GREENER PASTURES: Relationships can be Toxic

Relationships can be toxic. A toxic relationship is one which depletes your energy, judges and criticizes you to the point of damaging your self-esteem. A toxic relationship is emotionally abusive and controlling.

Many persons, especially women, can be in toxic relationships for a while before they begin figuring out what is happening. This is due to the signs being difficult for the person being controlled to spot. The manipulator typically chooses someone who is prone to being controlled and undermined due to a lack of confidence, along with dependent needs and a desire for someone to protect them, care for them, approve of and make them feel needed.

The purpose of the controller is to gain power and attain what they want by undercutting the other’s sense of who they are, thereby prompting them to constantly submit.

Dr. Gail Saltz lists five central tactics controllers’ use to get and keep another where they want:

– Intimidation: Utilizing implied or veiled threats concerning withholding love or walking out.

– Guilt-tripping: Implying the partner does not care enough or is too self-centered. The more conscientious the person, the better this works.

– Shaming: Insulting, putting down and using sarcasm to make the other feel inadequate. As the other person weakens, the controller gains greater power.

– Charm: The controller acts seductive and flatters at just the right times to reel in their partner and bind her more strongly to him.

– Turning the tables: The controller claims to be the victim, the one being put upon, deflecting any blame or confrontation and intensifying the guilt the other experiences.

These tactics can be highly effective. In order to assess whether you are being controlled, look for these signs:

– Who am I? You are not sure who you are anymore. You begin to believe the things the controller says about you.

– Chronic fear: You feel a kind of free-floating anxiety most all the time. It is the fear of losing yourself and being powerless to stop it.

– Fantasies of escape: You have thoughts of fleeing the relationship or even of your partner dying, so you can be free at last.

– Questioning reality: The controller has so shaken your grasp of what is real by all the denying, lying and rationalizing and abusing you that you no longer trust your own sense of what’s really happening.

– Isolation: Controllers try to isolate you from anyone who might support you and see through their deception. Eventually you will find yourself cut off from everyone but him.

– Lying: You find yourself lying to others in order to collude with the controller that all is well when it is not.

The controller convinces you that you cannot make it without him. Because he has so undermined your confidence and sense of self-worth, you believe it. This is why so many women cannot break free, or leave only to return to the relationship.

To escape such a relationship, the one being controlled has to gather supporters who will help her feel safe and protected, and who will strengthen her ability to take care of herself. She needs trusted others to re-establish her sense of who she is and what is real.