Relationships make up a large percentage of our daily lives and, no surprise here, people in healthy ones are more successful and happier than those in a relationship that is in constant turmoil. The relationship you have may indeed be poisoning your chances for living a personally successful life.
If you think it is a major cause of your unhappiness maybe you are one of the millions of people who are part of a toxic couple. Being in this type of unhealthy partnership depletes any creativity you may have and keeps you from living fully. It is difficult enough to get through each day simply doing menial things, let alone be creative.
Cate was a woman who knew where she wanted to go in her life and how she wanted to live it but who had absolutely no energy to pursue her goals. Her personal life was one continuous tension-filled war zone with no relief in sight. Constant arguments with her spouse depleted her emotional reserves. She was part of a toxic relationship which exhausted her and made daily living a monumental chore. Yet she stayed in this unhappy, poisonous marriage for years because it was all she knew. By not leaving she allowed the unhappiness to consume every aspect of her life.
It is interesting to note that the Danish word gift which means ‘married’ is the same word the language uses for the word ‘poison’. While we may laugh at the absurdity of the one word having two such different meanings, the reality of any relationship, married or not, being poisonous can be all too true.
Ask yourself these five crucial questions-
Do you wake up every day feeling stressed, sick, miserable, and dread being with your partner?
Are you allowing yourself to postpone your own career or goals because you have no energy or concentration to pursue them?
If, after having spent time together, do you end up feeling drained, having sleepless nights and feelings of despair?
Is the way you feel affecting your job performance, your friendships, or other relationships in your life?
Are you abusing drugs or alcohol to “help you cope?”
And the most important question of all-
Is this relationship keeping you from living the way you want to live?
If you answered yes to any one of these questions then you are in a toxic relationship.
Forget about being happy, that’s the least of your problems. Toxic relationships cause physical as well as emotional trauma. Your body is under siege from the constant stress. Psychiatrists say comparable to being a soldier in a war zone with no relief troops in sight. Very few toxic relationships ever get better; the majority only gets worse.
The truth is that you can never be happy in a poisonous partnership. Any chance you may have to create the life you want is stifled and your goals are either postponed to a distant future or completely abandoned because all your energy is being given to this negative state.
You need to step back and look at what is happening to you personally. Acknowledge that your life is being adversely impacted by the relationship, then decide what necessary and important steps you need to take in order to live a healthy, happy life. Being with someone just to be part of a couple is a disservice to you. That’s like saying you are going to settle for a less than healthy relationship because you don’t want to be alone!
Your choice, and it is a choice that is yours alone to make, has to be to end the toxic relationship as quickly as possible and slowly begin to build a solid life for yourself.