How to Identify an Unhealthy Relationship by Pretending to Be an Outsider
The lesson I learned after healing from a toxic relationship
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The aftermath of breakups could be quite intricate.
When my college love gave in the long-distance, I felt sad and disappointed in ourselves for not sticking to our original promise.
When my old boyfriend had to drop out of university and move back to China because of his mom’s health concern, I, for the first time, sensed the unpredictability of life and helplessness of our love.
Overall, in whatever breakup situation, I walked through a recovering phase as much as I anticipated. Although I had to experience emotional ups and downs amid the post-breakup stage, I knew that I would get better and better as time went by.
However, after eventually ending my last relationship, I spent almost three years getting rid of self-sabotage and self-loath. During that period, whenever past disturbing memories boiled to the surface, I surrendered to those negative emotions after a short time of emotional struggling, letting them drowning me rampantly.
I wonder why I had to suffer the lingering breakup depression.
It wasn’t until later I met my husband that I realized the answer: different from healthy relationships, unhealthy relationships would not only incrementally drain your spirit with dramatic plots but rarely end peacefully.
Ending a healthy relationship is like finishing a trip- though it’s a shame the journey can’t continue, we still appreciate the scenery we’d been visiting. On the other hand, an unhealthy relationship is a nightmare that consumes our considerable energy to discard.
In retrospect, many red flags had been reminding me that the relationship was toxic, and my Ex was a downright narcissist. Yet, getting trapped into the uninterrupted turmoil, I’d been exclusively focusing on obtaining short-term psychological stability, leaving zero mental force to examine whether, in essence, the relationship deserves any additional investment.
When I finally have the strength to confront my last toxic relationship’s frustration, I realize the key to assessing our relationship status lies in the “outsider” mindset — scrutinize a relationship from an outsider’s perspective.
The following three steps would give you some insights regarding your relationship state and possible improving methods.
#1. Observe your partner’s relationship with the external world
Like many young women, I used to savor getting unique treatments from my boyfriend, by which my vanity gets satisfied. However, my lesson is: the necessity of examining your partner’s response to the external reality is beyond the saying “ a man who is nice to you but rude to the waiter is not a nice man.”
On the surface, my ex treated everyone nicely. At the beginning of our relationship, I described my ex as a warmhearted, approachable person who always would like to help others.
Yet, as we spent more time together, I heard him mocking his “poor” classmates, preaching his “ transactional theory” when it comes to friendship, and found his biggest anger trigger was me not play along with him in front of others so that he lost “face .”
I realized that building an excellent public image was the actual reason driving him to behave that way.
In other words, my ex wasn’t rude to a waiter, not because he acknowledged equality or respect or other decent humanity, but because that kind of behavior would be detrimental to how others perceive him.
For a partner who prioritizes his alleged persona, you first need to abandon the delusion that you are so precious to him so that you can consistently enjoy the privilege.
Otherwise, one day, once you are involved in a conflict of interest with him, you would have to painfully aware that previously splendid treatments are also behavior to meet his sense of superiority.
Then, given his hypercritical nature, you have to spend more time observing him in an attempt to make a more reliable assessment as to who you’ve been genuinely dating. The key is to spot the inconsistency of your partner’s demeanors.
#2. Articulate your feelings than ruminating lousy memories
Observing and introspecting have to be separated in practice to avoid the two steps from affecting each other.
That said, I suggest you write down your observation for your partner in plain English when you’re calm rather than venting your anger and frustration in the middle of a fight or argument with your partner.
With a refreshed mind, you’re more likely to describe your partner and related events objectively without extra emotions that could later cloud your analysis.
Then, you have to identify your expectation for a romantic relationship explicitly. What are the most important things for you in a relationship? List them in the sequence of priority.
Some common expectations could include compassion, communication, commitment, and of course, love. However, your expectation could be as detailed as you want.
I ask myself two simple questions to discern if my expectation is realistic and meaningful: “Do the achievement of these expectations would benefit my personal growth?” and “ Do I would like to execute these expectations to my partners as well so that I do not have double-standards?”.
After getting clear on what you want from a relationship and what you’ve been experiencing in a relationship, all you need to do is to reflect on the unpleasurable incidents one by one, asking yourself which one of the expectations on your list has been overlooked or even trampled.
Finally, how do you usually respond to the disappointment created by your partner’s ignorance of your emotional needs?
You may initially communicate with your partner, but is there a conflict-solution pattern formed with time passing by? Your partner heard your misery and responded to it with more thoughtful action?
Or like my case, no matter how many times I complained that I didn’t want to cook and wash all by myself, my ex played the dumb. That’s when I knew the relationship was doomed to die.
#3. In retrospect, ask “what” than “why”
I’ve been staying in suffering for almost three years after escaping the relationship with my toxic ex. It’s a wrong mindset that lengthens the healing phase.
In my culture, society seems to be hostile toward women who are still single at 30 years-old. As a result of the cultural pressure, I clung to a bad relationship for three and a half years, being stuck into the trap of sunk cost fallacy.
Looking back then, I didn’t think that getting rid of an unhealthy relationship was worthy of a celebration because the time I waste on the wrong person would never return.
I regretted the relationship so much that I kept asking myself why? Why was I so stupid to stay in an unhealthy relationship for so long? Even worse, I started to access a downward emotional spiral because of my ex insidious comments during our ugly breakup.
Countless “why” had been torturing me every day until I came across a TED video talking about how to increase our self-awareness with a simple fix by psychologist Tasha Eurich. The biggest takeaway for me was to stop asking “why” and start asking “what” instead.
By focusing on why I stayed in a toxic relationship so long? or why I can’t stop sabotaging myself? I kept victimizing myself and paralyzing myself in the past, where I can’t do anything to make any difference.
However, once I started to ask myself, “what I learned from the terrible relationship?”, “what lessons I get from the relationship?”, my attention has navigated to the future and the action. My exploration of these “what” questions would liberate me from self-doubt and regain control of my life.
Final thoughts
Between brutal tragedy and ideal fairytale romance is a considerable spectrum where you must mindfully identify whether your current relationship is healthy.
However, taking on an emotional roller-coaster challenges your ability to make a reasonable assessment of your relationship state.
One effective way to combat the situation is to consciously put yourself in an outsider’s position, examining the relationship from a more detached perspective.
Keep the three steps in mind to get more insights about your relationship and yourself:
- Observe your partner’s relationship with the external world
- Articulate your feelings than ruminating lousy memories
- In retrospect, ask “what” than “why”
