Tough Love or Toxic Environment?

    People are mean, whether it’s intentional or just out of spite, there’s an issue with how far someone can go before they snap. It’s hard to make relationships work, especially if a relationship you have put all your time and effort into, but it’s even harder if they’re trying to control everything that happens in the relationship. I’ve had many different people in my life, a new group of friends, trying to form a new relationship, even new families members that enter my life that I’ve never seen before. All of those people have one thing in common, they all have one person that dictates the entire thing which isn’t good for the relationship trying to be built or trying to grow. If there is one thing to learn about having relationships with people, it’s that nothing good comes from being in a toxic relationship.

        There are three types of toxic relationships. Toxic friendships, toxic lovers, and toxic parenting. Something very common with these types of relationships is it causes a person to have trust issues. Having these types of relationships in the past, and even in the present, has given me many trust issues and it’s hard for me to open up to people with out being a little hesitant, even to the people close to me. I want to people understand the difference between a “normal” relationship and a toxic relationship, to let them no whether you have a friend, or you have a dictator.      

      We all have friends in different varieties, and we all have that one friend that tries to “control” the group and usually not the nicest person to their friends. To some people, being rude to a group of friends and being rude to random people are two different things. To friends, being rude means to show love and comfort that is laughed off. To random strangers, being rude means to yell and them from across the street or roll your eyes at what someone else has to say or to push them around. This is true but at the same time how far can one go to “bully” their friend. Whether it’s pushing or teasing or yelling, even though it’s all fun and games, there is still a fine line between tough love and bullying. Being in this kind of relationship before, it has caused me personally to gain trust issues towards a lot of people, even my actual friends. Because of this, I haven’t tried to make new friends because if I haven’t known someone for a while than I don’t trust them and will probably act cold towards them, not because I don’t want to be their friend, but because if they are going to turn on me, I’d rather them do it without any true knowledge of who I am.   

     Being toxic lovers works in a way that person A is the leader of the relationship and person B is super codependent, or they are treated like they are. Person A, usually the guy of the relationship, likes to control person A, the girl of the relationship, by telling her what to wear, what to eat, who to and not to hang out with and by using derogatory slang to insult their partner and vise versa. I personally have never been in a toxic relationship, but I have watched one

progress and it’s not good for either parties involved. As a bystander of a toxic relationship, I noticed a few things. There’s a lot more sad moments in the relationship than happy moments. There’s a lot of yelling from person a and a lot of crying from person b and the only times they are happy is when they are apart from each other. Sometimes, person b is scared to leave the relationship because person a is threatening them in some way. If that is the case, then the relationship needs to end immediately because, it’s not healthy for the person that’s supposed to love you is scaring you.

   Toxic Parenting can go two ways. Either the parents control their child life, often called “Helicopter Parents”, or the parent doesn’t care enough to provide for the child. With Helicopter parents, often the child will wish their parents didn’t care at all. This type of parent is usually trying to control most of their life for example, what they wear, checking their phone every hour and not letting them leave the house to hang out with friends. This kind of behavior can often lead to the child growing up without a sense of direction and will need to be told what to do constantly because they don’t know what it’s like to be on their own. With parents who don’t provide enough for their child, the child will often wish for the opposite, for their parents to care even just a little bit. This type of parent will typically act as though they don’t have time to tend to the child because their “busy”. Neglecting a child can often cause a change in how they act when the get older. The child might not understand the reference of physical affection and hugging and holding is just not natural for them. My family scares me. I’m afraid ask questions because I’m scared, I’ll get yelled at. My parents don’t really care that much but at last minute will pull a whole 180 and ask a whole bunch of questions about where I was, what I was doing,

as if they cared to begin with. It’s not that my parent’s neglect me, it just that I don’t have a very good relationship with my family and it’s something I want to fix but they both agree that nothings wrong with our family and it’s just me.

    Having these types of relationships have changed my mindset over the years. I would like to believe most of these problems with my friends and my family have caused some of the mental issues that I have today. I try to surround myself with people who won’t cause issues, but I can’t predict how my next relationships will go. I want to make sure people know the signs of a toxic relationship in case someone experiencing the signs. If that is the case, then leave the relationship immediately because it is, indeed, toxic.