If toxic people were an ingestible substance, they would come with a high-powered warning and secure packaging to prevent any chance of accidental contact. Sadly, families are not immune to the poisonous lashings of a toxic relationship.
Though families and relationships can feel impossibly tough at times, they were never meant to ruin. All relationships have their flaws and none of them come packaged with the permanent glow of sunlight and goodness and beautiful things. In any normal relationship there will be fights from time to time. Things will be said and done and forgiven, and occasionally rehashed at strategic moments. For the most part though, they will feel nurturing and life-giving to be in. At the very least, they won’t hurt.
Why do toxic people do toxic things?
Toxic people thrive on control. Not the loving, healthy control that tries to keep everyone safe and happy – buckle your seatbelt, be kind, wear sunscreen – but the type that keeps people small and diminished.
Everything they do is to keep people small and manageable. This will play out through criticism, judgement, oppression – whatever it takes to keep someone in their place. The more you try to step out of ‘your place’, the more a toxic person will call on toxic behaviour to bring you back and squash you into the tiny box they believe you belong in.
It is likely that toxic people learned their behaviour during their own childhood, either by being exposed to the toxic behaviour of others or by being overpraised without being taught the key quality of empathy. In any toxic relationship there will be other qualities missing too, such as respect, kindness and compassion, but at the heart of a toxic person’s behaviour is the lack of concern around their impact on others. They come with a critical failure to see past their own needs and wants.
Toxic people have a way of choosing open, kind people with beautiful, lavish hearts because these are the ones who will be more likely to fight for the relationship and less likely to abandon.
Even the strongest people can find themselves in a toxic relationship but the longer they stay, the more they are likely to evolve into someone who is a smaller, less confident, more wounded version of the person they used to be.
Non-toxic people who stay in a toxic relationship will never stop trying to make the relationship better, and toxic people know this. They count on it. Non-toxic people will strive to make the relationship work and when they do, the toxic person has exactly what he or she wants – control.
Toxic Families – A Special Kind of Toxic
Families are a witness to our lives – our best, our worst, our catastrophes, our frailties and flaws. All families come with lessons that we need to learn along the way to being a decent, thriving human. The lessons begin early and they don’t stop, but not everything a family teaches will come with an afterglow. Sometimes the lessons they teach are deeply painful ones that shudder against our core.
Rather than being lessons on how to love and safely open up to the world, the lessons some families teach are about closing down, staying small and burying needs – but for every disempowering lesson, there is one of empowerment, strength and growth that exists with it. In toxic families, these are around how to walk away from the ones we love, how to let go with strength and love, and how to let go of guilt and any fantasy that things could ever be different. And here’s the rub – the pain of a toxic relationship won’t soften until the lesson has been learned.
Love and loyalty don’t always exist together.
Love has a fierce way of keeping us tied to people who wound us. The problem with family is that we grow up in the fold, believing that the way they do things is the way the world works. We trust them, listen to them and absorb what they say. There would have been a time for all of us that regardless of how mind-blowingly destructive the messages from our family were, we would have received them all with a beautiful, wide-eyed innocence, grabbing every detail and letting them shape who we were growing up to be.
Our survival would have once depended on believing in everything they said and did, and resisting the need to challenge or question that we might deserve better. The things we believe when we are young are powerful. They fix themselves upon us and they stay, at least until we realise one day how wrong and small-hearted those messages have been.
At some point, the environment changes – we grow up – but our beliefs don’t always change with it. We stop depending on our family for survival but we hang on to the belief that we have to stay connected and loyal, even though being with them hurts.
The obligation to love and stay loyal to a family member can be immense, but love and loyalty are two separate things and they don’t always belong together.
Loyalty can be a confusing, loaded term and is often the reason that people stay stuck in toxic relationships. What you need to know is this: When loyalty comes with a diminishing of the self, it’s not loyalty, it’s submission.
We stop having to answer to family when we become adults and capable of our own minds.
Why are toxic relationships so destructive?
In any healthy relationship, love is circular – when you give love, it comes back. When what comes back is scrappy, stingy intent under the guise of love, it will eventually leave you small and depleted, which falls wildly, terrifyingly short of where anyone is meant to be.
Healthy people welcome the support and growth of the people they love, even if it means having to change a little to accommodate. When one person in a system changes, whether it’s a relationship of two or a family of many, it can be challenging. Even the strongest and most loving relationships can be touched by feelings of jealousy, inadequacy and insecurity at times in response to somebody’s growth or happiness. We are all vulnerable to feeling the very normal, messy emotions that come with being human.
The difference is that healthy families and relationships will work through the tough stuff. Unhealthy ones will blame, manipulate and lie – whatever they have to do to return things to the way they’ve always been, with the toxic person in control.
Why a Toxic Relationship Will never change.
Reasonable people, however strong and independently minded they are, can easily be drawn into thinking that if they could find the switch, do less, do more, manage it, tweak it, that the relationship will be okay. The cold truth is that if anything was going to be different it would have happened by now.
Toxic people can change, but it’s highly unlikely. What is certain is that nothing anyone else does can change them. It is likely there will be broken people, broken hearts and broken relationships around them – but the carnage will always be explained away as someone else’s fault. There will be no remorse, regret or insight. What is more likely is that any broken relationship will amplify their toxic behaviour.
Why are toxic people so hard to leave?
If you try to leave a toxic person, things might get worse before they get better – but they will always get better. Always.
Few things will ramp up feelings of insecurity or a need for control more than when someone questions familiar, old behaviour, or tries to break away from old, established patterns in a relationship. For a person whose signature moves involve manipulation, lies, criticism or any other toxic behaviour, when something feels as though it’s changing, they will use even more of their typical toxic behaviour to bring the relationship (or the person) back to a state that feels acceptable.
When things don’t seem to be working, people will always do more of what used to work, even if that behaviour is at the heart of the problem. It’s what we all do. If you are someone who is naturally open and giving, when things don’t feel right in a relationship you will likely give more of yourself, offer more support, be more loving, to get things back on track.
Breaking away from a toxic relationship can feel like tearing at barbed wire with bare hands. The more you do it, the more it hurts, so for a while, you stop tearing, until you realise that it’s not the tearing that hurts, it’s the barbed wire – the relationship – and whether you tear at it or not, it won’t stop cutting into you.
Think of it like this. Imagine that all relationships and families occupy a space. In healthy ones, the shape of that space will be fluid and open to change, with a lot of space for people to grow. People will move to accommodate the growth and flight of each other.
For a toxic family or a toxic relationship, that shape is rigid and unyielding. There is no flexibility, no bending, and no room for growth. Everyone has a clearly defined space and for some, that space will be small and heavily boxed. When one person starts to break out of the shape, the whole family feels their own individual sections change. The shape might wobble and things might feel vulnerable, weakened or scary. This is normal, but toxic people will do whatever it takes to restore the space to the way it was. Often, that will mean crumpling the ones who are changing so they fit their space again.
Sometimes out of a sense of love and terribly misplaced loyalty, people caught in a toxic relationship might sacrifice growth and change and step back into the rigid tiny space a toxic person manipulates them towards. It will be clear when this has happened because of the soul-sucking grief at being back there in the mess with people (or person) who feel so bad to be with.
But they do it because they love me. They said so.
Sometimes toxic people will hide behind the defence that they are doing what they do because they love you, or that what they do is ‘no big deal’ and that you’re the one causing the trouble because you’re just too sensitive, too serious, too – weak, stupid, useless, needy, insecure, jealous – too ‘whatever’ to get it. You will have heard the word plenty of times before.
The only truth you need to know is this: If it hurts, it’s hurtful. Fullstop.
Love never holds people back from growing. It doesn’t diminish, and it doesn’t contaminate. If someone loves you, it feels like love. It feels supportive and nurturing and life-giving. If it doesn’t do this, it’s not love. It’s self-serving crap designed to keep you tethered and bound to someone else’s idea of how you should be.
There is no such thing as a perfect relationship, but a healthy one is a tolerant, loving, accepting, responsive one.
The one truth that matters.
If it feels like growth or something that will nourish you, follow that. It might mean walking away from people you care about – parents, sisters, brothers, friends – but this can be done with love and the door left open for when they are able to meet you closer to your terms – ones that don’t break you.
Set the boundaries with grace and love and leave it to the toxic person to decide which side of that boundary they want to stand on. Boundaries aren’t about spite or manipulation and they don’t have to be about ending the relationship. They are something drawn in strength and courage to let people see with great clarity where the doorway is to you. If the relationship ends, it’s not because of your lack of love or loyalty, but because the toxic person chose not to treat you in the way you deserve. Their choice.
Though it is up to you to decide the conditions on which you will let someone close to you, whether or not somebody wants to be close to you enough to respect those conditions is up to them. The choice to trample over what you need means they are choosing not to be with you. It doesn’t mean you are excluding them from your life.
Toxic people also have their conditions of relationship and though they might not be explicit, they are likely to include an expectation that you will tolerate ridicule, judgement, criticism, oppression, lying, manipulation – whatever they do. No relationship is worth that and it is always okay to say ‘no’ to anything that diminishes you.
The world and those who genuinely love you want you to be as whole as you can be. Sometimes choosing health and wholeness means stepping bravely away from that which would see your spirit broken and malnourished.
When you were young and vulnerable and dependent for survival on the adults in your life, you had no say in the conditions on which you let people close to you. But your life isn’t like that now. You get to say. You get to choose the terms of your relationships and the people you get close to.
There is absolutely no obligation to choose people who are toxic just because they are family. If they are toxic, the simple truth is that they have not chosen you. The version of you that they have chosen is the one that is less than the person you would be without them.
The growth.
Walking away from a toxic relationship isn’t easy, but it is always brave and always strong. It is always okay. And it is always – always – worth it. This is the learning and the growth that is hidden in the toxic mess.
Letting go will likely come with guilt, anger and grief for the family or person you thought you had. They might fight harder for you to stay. They will probably be crueller, more manipulative and more toxic than ever. They will do what they’ve always done because it has always worked. Keep moving forward and let every hurtful, small-hearted thing they say or do fuel your step.
You can’t pretend toxic behaviour away or love it away or eat it, drink it, smoke it, depress it or gamble it away. You can’t avoid the impact by being smaller, by crouching or bending or flexing around it. But you can walk away from it – so far away that the most guided toxic fuelled missile that’s thrown at you won’t find you.
One day they might catch up to you – not catch you, catch up to you – with their growth and their healing but until then, choose your own health and happiness over their need to control you.
You can love people, let go of them and keep the door open on your terms, for whenever they are ready to treat you with love, respect and kindness. This is one of the hardest lessons but one of the most life-giving and courageous ones.
Sometimes there are not two sides. There is only one. Toxic people will have you believing that the one truthful side is theirs. It’s not. It never was. Don’t believe their highly diseased, stingy version of love. It’s been drawing your breath, suffocating you and it will slowly kill you if you let it, and the way you ‘let it’ is by standing still while it spirals around you, takes aim and shoots.
If you want to stay, that’s completely okay, but see their toxic behaviour for what it is – a desperate attempt to keep you little and controlled. Be bigger, stronger, braver than anything that would lessen you. Be authentic and real and give yourself whatever you need to let that be. Be her. Be him. Be whoever you can be if the small minds and tiny hearts of others couldn’t stop you.
[irp posts=”1602″ name=”When It’s Not You, It’s Them: The Toxic People That Ruin Friendships, Families, Relationships”]
Karen… Thank you… thank you… thank you… for writing and sharing what I receive as a heart-centered, loving, truthful, and empowering message. In all the difficult moments and the feelings which flow from realizing one is in close relationship with someone who’s traumatized so deeply that they cling to defenses for too long. I’ve navigated ending my marriage with my wife whom I love so deeply. Yet, she has chosen (or not chosen, if there’s an undiagnosed mental health issue contributing) clear patterns of unhealthy and abusive behaviors towards me. I’m aware of and empathize with the pain I sense she lives with in her own being. I’ve needed to learn that even in the truth of all the dynamics, what you’ve said about what love looks like is absolutely true. This is one of the most insightful, true, and caring articles I’ve read regarding toxic relationships and choices we make. The therapist I worked with told me, “staying is a form of consent.” It took me acknowledging and owning that for myself to realize my attempts were coming to an end… I didn’t consent, intellectually. Yet, in truth, I consented emotionally and physically nearly every day I stayed. Freedom to be who are in our more whole selves matters. Your insights and writings support that freedom. Much respect.
My wife is so toxic that her mother called me out of the blue one day to apologize that her daughters don’t have any empathy. I think that they are all toxic, mother and daughters. I’ve seen them gang up on a child before (my child – I’ve seen them blatantly lie to manipulate their own family to then say, “little white lies don’t matter” as if its a justification.
I still love her but know 100% that our relationship has already failed. If we didn’t have children their is not a chance in the world that we’d still be together and we both know it to be a fact.
I am not going anywhere. The stats on young men raised by their mothers are what they are and I will not curse my sons with that shit. The only way it ends is if she leaves this time. I’ve already left once and she manipulated her way back in. I am here to raise my sons. I just need to not let her behavior trigger me and things will be fine…
You’re right you know, I know this type of behaviour. They tell you you’re the crazy one when in fact we are the normal ones. They lie and make us feel bad, and they can because we are good people and they are not unfortunately.
I loved her – still do – but when it ended suddenly over a stupid argument where she questioned how I pronounced someone’s name, I felt such relief somehow. I looked back in my diaries, which I never normally reread, and found this background criticism there almost all through the 10 years we have been together. I am left feeling so stupid and so full of a lack of self-respect that I wonder how it was that I stayed this long. I am angry, not with her, but with myself, and I don’t really understand why I stayed.
However, even now as we start to talk a little about the truth of what happened between us, and she has listened for the very first time without a reflective attacking defense to me telling her how vulnerable and diminished I felt, my instinct was to go and comfort her. I had a really strong feeling that she needed help to understand where the negativity comes from. But, with some reflection later, I know, as is said here, that she will never change and that this drip-drip quiet belittling criticism is somehow baked in. So even though this is really upsetting and painful, I need to see it to the other side and accept being alone as the prize of being free.
Hi all
I think I am toxic and am in now therapy .i want to manage my emotions better . I want to apologise for my behaviour on last day of our relationship .
He decided to leave and get a break mid dinner. He would stay away 2-3 days. He had been doing this every week. He would lie where he was going and said he had right to keep things private .
On final night I realised I had to end the relationship . I begged to be let in ,lot where he was. He has again lied where he was . I then ranted at him about all the things I found hard which was meant with indifference . He called the police.
Our relationship hurt me
In the second year I found about 2 affairs in first year . I lost trust and he would get mad if I was questioning saying I was using the affairs to criticise him. . If I tend to say a need it was met with dismissiveness I will go over and over the need trying to explain it till it becomes an arguement. My partner believed I liked to argue and wanted to just be happy and ignore the issues .he is a salesman and would go away and forget his charger so couldn’t call as phone flat but wouldn’t face time etc. I became a clingon .
He says is I abused his kids and I never did. He’s saying I was completely crazy but I have close family and many long term friends and I’m not crazy in any other relationship
I spent every event on him and his wants for his man cave in the hole that it would get a connection and he then said it was all blackmail .
We have been no contact 4 weeks except a few texts re the house
Anyway I am working on my issues and regulation but I’d like to say sorry , not to get back together but because I wasn’t true to my values
Should I or just let it be
I’m definitely in a toxic relationship and it feels like it’s too late. I’m broken and hurt and he has shit on me that I can never live down, but I don’t know if it’ll be any better than him holding it over my head for the rest of my life.
It would be better to be alone than with someone who will hold your mistakes over your head the rest of your life. There’s a chance you’ll meet someone who will accept you for your faults, live, learn, and love each other in a way that’s meaningful and productive for both of you. But you’ll never get that chance if you stay in a toxic relationship.
I’ve just come out of a toxic on off 20 year relationship . over the years i have had lying stealing, manipulation , controlling ways, gaslighting stonewalling , showing no signs of empathy ,.i brought up her 4 year old son for 20 years who called me dad, i no longer have any relationship with him due to him now turning against me and blaming me for everything, she has never once taken any responsibility , i was away form her for 10 months she came to me saying sorry for how she treated me and she loved and missed me , then after going back and her being the same way again for months , i leave again for me to beg her to take me back, i left 3 months ago, again i left due to my feelings being ignored , i again begged her to take me back, in between this time after 7 weeks she has now met someone new , makes me sick how she moves on without any care in the world and I’m like used toilet paper, i am now having counselling for the second time . hopefully will get better for me soon, i still reckon she will contact me in the future when no doubt her new relationship will fail , but i have blocked her now and never want to cross her path again
Hi, I’m so sorry you’ve been through all of this. I can really relate, only I’ve been through it with 2 men, ex’s, both narcissists. I’m so glad that you blocked her. It’s really difficult, too, if you still love them. I remember reading that a relationship should be effortless. There will be times of arguments, etc, but things will be resolved quickly because both love each other so much, they don’t want to cause the other one any pain. I never had this. I’m so glad you’re going to counseling. That is a great gift you’re giving yourself. I can tell you’re a great guy. Praying that you’ll heal and find a lady who will treat you right. You deserve that!
Thank you. This is the first best thing I’ve come across in the subject. I will be rereading it again & again
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I am so thankful I found this. In the process of leaving a toxic partner. Afraid to go to sleep in case my resolve has diminished on awakening 😑
My husband I believe is very toxic just like his mother is. He won’t stop with the drugs. His mother also does them and pretty much anyone they know and associate with does them. It’s so hard to walk away though. They are living in a tent (as far as I know)… He hasn’t had a home for us in 6 and a half years now. He told me last night he may go back to his dad’s which is 2 hours away from me. We should be together 13 and a half years and our 10 year wedding anniversary was on the 5th. These drugs have destroyed everything. Everyone else still has the life and the family and spouses they have had
Is it possible to be partially in love & feel scared of your partner if he threatens you at the same time?
That’s how I feel right now.
I am in a relationship with a so-called “psychopath” & am not sure if I should cut him out of my life altogether & move on or try & make up with him & start afresh. Everyone I’ve spoken to about how he treats me reckons I should leave & bluntly cut him straight out of my life, but it’s not that simple as I still have feelings for him. He doesn’t live with me which is good, however, we did trial a living arrangement for 3 months, but it didn’t work out, so he is back living with his elderly mum. When he was living under my roof, it was I who did everything for him – washing, ironing, cleaning, prepping meals etc because that’s what he was used to as he had always been married up until he was arrested & charged for stalking & attempted murder of his estranged wife back in October 2015.
He is also currently serving a parole period up until April 2025.
I’m quite certain he also has narcisstic traits because on one occasion he told me that “he was right & I was wrong”. Didn’t do much for my self esteem except put me down & make me feel awkward & small.
He is also very intelligent, smart & surprisingly fit for his age of 65. It shocked me one day when he told me he could pick up on people’s body language & could tell straight away what sort of mood that person was in. This really concerned me & made me more aware of my emotions.
We aren’t talking at the moment due to a failure in communication. He was supposed to pick me up from my place & take me out for my birthday tea. However, because he failed to read a text message I’d sent earlier in the day saying that I would meet up with him at the restaurant in town, he failed to read the text, so then he rang me later that day to say that he was out at my place & wondering where I was. I told him I was already in town & I would either drive back home so we could go in together or I meet him there. He reacted nastily by saying, “no, I don’t think I’ll bother with tonight, hoo-roo” & that’s the last conversation we had. I haven’t had so much as an apology in the form of a text or phone call from him since. Seems to me like I have to say sorry to him when I know full well I haven’t done anything wrong. I’m assuming he had a shit of a day at work & decided to take it out on me.
He’s also a social butterfly (extrovert) & can’t help but get himself to parties & other social gatherings & meetings, whereas I’m the opposite (introvert). I’ve noticed that when we go somewhere where there’s people gathered, he gets up to talk to others & leaves me alone to basically fend for myself. Apparently, he used to treat his ex-wife the same (she was an introvert too). My social skills aren’t that great & I do find social interaction with others quite daunting & challenging due to my upbringing. However, he automatically thinks that I need to come out of my shell, so by taking me out to meet other people will assist me with this issue, but it’s not that easy for me. When no-one pays any attention to me, I simply get up from my chair & head outside so I can ring someone I know to talk to. Then he wonders why I take off & get emotional because he doesn’t care enough to ask me what’s wrong. What sort of a bloke treats his girl like that? A very disrespectful one who doesn’t care about her feelings!
His mum told me a while back that he only thinks of himself. I didn’t believe this until a few weeks into the relationship that I noticed this trait & that’s when I picked up on the upkeep of his appearance (constantly inspecting &/or picking at his fingers) & impeccable clothing. Typical narcissistic behaviour that nobody should have to put up with, no matter what sort of relationship either sex is in.
I have just been advised by a close aquaintance that I should not be in the relationship, so as of a few minutes ago I have just sent a text to my ex’s phone telling him to come & collect his stuff out of my shed & I’m through with him. No response as yet.
It’s scary knowing that I’ve just spent the past 12 months in a relationship which I was fearful for my life.
I have been married to my husband for less than a year, together for nearly 2 years. During our relationship we was verbally and physically abusive to me, chocked me, punched me, destroyed me property. Over the last year at least once a month, constantly accusing me of cheating and bringing up my past. I was always apologizing and going back to him. I ignored my friends and family stopped talking to everyone. I believed in being loyal to this man against everything. In January I was pregnant I lost the baby in March, would have been my first child I was excited. a month later he beat the hell out of me I stayed. I was no angle I said nasty things back to defend myself started to become break things around the house I was changing. Constantly depressed and sad, lost my sense but I wanted to make my marriage work.
Then there was a rumor that his ex girlfriend was pregnant and it was his child. He swore up and down it was not, refuses to take a DNA test. Claims she is trying to ruin his life, his father is claiming the child as his grandchild. The police showed up at our house with a warrant to arrest him. I have no idea what the outcome of that situation is. I feel bad but I left I drove 3 states away from him to get away. I cry every night it’s only been 3 days. Did I do something wrong I just wanted love. My family say I’ve lost a part of myself maybe I have I can’t see anything right now.
When I read this article a lot of things outlined in the article reflected the life I have been living. He would monitor who I spoke with how I spoke, wanted my passcode to my phone. Called me a whore often and a cheater. Blamed me for his life going down the drain. I kept trying I really have.
I feel like crap because I was willing to stay with him even thought he was abusive to me I wanted him to heal. But I was so scared of him, knowing that he had two children with 2 different women possible and I don’t have any children made me leave. I’m sorry I know I have grammar errors and I’m not sharing things story in order I’m just typing away.