationships.
Toxic partners use isolation techniques to gain more control over you.
They want you to feel as if they are the only person you need. This obviously leads back to the possessiveness, as they feel like you are their property.
They also want you to not have the outside noise. They don’t want people around you to tell you that their actions are wrong, or perhaps to get you to see the bigger picture.
Being in a toxic relationship itself can be very isolating, just for the sake of being in one.
The people around you begin to grow tired of seeing you hurting, seeing the cycle, seeing how they treat you.
Sometimes there is no helping someone, until they realise it themselves that it’s toxic. But, it is still important to do what you can to put them in the right direction but set those boundaries of time for yourself.
But, when the people around you, start dropping off like flies. It can feel very lonely, and that’s when you start to form an attachment to the toxic partner.
As although that person doesn’t treat you nicely, they have still stuck around. Even though, it’s their behaviours and actions who have created this reality for you.
My experiences with toxic relationships
Like I mentioned in the previous blog, I’ve experienced a lot of toxic relationships. Partners, friends, co-workers, bosses, family etc.
A lot of my relationships have been toxic, or ended in a toxic way.
I feel as though it’s important to look at the people around you, and see them for who they really are and their values.
Most of my boyfriends have been toxic.
My first boyfriend, was from school. He was my first heartbreak and it was a traumatic one.
When we first met, everything was very sweet between us. We would just be on call for hours, just constantly all over each other, just absolutely smitten.
Eventually, things started to go wrong between us and we would start to argue daily. These arguments would last for days sometimes.
It started with him just shouting at me, but then eventually progressed to worse. He would throw stuff across the room, throw the tv remote towards me or refuse to talk to me.
After some time of heated arguments, I started noticing that he was hanging out with different types of people.
Types of people, he shouldn’t be mixing with. Types of people, I didn’t want to be mixing with.
Then, there would be girls too. So many girls. Messages, hanging out with them. And when I would confront him, he would make me feel stupid for even bringing it up with him even though he knew it was wrong.
A lot of those girls were my friends too, or past friends of mine. Probably just another way of feeling like he had the power.
It got to a point, where things got so bad for me in my personal life and our relationship where he just fell out love with me.
He broke up with me, did some unspeakable things with different girls when we broke up.
Then, once he had a new girlfriend, let me into his house to collect my things. We got talking, and he told me about how much he missed me, how sorry he was.
He made a move on me, and at the time I wasn’t aware he had a girlfriend. But I still didn’t want to kiss him.
After that day, hell broke loose in school, with me, him, his girlfriend and everyone else involved. He eventually got what he deserved for doing it. But, came straight back to me.
And at that point, I thought that’s what love was and I wasn’t prepared to give that up, so I tried again. But that time, I was a different version of myself.
A version of myself, which was more toxic and similar to him. I had started smoking and just completely changed as a person.
I tried to make it work again, but obviously a cheetah never changes its spots. The same scenarios of girls, friends of mine, the arguments etc.
It got to one time, where I got a call from his best friend to break up with me because he had kissed another girl.
I had heard that he had fingered another one of my old friends in the same room as my best friend at the time.
When I confronted him about it, he harmed himself and showed me that he did it.
After all of the stuff that we went through together, eventually it fizzed out into something much worse.
It began with one of our arguments lead to him, forcing me to watch an autopsy. And I have a severe fear of blood, surgery or anything gory.
After that, we fought and broke up and run the cycle until he found a new girlfriend.
Then, him and his friends started bullying me at school and online until I built up the courage to retaliate.
I finally had enough of how they controlled and dictated my school life and life in general. I couldn’t escape their nastiness.
I would come into school, miss lessons, cry for hours, eat in the bathroom alone. I would go home, harm myself, be alone in my room and cry myself to sleep.
Not only did I have to deal with, their bullying, but the fact I had lost someone so special to me and seeing them love someone else.
They wanted me to hate my life, and for a while I did. Until I grew stronger, probably with the help of my friends and people around me.
I’ve dealt with this battle a lot in future relationships. This constant cycle, the way they make you feel like you as a person are insignificant.
I feel as though, we as women, or men need to share our experiences with other people. I think talking is the best way to get people to understand it, know what to do when they’re in one and to help those in them, feel a lot less alone.
The more education, we teach ourselves to not tolerate toxic behaviours and relationships, hopefully the less it will happen.
I obviously understand that these situations and things will always happen, as violence and abuse continue to happen everyday.
That’s why with the right community, support and education we can help people get through these difficult times.
Talks With Tia Xox
I hope you found this blog post helpful or informative.
My goal with these blogs is to spread as much awareness, love and support to people that need it.
If you have any questions, comments or suggestions about this blog or anything I’ve spoken about. Please leave a comment, or send me a dm on my social media handles.
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