Better Marriages

Toxic relationships are a fact of life for many people, men and women alive, both young and older. Often family and friends can see the effects in the relationship but the one living in it cannot or will not. Some want someone to ‘love’ them so badly they think most any type of attention is love and fail to see that they are in a toxic relationship, one that may not necessarily be abusive, but one that is dragging them down and is not healthy.

One of the first steps to healing is to admit there is a problem. There is always a chance and hope that the spouse will change, but the reality is that change is unlikely for someone who only knows how to hurt another person. It can be said that some spouses do not realize what they are doing, and they can be helped. It can also be said that some know exactly what they are doing, leaving getting out of the relationship as the only healthy solution.

A spouse that loves you is not going to spend their time tearing you down, making you look foolish, talking down to you, or saying hurtful and derogatory things. Rather the one that loves you will want to be near you, they uplift you and encourage you, and they never seek to hurt you or make you sad.

Signs that you might be in a bad relationship:
* You and your spouse spend the evening with another couple. Your spouse goes out of his way to make jokes most of the evening, using you as the main target in all of them. When back home, he says he is sorry, yet this isn’t the first time he has done this.

* You make it a point to have dinner ready and waiting when your husband comes home from work. He never misses an opportunity to tell you what’s ‘wrong’ with the meal. When the two of you visit his mother’s home and there’s a meal served, he always tells her what a delicious meal she served.

* You work hard to provide for your family. Sometimes that means working overtime and not being able to spend as much time as you would like to with your spouse. Your wife constantly nags you that you work too much. In front of mutual friends, she makes comments to them about how you don’t ‘really’ love her, criticizing how you dress, going on about how you love your job more than her, making it a point to make you look bad every chance she gets.

* You’ve gained some weight and are working on losing it. Rather than be supportive and encourage you, your spouse tells you how fat you look and makes wise cracks in public about your appearance. She tells you that she won’t make love to you until you lose weight, in front of mutual friends.

* Your spouse makes it a regular habit to check your cell phone to see who you have called and who has called you. He checks your email, opens your mail before you are allowed to see it, goes through your purse when you are sleeping.

* Your spouse makes it a point to bring up things that will make you cry, knowing that saying certain things will hurt you.

* You work at saving money and planning for a vacation with your wife. You’ve had the time off planned for six months in advance and she has known the dates for the vacation all along. Two days before you are to be off to take the long planned trip, she announces she is going to the beach with friends during the vacation time. You’re not invited.

* You sit down to talk with your spouse about how you feel about certain things, being open and honest, pouring out your very soul and heart to them. Your spouse laughs at you at almost every comment you make, demeans you, and blames you for their bad behavior. Instead of listening to you, the spouse makes a joke of your feelings.

Perhaps the most hurtful thing about a toxic relationship is the fact that this is the person that is supposed to love you and care for you, but instead they seek to hurt you and cause you emotional distress and pain.

A person in a toxic relationship might have a difficult time letting go of it. Sometimes they feel as that there is no one else for them, thinking that they aren’t good enough for someone that will truly love them and care for them. Often a person caught in a bad relationship stays because even though it is a terrible relationship, their spouse has convinced them that no one else could possibly want them.

This cycle of thinking has to be broken. There is hope and there is healing. In order to obtain the happiness that is waiting, the person living in this type of relationship must make the decision to get out of it. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. There is hope.

A healthy relationship can be obtained once the person in the bad relationship recognizes the need for a better life and gets out of the abusive relationship. The first step in healing is removing yourself from the relationship.

A loving relationship allows no room for toxic behavior. In a healthy relationship, a spouse listens to the other. The spouse doesn’t seek to hurt you, to make fun of you, to use you as the joke of the party. The spouse in a healthy relationship wants to be with you, doesn’t check up on you all the time, doesn’t use any excuse to make you look bad, doesn’t seek to embarrass you in front of family and friends, doesn’t try to control you.

A healthy relationship finds a couple who are happy with each other and understand each other, who know the other isn’t perfect but accepts and loves the person as they are. They don’t seek to change each other, they stand with each other through anything and everything, and the only tears they want to cause the other are tears are happiness.

Low self esteem isn’t a rare thing among the human population. A surprisingly high number of people suffer from low self esteem. Often a person who has a low self esteem doesn’t love themselves, making the feelings even worse.

Low self esteem stems from a variety of issues. A person might have been ridiculed often as a child by their parents. Perhaps the person has felt that no one really understands them. Maybe the person was made fun of by other children over something like a speech problem. Whatever the cause, low self esteem can cause the person suffering from it to not only not love themselves but to feel like they aren’t good enough, that they don’t count, or that no one really loves them.

Sometimes, though not always, the person with low self esteem will lash out at others in a vain attempt to try to make themselves feel better or to raise themselves up. They feel the need to try to make another person feel as bad or as low as they feel in order to try and make themselves feel better. This attempt seldom works however, because they have failed to address the issue or issues that have them feeling so low to begin with. Attempting to bring another person down not only fails in bringing the other person down, it only makes the one suffering from the low self esteem feel worse and want to lash out even more.. They continue to seek a way to make someone else feel bad so that they don’t feel bad.

And the cycle continues because they are still suffering from low self esteem and they still don’t love themselves. There is an alarming number of people that even resort to cutting themselves in an attempt to feel better about themselves, seeking some measure of control over something they cannot control. But the cutting doesn’t make anything better, because again, the issues causing the low self esteem have not been faced or addressed.

Building your self esteem and learning to love yourself isn’t all that difficult, but it does take effort on your part. Start by realizing that no amount of downing another person will resolve whatever issues are plaguing you. To try and berate others doesn’t hurt anyone but you. It only keeps you in the cycle of low self esteem and prevents you from healing and loving yourself.

There will always be negative people with negative behaviors, and chances are they will project that negative energy onto you. A person with low self esteem will often take to heart anything negative thrown at them, and sink even lower. Rather than allow someone to make you feel bad over their bad behavior, consider the source that the bad behavior is coming from. Are their negative actions towards you really about you at all? Or are the negative actions simply a projection of their own feelings of low self worth? When you determine that it’s not even about you, but rather about them, then you can easily deflect the issue and not allow it to bring you down.

Begin each day by thinking of one thing that you really like about yourself. This can be your hair, your compassion for others, your ability to make others smile, or that you make a great pot of chicken and dumplings. As you do this each day and discover things about yourself that you like, you will begin to feel better about yourself, and your self esteem level will rise. And before you know it, you will find that you actually not only like yourself, but you love yourself too.

Enlist the help of those that love you to help build your self confidence. Those that know you best and care for you are the ones that can help you see how special you truly are. Remember that someone who really knows you has most likely seen you at your worst and they didn’t leave. These are the ones that can help you to build your self esteem.

When your mind has been conditioned to believe that you are no good, that you have no value, that you are worthless, then you will believe these things about yourself. A child who is told enough times that they are stupid will eventually believe that they are indeed stupid. Their low self esteem will carry into adulthood.

You can rebuild your self esteem by reversing the effect. If you tell yourself long enough that you are of value, that you do matter, that you do count, that you are indeed a beautiful person, that you are important, then eventually you will believe this to be true. Your self esteem level will rise, you will find yourself loving you.

Replacing the negative and bad thoughts with good and positive thoughts will soon leave no place for the negativity. Some people might need to constantly work at keeping their self esteem level at a high level. For others, once the issues are worked through that brought your self esteem down, you have it made.

Building your self esteem up will not only make you a happier person and give you peace, it will improve your relationships with others. It will also allow you to better see people who seek to only to bring you down by trying to berate you so that you can eschew from those types of people.

Whatever the issues that causes a person to feel so low, there is a way out. Facing whatever caused you to feel this way opens the door to healing. Knowing that words do not make you who you are, that another’s opinion of you doesn’t make you who you are, and that those who care are right there with you can help you to have high self esteem. Love yourself, you’re unique!