Five common signs that your relationship is unhealthy you shouldn’t ignore

Many unhealthy relationship habits are ingrained in our culture. For instance, it is common for African mothers to tell their daughters to pray and persevere as their promiscuous husbands run around with all manner of women.

Many times, our partners are viewed as assets rather than someone with whom we share a mutual emotional connection. 

Let’s face it, most of us don’t grow up with the best examples of what healthy relationships look like. Toxic relationships are everywhere we turn and made to appear normal. And because of that we can find ourselves in very unhealthy situations that always end in the same way. With a broken heart.

To avoid falling into the trap of staying in an unhealthy relationship, below are some traits you should watch out for in your relationship that should not be ignored.

Keeping tabs on each other

When he or she continuously brings up past incidences and blames you for mistakes you made in the relationship, it is time to do some soul searching. Before you know it, it turns into a scoreboard of who has done what. 

Keeping tabs within the relationship can be unhealthy when what you’re doing is trying to justify your own wrongdoing by bringing up scenarios and manipulating your partner to feel guilty for something that was done in the past. 

This becomes a problem when both partners use all their energy to prove who is right and who did what instead of working on the actual problem.

Blaming your partner for your emotions

We all have good days and bad days. If you’re having one of those bad days where everything seems to go wrong and you come home and your partner is not paying attention to you, don’t overreact.

He or she could be genuinely busy so expecting them to mirror our emotions can form poor personal boundary establishment and codependent tendencies. 

Your partner should not be responsible for your emotions and vice versa. If you base all your feelings and happiness in your partner could lead to resentment when they fail to meet your expectations. 

Buying your way through relationship problems

Getting gifts is exciting. But there is a big difference between getting gifts because he or she feels you deserve it or they are continuously covering up relationship issues with superficial pleasures. 

Not only do you shove the real issues under the rug which always have a way of re-emerging in future but it sets up unhealthy precedence within the relationship.

The next time he beats you and makes it up with a trip to Dubai you should consider running for your life.

Passive aggressive behavior

This is how a normal relationship works: if your partner has annoyed or hurt you, you should let them know what is bothering you openly. Don’t begin to act out trying to drop hints that you are indeed upset. 

You don’t have to annoy them so they can know you’re not okay rather state your case. Dropping hints instead of openly stating what is bothering you shows that you are not open or comfortable in expressing your feelings. Rather, you are unable to communicate openly out of fear of being judged. 

In a healthy relationship, there is no need to be passive aggressive because you know that you can safely express any anger or insecurities.

Holding the relationship hostage

This occurs when one partner has a complaint or criticism that turns into blackmail and ends up threatening the commitment of the relationship. Before you know it, every minor issue becomes a commitment crisis.

Both partners should know and realize that it is normal and healthy to express any negative emotions to one another without it threatening the relationship itself. 

Otherwise, they suppress their emotions and that can lead to distrust, manipulation and resentment.