The simple answer: If you feel worse about yourself since meeting your partner, you are probably in a toxic relationship. If continued for a long time, it damages your core self-worth and is harmful to your own mental health.
The term “toxic relationship” or Pathological Love Relationship (PLR) usually refers to a relationship where one of the partners has a Cluster B personality disorder, as defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5) used by mental health therapists. The Cluster B disorders are better known to the public as narcissism, antisocial and borderline personality disorder.
Cluster B refers to personality disorders that are “dramatic and erratic” and they, along with psychopathology, are considered the most damaging to partners. Other close relationships—such as with bosses, parents and adult children—can also become toxic. A person does not need to have a diagnosable disorder. Even if they have just some of the common traits of the Cluster B disorders, they can still be very toxic.
S/He Wasn’t That Bad
Many people struggle with putting a label on a partner, either trying to figure out “what he is” or resisting a particular label because “she’s not that bad.” Once you realize there’s a reason for what you’re experiencing, applying a diagnosis or label is not really important. What is important?
- Your own symptoms
- The extent of damage you experienced
- How you feel about yourself
Abuse does not need to be physical to be extremely damaging, especially if your partner uses “subtle abuse’ because it is so hard to recognize it as abuse. You are much more susceptible to missing the early ‘red flags’ and to being convinced that you are “just too sensitive.”
According to Robert Bacal, a conflict expert with a Masters Degree in Psychology (Canada) who specializes in the use of language and psychology in human relationships:
“In some ways, subtle verbal abuse is actually more damaging than more obvious forms. Why? Because subtle verbal abuse is something you may experience every day, perhaps dozens of times a day. It works its damage beneath the surface affecting the way you think and feel about yourself and about the people using subtle abuse techniques.” (Bacal, Building a Healthy Relationship)
To me, this is the worst part of being in a toxic relationship. Bit by bit you give away parts of yourself, sometimes out of confusion and manipulation and sometimes just to keep the peace.
Your Perceptions Of “Bad” Are Not Reliable
When you’re caught in the web of a relationship with a toxic partner, you’re not the best judge in the world. You become accustomed to the abuse (normalize it). “Not that bad” to you probably would be to someone else who could see it. You’re much more likely to be minimizing the abuse than exaggerating it.
This is why, if someone you care about can’t pull themselves away, keeps going back or is falling apart after a toxic relationship ends, your support and presence in their lives is so important. If you can be there and listen with patience, without judging, perhaps gently educating, you’ll be providing an immeasurable gift, even if it takes them a long time to see that or act on it.
Was Your Relationship Toxic?
Sometimes the hardest thing to admit to yourselves is that someone you loved and trusted is not capable or worthy of that.
The longer abuse occurs, the less able you are to see it as abuse. At least until it gets so bad or goes on so long you finally realize your life may be in danger…and the loss of self is a form of losing your life.
How do you recognize subtle abuse? It’s not easy! I like the description by David Hayward, author of The Naked Pastor blog: “When we don’t respect people as they are and allow them to be as they are, this is a more subtle form of abuse, the logical conclusion of which leads to a kind of violence against the human spirit.”
And therein lies the answer to the question, “Was your relationship toxic?”
- What did it do to you? What is the state of your ‘human spirit’?
- Are you mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually healthier than you were when you met that person?
- Are you happier now than before you met?
- Do you love, care, like and respect yourself more?
- Have you expanded and thrived as a person or, as one woman put it, been squashed like a bug under a thumb?
No diagnosis is needed. You don’t have to know if your partner or former partner is a narcissist, anti-social, borderline or psychopath. Answering the questions above will tell you if that relationship was toxic to you. And that’s all that matters.
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