At a glance
Toxic is the word people reach for when a relationship has started costing more than it gives back. It names the hurt accurately and then leaves you holding it, with no idea what follows. This article helps you tell a hard patch from a relationship doing harm.
Clinical insights from 22 years in psychotherapy
I’m Mark Colclough, MA, psychotherapist in Copenhagen. Qualified at the Psychosynthesis Education Trust and the University of East London. 22 years of full-time, face-to-face clinical practice.
- I ask what the word is carrying. When somebody tells me their relationship is toxic, I ask what they are afraid the answer turns out to be, and the fear is rarely the one I expected.
- The partner who worries about being difficult is doing most of the adjusting. That is one of the steadier patterns I see, and it holds in couples who would both deny it.
- Laughter tells me there is still contact. When a couple can still laugh at themselves in my room, I hold more hope than the account they have just given me of themselves.
Clinical notes: My observations are anonymised and compounded from my session notes since 2004.
What does a toxic relationship mean?
Toxic is a description people arrive at, not a condition anybody can test you for.
The word does one thing very well. It names harm that somebody has spent years explaining away: the evenings that end badly, the slow narrowing of what you are allowed to want, the feeling of being smaller in your own kitchen. If you have started using it about your own relationship, some part of you has stopped accepting the explanations, and that is worth taking seriously before anything else.
It also does something unhelpful. It moves a pattern into a personality, and once your partner has become the toxic one there is nothing left to work with: no behaviour to describe, no sequence to interrupt, only a verdict. The question that opens things up in my room is a different one. What happens between the 2 of you after it has gone wrong, and does anything either of you does make it better? I have written more about red flags in a relationship.
How do I tell a hard patch from a relationship doing harm?
Repair is the dividing line. After a bad evening somebody comes back, and something shifts.
You know the shape of a repair already. Tea made without being asked. The sentence that admits the other person was partly right. The joke that lands and lets the room breathe. Repairs are rarely elegant. In a hard patch they arrive late, badly worded and half grudging, and they still work, because what they carry is: I am still here, and you still matter to me.
In a relationship that has begun doing harm, nobody comes back. The evening closes over, the subject goes under, and by morning you are both behaving as though none of it happened. That is how 2 people manage years without a single argument reaching its end, and how the hurt ends up stored in the body instead of spoken. This dividing line is my clinical judgement rather than a measured threshold, and it is the one I lean on most.
Which patterns do couples therapists watch for?
By the time a couple reaches me, the subject of the argument matters far less than the habits that have grown around it.
I am not listening for who is right about the money or the holiday. I am listening to how the 2 of you handle each other while disagreeing, and 4 habits in particular, named in the couples literature as criticism, contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling1.
- Criticism. A complaint is about something that happened. Criticism goes at the character of the person who did it, and that difference decides whether your partner is able to answer you at all.
- Defensiveness. The reflex that reaches for the excuse and the innocent position, leaving whatever your partner actually said lying unanswered between you.
- Stonewalling. One of you stops responding. From the outside it looks like refusal; from the inside it is overload.
- Contempt. Sarcasm, mockery, name calling, the eye roll: the position of standing morally above the person you live with. Of the 4 this is the one the literature treats as the strongest signal that a marriage is ending1, and in my room it is the one that frightens me most.
- The same behaviour does not cost the same in every household. Among couples living with real financial strain, husbands withdrawing from their wives’ demands went with their wives’ satisfaction holding steady, while in more comfortable couples the same withdrawal went with satisfaction falling2. That is an association across groups of married couples rather than a rule about yours.
Once these settle in, an argument stops being about its subject. I have written more about why the same argument keeps coming back.
What if I am afraid of my partner rather than frustrated with them?
When what you feel around your partner is fear, nothing in this article measures anything useful.
From the outside the signs are mundane. Checking your own phone before you hand it over. Rehearsing a sentence in the hallway before you walk in with it. Deciding against a friend because of what the evening afterwards will cost you. Apologies and good spells belong inside a pattern like that rather than disproving it, which is why counting repairs here tells you only how practised the pressure has become.
This is where couples work is the wrong instrument, and so is reading an article. Sitting in a joint session to improve communication while one of you is managing the other one’s temper leaves the person doing the managing worse off, because whatever honest thing gets said in the room is paid for later in the week. Individual therapy is where this belongs, with a therapist of your own and no obligation to be even-handed about what you are describing. If it is your own version of events that keeps getting rewritten, I have written about what gaslighting looks like in a relationship and about living around a partner’s moods.
How do I change a toxic pattern in my relationship?
Describe the behaviour, watch for the repairs, and change your own half of the loop.
- Describe rather than label. “You disappear for 2 days after an argument” is something a person is able to answer. “You are emotionally unavailable” is a verdict, and nobody changes in answer to a verdict.
- Watch for the repairs. For a week, notice each time either of you softens, apologises, makes a joke that lands or walks back into the room. This is an aid to seeing the pattern, not a score to settle.
- Ask the friend question. If somebody you love described this relationship to you exactly as it stands, what would you want to say back to them?
- Start with the body. Dread in the 10 minutes before your partner gets home, and relief when they go away for a weekend, tell you what your explanations have been smoothing over.
- Do not wait for it to settle by itself. Couples filmed 3 times across 13 years3 kept the same division between them, the pressing and the withdrawing much as they began, which is a reason to look at this now rather than later.
- Change your own half. A loop needs 2 people, so dropping your own move in it alters the sequence, though it does not oblige your partner to alter theirs.
What none of this settles is whether you should stay, and I would be wary of a therapist who answered that for you. The work makes the decision an informed one, so that staying or leaving happens with the pattern and its cost in plain view.
These steps are the wrong instrument where neither of you comes back after an argument, where one of you will not look at their own part, and above all where what you feel is fear. Individual work is the next step in those situations, not joint sessions. What stays genuinely uncertain for most couples at this point is whether the pattern belongs to the relationship or arrived with one of them, and that needs closer exploration before anybody decides anything.
Questions people ask
Is couples therapy right for a relationship that feels toxic?
Yes, when you are describing a pattern the 2 of you fall into, and the earlier the better. Where one of you is frightened of the other, individual work is the right place to start instead.
What happens in a first session if we cannot agree what the problem is?
I ask each of you to take me through a recent evening that went wrong, in order, and the disagreement about the problem becomes the material. Nobody has to win that argument for the work to start.
Can I have therapy about this on my own?
Yes, and for many people it is the clearer place to begin, because you look at your own part without also managing how your partner hears it. You decide what you take back into the relationship afterwards.
How do I ask my partner to come without it sounding like an accusation?
Ask for help with what happens between you rather than for help with your partner. An invitation that names your own half of it is much harder to hear as blame.
Will a therapist tell me whether to stay or leave?
No, and I would be wary of one who did. My job is to make the pattern clear enough that the decision you reach is an informed one.
If you are unsure whether to stay and work on it, I offer couples therapy on your own so you can think clearly before you decide.
You may also find these helpful
Sources
- The Gottman Institute, The Four Horsemen: Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness and Stonewalling
- Ross, J. M., Karney, B. R., Nguyen, T. P. and Bradbury, T. N., Communication That Is Maladaptive for Middle-Class Couples Is Adaptive for Socioeconomically Disadvantaged Couples, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2019
- Holley, S. R., Haase, C. M. and Levenson, R. W., Age-Related Changes in Demand-Withdraw Communication Behaviors, Journal of Marriage and Family, 2013
How this article was written: I choose the subject and the angle. An AI assistant researches and drafts. I read the draft, correct and improve it and stand behind every clinical statement. The professional and clinical judgement is mine.
