Relationships require work and dedication to thrive and be healthy. However, there are dynamics in certain relationships that make them destructive and toxic to one or even both partners. The way your partner relates to you psychologically and emotionally can have a large bearing on your self esteem and feelings of self worth. Here are 6 signs that your relationship may have an emotionally or psychologically abusive dynamic and may be toxic for this reason:
1. Your partner puts you down, either in public or privately. These insults may be blatant name calling, but not always. Sometimes, it is more subtle, for example your partner may criticize the way you do things, who you are, or even question your mental competence. All the while, your partner may imply that he or she has it all together and knows the best ways to do the things you are failing at. Ultimately, you may end up feeling incompetent, inferior, and even crazy.
2. Your partner attempts to limit your access to work or educational opportunities. This strategy helps maintain your partner's control over you and keep you dependent.
3. Your partner attempts to discourage or limit your contact with outside friends and family. Isolating you in this way serves a couple of different purposes. Firstly, it establishes your partner's dominance and control. It also limits your ability to receive positive, affirming messages from your loved ones. Your abuser is trying to create a reality about you and for you. Having contrary information coming in is undesirable in the abuser's eyes. In addition, limiting your contact with others also reduces your opportunities to hear criticisms of your partner.
4. Your partner attempt to control and influence your daily activities. You may feel compelled to give an account of your daily activities and defend or justify your choices. You may even get to a point where in order to avoid confrontation, you choose activities you know your partner will approve of.
5. Your partner uses sex as a weapon of manipulation and control. This may be demonstrated in your partner's demand that you comply with his or her demand for sex and intimacy, regardless of your feelings or desires. This may also manifest in the opposite manner, where your partner deliberately withholds the physical affection and intimacy you desire, in order to keep you feeling rejected, worthless, and subject to his or her whim.
6. Your partner implies that there will be non-physical consequences for not complying with his or her demands. Once in awhile, your partner may do something kind for you, but this is not a true effort to change a pattern of behavior, but a tactic to draw you back into the relationship. Once you are back under your abuser's control, the emotional and psychological abuse will begin again.
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