Everyone has at least one or more toxic trait(s). In a romantic relationship, the adverse effect of these toxic traits is likely to cause physical, mental or psychological harm to the victim. This is why it is important to take note of all warning signs and the toxic traits of your partner in order to avoid falling a victim.
The warning signs
Are you the person in the relationship that often feel like you’re constantly walking on the edge, trying too often to be careful not to get your partner triggered, feeling suffocated or you feel like your partner is constantly trampling on your boundaries? There are high chances that you’re in an unhealthy relationship.
Below are the warning signs of an unhealthy relationship.
1 . Gaslighting
This happens when your partner constantly try to bend your senses of reality, dismisses your reactions towards his/her actions, manipulate your feelings or control your sense of judgements. For instance; your partner purposely triggers you to get angry and when you react or say something about how you feel, he/she accuses you of being too sensitive.
2. Jealousy
Jealousy is attributed to someone who lacks trust for his/partner. If your partner gets extremely jealous when you tend to share your attention to someone else or that he/she does not feel safe with you having someone else close to you. Your partner is likely to get triggered by the assumption that whoever gets close to you is close because the person is either emotionally or sexually attracted to you.
3. Possessiveness
A possessive person is one who always mark territories and claim complete ownership of another person. Possessiveness is an attribute of someone who constantly demand absolute attention and love due to the fear being abandoned. This usually result to anger, fear and sadness.
4. Cheating
A cheating partner is always a lying partner. He/she is seen with other people aside his/her partner. And when you confront them, they’re likely to give excuses that will make you question your adequacies in the relationship. A serial cheating partner do not need any reason at all to cheat on you.
5. Plays victim card
When a person always play the victim of every situation just win your affection, sympathy, attention or generally to win an argument, such person is a chronic manipulator and he/she can easily control your emotions if you fall for it. A victim card player is fond of always action up, exaggerating or guilt trip you to avoid taking responsibilities for his/her actions.
6. Physical violence
This is the clearest sign of an unhealthy relationship. This involves being physically assaulted in the relationship. In worse cases, it result to death. A physically violent partner is often triggered by the slightest form of anger towards his/her victim.
7. Controlling
This is when your partner always feel the urge to be in charge of your mental, physical and emotional affairs. A controlling partner makes all the decisions and have power over all your actions and whenever you attempt to stand a ground for yourself, he/she dismisses your opinions or decisions
8. Sexual abuse
A sexually abused person is one who is often coerced into doing certain sexual activities that he/she does not accept. This also happens in a relationship when sexual intimacy does not happen as a result of consent and mutual agreement. The abused is usually drugged, manipulated, threatened or guilt tripped into accepting the abuser’s sexual desires.
9. Concealment of information
Although, the information that is being kept from you might not necessarily hurt you. It all depend on how much the information concerns you. If your partner habitually conceal certain information that is trivial to your mental, emotional and physical well being, then that is a toxic trait. For instance; you have a partner who is HIV positive and decided to keep the information away from you. You on the other hand only got to find out after you have contact the virus from your partner. This is how toxic it could get for someone to conceal important information.
10. Isolation
This is a situation when your partner attempts to physically seclude you away from your friends, families or everyone else.
A victim of an unhealthy relationship is usually scared, choked up and inferior but despite all the obvious red flags, they still hope that the relationship turn out well. In some other cases, the victims find it difficult to set themselves free either due to the fear of being lonely, threatened or blackmailed.
