10 Ways on How to Fix a Toxic Relationship

Maintaining a healthy relationship takes a lot of conscious commitment, awareness, care, communication skills, time, and effort. And even when you establish a highly functional relationship with your partner, there is a chance that your love will encounter challenges, including a once-happy relationship turning into a toxic relationship. 

You can never be sure that your relationship is invincible, as it will inevitably go through a few rough patches now and then.

There are no perfect matches or couples that are flawlessly connected- this is because we, as humans, aren’t perfect and therefore do not have the capacity to create perfection in love.

Also watch: How to Repair Your Marriage

The truth is that most of the best relationships go through very difficult times. These times serve as a chance for us to work out our deeply rooted childhood wounds.

What is a toxic relationship?

No one enters the relationship with a negative expectation. A relationship is meant to add something to your life rather than put you in the position of doubt and scarcity.

A toxic relationship is one where one or both partners feel misunderstood, unheard, and disrespected. It is a kind of relationship that takes more than giving. 

Take a quick look at this article and learn more about toxic relationships.

Are you experiencing a rough patch or a toxic relationship?

If there is friction, distress, abuse, and pain between you and your partner, the first thing you need to do is to determine if your relationship is going through a rough patch or it is, at its core, a toxic relationship.

A toxic relationship usually drains your energy because they are highly abusive. They are based on codependency, neglect, and emotional manipulation.

There is typically a lack of compassion and understanding between partners. Major trust issues and the inability to create or maintain secure attachment can also be a part of such relations.

Can you heal a toxic relationship?

Healing a toxic relationship requires the ability to gently work and do in a compassionate, understanding, and patient way.

If healing is possible, it directly depends on your specific circumstances and on how much “damage” was done to both individuals (including other people involved like close family members, children, etc.) over the period of your troublesome love.

If you wonder, “Can a toxic relationship be saved?” Observe if your relationship has brought way more misery than bliss in your life, then you might need to consider if this is the right choice for you, especially if there is any kind of abuse involved.

If you feel that your relationship, despite being challenging and difficult, still enriches your life and brings some positivity and growth, then you need to take personal responsibility for your well-being.

You should also learn to navigate through your imperfect love life by making it better and healing the current toxicity that is there.

Once you manage to heal and overcome your initial relationship struggles, you will have a chance to experience more love, more passion, and more intimacy. 

The healing of your love can only happen through your conscious decision, commitment, and effort to work on yourself, and it’s very important that your partner does the same in their own way.

How to fix a toxic relationship: 10 ways

Can toxic relationships be healed? Well, they can be! Fixing a toxic relationship just requires some focused effort. So, how to remove toxicity from relationships?

Here are the top 10 ways to heal your toxic relationship:

1. Recognize that toxic relationships are harmful

Toxic relationships can be destructive to both individuals involved. They can lead to feelings of anger, frustration, and resentment. 

They can also be physically damaging. The negative impact of toxic relationships cannot be understated. Therefore, it’s important to recognize when a relationship is unhealthy and take steps to end it.

2. Be assertive

Assertiveness is a great communication skill that will support you in managing your struggling relationship and, at the same time, help you in improving your connection with yourself.

The ability and decision to assert yourself are way healthier than going into passive-aggressive behavior that usually causes a lot of damage between you and your partner. Eventually, the partnership spirals into a toxic relationship.

Learn about it, practice it, share it with your spouse, and see what it brings to your love life.

3. Hold space for each other

Another toxic relationship advice is to make sure you are maintaining the connection with your partner even through times of friction and frustration.

When you isolate, ignore, and escape such circumstances, the gap between you grows, and it gets more difficult to reach contentment and closeness.

4. Rise above emotional manipulation and mind games

Are you the one playing mind games in your relationship or is it your partner? No matter who is introducing these toxic manipulation attempts, in order to heal your toxic relationship, you will need to resist both initiating or participating in mind games or gaslighting in relationships.

5. Engage in crucial conversations

More love, more passion,  and more intimacy are usually to be found on the other side of the truth. In order to restart your struggling love, you will need to start taking some emotional risks.

You can begin by engaging in a crucial conversation, bringing up the truths that you have been withholding from your partner, and then staying in dialogue even when it is uncomfortable or scary.

Related Reading: 10 Relationship Conversations You Can Have With Your Partner

6. Get information, tools, advice, and/or professional support

Most people simply don’t know what to do. Our mainstream culture is totally ignorant about what it takes to create a healthy, highly functioning relationship.

Fixing a toxic marriage or ending toxic relationships is no easy feat. Finding an answer to the question, can a toxic relationship be fixed is daunting.

So whether it is leaving a toxic relationship or finding the answer to “can a toxic relationship be repaired” or “how to fix a toxic relationship after breaking up,” is best done with professional support who can equip you with tools on how to turn a toxic relationship healthy.

Marriage counseling or relationship advice in the form of a third-party, unbiased, credible expert can help you recognize toxic relationship signs,  fix unhealthy relationships by establishing some ground relationship rules, and facilitate moving on from a toxic relationship.

Getting some information on how to heal a toxic relationship or involving a professional to support you would be a great step towards the couple’s recovery from the toxic marriage or transforming the toxic behavior of a partner. 

7. Practice gratitude

We often take what we receive on a regular basis for granted, and we don’t see the value and importance of what our partners bring to our life.

Doing daily gratitude, like sharing three things we appreciate about our partner before going to sleep, can help to switch the attention from negative to positive and heal our relationship.

Lastly, it is important to recognize that what we dislike in our partner is likely something we dislike in ourselves so we try to control, manipulate, avoid, ignore or blame others instead of doing the necessary “inner work” on ourselves.

Not all toxic relationships are easy to heal. 

More self-love and self-acceptance will indeed lead to breaking toxic relationship habits and more love in your current relationship riddled with temporary glitches. 

Related Reading: Not Feeling Grateful? Here’s Some Useful Relationship Advice

8. Resist your urges to control your partner

When you are in a relationship that lacks trust and true intimacy, it is very easy to develop a controlling behavior towards your partner.

Because of the fear involved you might have the irresistible desire to ask a lot of questions about the whereabouts of your partner, or their friends, you might even want to influence important decisions your partner is about to make, or in general, you would try very hard to make them behave and think in a way that you desire.

When you feel like controlling these urges, the best thing to do is to resist them and ask yourself – what am I afraid of in this situation?

9. Set boundaries with the other person

It’s difficult to maintain a relationship that is unhealthy for both of you. 

However, you can set boundaries that protect both your physical and emotional well-being. For example, you can give yourself a time limit for being in the other person’s presence or limiting your contact with them.

10. Seek help if necessary

If you are struggling in your toxic relationship, you may want to consider seeking outside assistance. There are many resources that can help you and your partner get a fresh start and improve your relationship. 

In addition to couples’ therapy, you can also turn to family and friends for support. The bottom line is that you should never feel like you have to struggle on your own. Everyone deserves a healthy and loving relationship.

Related Reading: How Seeing a Therapist Can Improve Your Life

What if you really need to leave a toxic relationship?

Now, a word on how to get out of a toxic relationship with an abusive person if you feel extremely violated, gaslighted, and can not find more strength to extricate yourself from this vicious cycle of turmoil.

To get out of an unhealthy relationship that has depleted you, and to move on, follow these tips on how to leave a toxic relationship.

• Step out of the denial that your partner is a work in progress, and you can fix them. Don’t end up draining yourself, spending time with them despite no connection and disappointment, giving way more to the relationship than you receive.
• Surround yourself with supportive friends and family members who emotionally validate you and provide you with healthy support.
• Don’t forget and move on. Keep a log of all that the abusive partner did to torment you. Journal your feelings to get the much-needed perspective and reinforcement.
• Try gradual withdrawal of communication from your toxic partner.
• When you decide to leave, and if the abusive partner turns on the waterworks, don’t fall for it. Leave. No U-turns. No second chances. No guilt-trips.
• Build your positive core beliefs, and life-altering affirmations. 
• Go easy on yourself, the juggernaut of withdrawing from an unhealthy relationship is daunting.

Takeaway

In this in-depth article, we have dived headlong specifically into how to survive and heal a toxic relationship. Hopefully, our advice on how to fix a toxic relationship will help you resurrect a happy and healthy relationship.

Don’t lose sight of the end goal. You are just one step closer to moving past the negative experiences, and a happier you. Relieve yourself of the burden. Remember, things often get worse before they get better.