Strange Bedfellows -- 8 Types of Toxic and Dysfunctional Relationships
Posted: Wednesday, May 27, 2009
by Yangki Christine Akiteng
The Real People's Love Doctor
Difficult or toxic relationships do not at first appear to be toxic because Pop Culture has taught us to mate based on the idea of love -- people tend to see and believe what they want to see and believe about the other person and the relationship. In some cases, the people involved in these toxic relationships are in so deep that what to some would appear toxic feels normal to them.
1. The "Parent-Child" Relationship
People who get into parent-child relationships have an intense need to recreate or compensate for the relationship they had with their own parent. Regardless of the psychological reasons behind this kind of relationship, in most cases this substantial "re-parenting arrangement" tends to reinforce the dysfunctional behavior -- enabling, fantasy, ambivalence, confusion, guilt projection, double-bind messages, hostility and chronic negativity. You know this is not how a healthy relationship should be, but you have no idea how to make it right -- or even want to make it right. Something about the toxicity of the relationship feels so familiar, even safe in a twisted kind of way.
2. The "Martyr" Relationship
This is where someone sacrifices and gives up everything -- including their mental/emotional well-being -- in the name of love. In your craving to be loved, you give and give, and nurture and nurture to a degree where it's controlling and unhealthy. Because you believe that being "a martyr to love" makes you a loveable person, you tell yourself your love is unconditional but actually it is very conditional and selfish. Even when the relationship is abusive, you feel that you must really love this person to sacrifice and give up everything, though you can't understand why you'd love someone who treats you badly.
3. The "Change Agent" Relationship
Most people who get into these relationships are convinced on some level that they can really make the other person a "better" person. Even faced with the reality that the other person will not change, you can't accept and break free of the illusions of the "power to change someone" that you have created. In some way you actually feel "responsible" for the other person, and see leaving as abandoning him or her. But as they say, a man who marries a woman to "educate" her falls a victim to the same fallacy as the woman who marries a man to "reform" him.
4. The "Sponsor" Relationship
In this relationship, one person provides a sense of financial security and the other person feels obligated to the person who pays the bills. The only reason you are still in the relationship is because you 1) have the obligation to support the other person, 2) have no other way to support yourself or 3) both of you feel entitled to the "investment" you have made in the relationship and won't let the other person have it all. But because the relationship is not about love, rage attacks, lies, cheating etc. are the menu of the day. The only thing you seem to agree on is the colour of money.
5. The "Exotic" Relationship
People obsessed with "exoticness" and "foreignness" often confuse love with obsession. They seek out a man or woman specifically because he or she is from a certain race, religion or culture; or because they're obsessed with a particular accent, look or other characteristic associated with someone from a particular race, religion or culture etc. Even though the relationship feels exciting in many ways, almost all of your fights are about race, religion or culture. It's always about one or the other feeling lonely, isolated, unconfident, unloved, or like the "outsider" -- especially around the other's socio-cultural networks.
6. The "Rebel" Relationship
Rebel-type daters choose a partner, who is exactly the opposite of everything their families and friends would want for them. You may be merely angry with your parents, family or social network or attempting to establish a sense of your own identity. You get a kick from watching your parent's, sibling's or friend's reaction to your partner more than you actually get from the relationship. The relationship is simply "entertainment" and your partner the pawn in your reality TV Show.
7. The "Social Network" Relationship
This is when one or both people get into a relationship to have access to the other's social circle, widen their social circle, or advance themselves up the social ladder. At first glance, everything looks "picture perfect" yet digging deeper reveals that you are a mere extension of a calculated social equation. Though this is a touchy subject that neither of you necessarily wants to talk about, one or both of you somehow manages to never let the other person "forget" who is dating up or dating down, who married up or married down the social ladder.
8. The "Neutered" Relationship
This kind of relationship is usually based on a great friendship; a close and mutual bond cemented by many years of being each other's best friend. The sexual attraction/chemistry may or may not have been there in the initial stages, but you feel obligated to stay with each other because you see eye to eye in almost all areas of your lives. Though there is no sexual attraction between the two of you and you are not even physically sexually intimate, one or both of you feels jealous and rejected if the other is sexually attracted to someone else and feels betrayed and hurt if the other even mentions that he or she has sexual urges. You feel that if you don't feel like having any or can't have any, neither should he or she!
Bottom line: When we have toxic or dysfunctional relationships with others, it means we have a toxic relationship with ourselves. Remove what you view to be a toxic person from the relationship, and you are left on your own with only the mirror to look at.
About Author: Internationally renowned Dating & Relationships Coach, Christine Akiteng has devoted years of her life re-uniting couples and has seen over and over again first hand what works. She has woven together solid-gold advice on just about every stage of getting back together with your ex to help you make the process less scary and shaky and more exciting and smooth as possible.
Christine's main website: http://www.torontosnumber1datedoctor.com
e-Book: http://www.datingyourex.com
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Top-level comments on this article: (3 total)"Remove what you view to be a toxic person from the relationship, and you are left on your own with only the mirror to look at. "This last line says it all! You have covered just about everything Christine, but the problem is, what's left? By removing every toxicity in your mating career, doesn't that eventually leave us alone? Maybe another installment to this story is pending.Please log in to respond to this comment.What's left? YOU. The other part of that statement is: "When we have toxic or dysfunctional relationships with others, it means we have a toxic relationship with ourselves". Relationships are nothing but mirrors to ourselves reflecting back to us the healthy/good and the ugly/unhealthy that's already in us. This is why when we first "fall in love", we walk on cloud 11. We see in the mirror the most magnificuent parts of ourselves. The eyes begin to wander to other parts of the mirror and we don't like what we see but most of us think it's the other person's fault. Removing the "toxic person" from one's life is only removing the mirror. What attracted that toxic person in the first place still remains (YOU). Tha'ts why people who attract toxic relationships go from one toxic to another toxic relationship. They are just changing the mirrors, and will keep doing so until they turn around and face themselves. It all begins and ends from within. Committing yourself to really let go off old patterns of relating is a better alternative to pining for your last love and waiting for your next heart break.Non-toxic people can't stand to be around toxic people for very long. And if they do, they recognize the relationship for what it is (unhealthy relationship) and deal with it for what it is.Please log in to respond to this comment.
It's often easy to see what's wrong in other people's relationships but when it comes to our own, we are blind. Very interesting article Christine.Please log in to respond to this comment.Thanks Brianna. Nobody is perfect, we all look into the mirror of relationships and can spot one blemish or another. But sometimes we go into complete denial (you call it "we are blind"), and it's in such times when we need an objective relative or friend in our lives. Someone who has our best interest at heart and has nothing to gain or lose by being direct and truthful. I have plenty in my life -- my mother is number one on the list. She tells me like it is, and I love her to death for it..:-).Please log in to respond to this comment.
Thank you. I can recognize myself here. A relationship is truely a reflection of how I understand myself. It is about to take responsibility and not to go into a "forgetting and foggyness ". There is actually a lot of beauty to be discovered through oneself. My relationship just broke off, and I am sitting with me. There is a lot going on there to be grateful for.Please log in to respond to this comment.Glad I could be of help. Sitting with yourself is almost always the right thing to do. Sit well.Please log in to respond to this comment.
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