7 Things a Couples Therapist Wants You to Know About Your “Toxic Relationship”

By Figs O’Sullivan, LMFT | Updated April 2026 | 18 min read

You Googled “toxic relationship.” I know why. Something is wrong and it has been wrong for a while. You are hurting. Your partner is hurting. And the internet just handed you a word that finally seems to explain everything.

Here is the problem with that word: it feels like an answer, but it is actually a trapdoor. The moment you label your relationship “toxic,” you stop asking the questions that could actually save it. You stop wondering what is underneath the fighting. You stop seeing your partner as a person in pain and start seeing them as a problem to be solved, or worse, a threat to be escaped.

I have spent 17 years sitting across from couples who walked into my office convinced they were toxic. Some of them were right, and I will be honest with you about that. But most of them were wrong in a way that almost cost them the most important relationship of their lives.

This article is going to challenge nearly everything you have read about toxic relationships. Not because those articles are entirely wrong, but because they are dangerously incomplete. They give you a list of “signs,” tell you to set boundaries, and wave you toward the door. That is not therapy. That is a junk-food answer to a gourmet problem.

Let me give you the real thing.

What Actually Makes a Relationship Toxic (It Is Not What You Think)

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Every article on this topic gives you the same checklist. Constant criticism. Jealousy. Control. Manipulation. And sure, those behaviors exist. But here is what those articles never explain: why those behaviors are happening in the first place.

After 17 years of clinical work, here is my definition of a toxic relationship. A relationship becomes toxic when one or both partners are suffering most of the time, and the length of time spent in disconnection is large (days, weeks, sometimes months), with no meaningful repair at the end of it.

Read that again. The toxicity is not located inside one person. It is located in the space between two people who have lost the ability to come back to each other after a rupture.

This is a critical distinction. Most of what you read online treats “toxic” as a diagnosis you slap on your partner. “My partner is toxic.” “How do I fix my toxic boyfriend?” “Signs your girlfriend is toxic.” That framing is not just inaccurate. It is actively destructive, because it prevents you from seeing the one thing that could actually change your situation: your relationship is a system, and you are half of it.

Research from The Gottman Institute has demonstrated that relationship distress follows predictable patterns of escalation. Criticism triggers defensiveness. Contempt triggers stonewalling. These are not random acts of cruelty. They are choreographed sequences of protection, and both partners are dancing.

The Waltz of Pain: Why Your Relationship Feels Toxic

In my clinical work, I call the destructive cycle that couples get trapped in the Waltz of Pain. It is a repeating 1-2-3 step that looks like this:

1. A negative perception of your partner. You see them through a lens of threat. “They don’t care.” “They’re selfish.” “They’re trying to control me.”
2. A reactive emotion. Anger, frustration, panic, disgust. This is not your core emotion. It is the bodyguard standing in front of it.
3. A protective action. You criticize. You blame. You withdraw. You go cold. You explode.

Here is the part nobody tells you: your partner has their own 1-2-3 step. And your step three (your protective action) lands directly on their step one (their negative perception of you). Which triggers their step two. Which triggers their step three. Which lands on your step one again.

Your protector meets their protector. Their protector meets yours. Two childhood strategies collide, and the relationship becomes a reenactment of wounds neither partner caused.

This is why your fights feel so repetitive. This is why you keep having the same argument about dishes or money or texting back too slowly when the real argument is about something much deeper: Am I safe with you? Do you actually love me? Will you leave?

That repetitive, exhausting, soul-crushing pattern is what most people mean when they say their relationship is “toxic.” They are describing the Waltz of Pain without knowing it has a name or a structure or, most importantly, a way out.

The “Toxic = We” Shift That Changes Everything

Something remarkable happens in my office when a couple stops saying “you are toxic” and starts saying “we are toxic.”

I had a couple come in, deep in a pursue-withdraw cycle. She was relentless in her criticism. He was a ghost in his own marriage. Every session started with her cataloging his failures and him staring at the carpet. Classic “toxic relationship” material, right?

Then one session, she said it differently. Not “you are toxic.” Not “this is all your fault.” She said: “We are toxic.”

I jumped on it. “Yes. You are right. You two are toxic. And that is the best thing I have heard you say.” Because when she said we, she did something that months of individual blame never accomplished. She acknowledged that they had a systemic problem. She stepped out of the penthouse of her own suffering and looked at the building they both lived in.

This is what I call the “Toxic = We” breakthrough. It is the moment when the word “toxic” stops being a weapon and becomes a doorway. When you say “we are toxic,” you are no longer in the business of diagnosing your partner. You are in the business of diagnosing your relationship. And your relationship is the only thing either of you can actually change together.

Here is the paradox that will bother you: the very thing that makes your relationship feel toxic is actually what makes it beautiful, because it is only happening because you love each other. People who do not care do not fight. People who are not attached do not pursue. People who are not afraid of losing you do not withdraw. The intensity you are calling “toxic” is actually the intensity of two people who are terrified of losing each other and have no idea how to say so.

The Four Things That Are Always True in a “Toxic” Moment

When couples come to me describing a toxic fight, they almost always describe two things: “I am hurting” and “look what they did to me.” That is half the picture. In my framework, if one of four things is present, all four are present:

1. I am hurting.
2. I am reacting.
3. You are hurting.
4. You are reacting.

Most people only have access to items one and four. “I am in pain, and you are the one causing it.” They cannot see item three (that their partner is also in pain) because their partner’s pain is hidden behind item four (their partner’s reaction). And their partner cannot see item one (your pain) because your pain is hidden behind item two (your reaction).

This is the fundamental optical illusion of every relationship that feels toxic. You are both hurting. You are both reacting. And the things you both do to try not to hurt end up hurting the other person. It is a closed loop of mutual destruction, and neither of you is the villain.

I sometimes describe this to couples as two amoebas in one petri dish, sharing the same heartbreak. You are both simple organisms reacting to threat and safety. The toxic disconnection that is destroying your relationship is not a calculated attack. It is an automatic survival response from two nervous systems that learned how to protect themselves long before they ever met each other.

Why Internet Advice About Toxic Relationships Makes Things Worse

I need to be direct about something. Most of what the internet tells you about toxic relationships is the equivalent of eating a bag of candy for dinner. A quick rush that leaves you emptier.

Here is what I mean. You are in pain. You Google “toxic relationship signs.” You find an article that lists 15 behaviors your partner exhibits. You feel a surge of validation. “Yes. That is exactly what they do. I am not crazy.” Your ego gets its hit. You feel righteous for about twenty minutes.

Then you go home. You look at your partner through the lens of that article. Everything they do now confirms the diagnosis. You are armed with a label, and your partner can feel it. They get more defensive. You get more certain. The Waltz of Pain accelerates.

This is what happens when you consume hyper-individualistic, pathologizing advice. It tells you the problem is located inside another person. It tells you your only job is to “set boundaries” and “protect your peace.” Those are not wrong concepts, but when they are deployed without understanding the system you are part of, they become weapons disguised as self-care.

The American Psychological Association emphasizes that healthy relationship functioning depends on mutual responsiveness, not unilateral boundary-setting. Real repair requires both partners to develop the capacity to see each other’s pain, not just their own.

I am not saying boundaries are irrelevant. I am saying that a boundary without empathy is just a wall. And walls do not heal relationships. They end them.

The Baking Analogy: Same Ingredients, Different Outcome

When a couple comes to me and dumps everything on the table (the affairs, the screaming, the silent treatments, the contempt), I think of it like baking.

They bring all the ingredients that make their relationship look like a pile of garbage. Flour everywhere. Eggs cracked on the counter. Sugar spilled on the floor. They look at this mess and think, “This is unsalvageable. This is toxic. We need to throw it all away.”

But here is the thing. Those are the same ingredients that make a beautiful cake. The problem was never the ingredients. The problem was the arrangement. My job is to help them rearrange the ingredients, rearrange their perspective of what is happening, and show them that the exact same components (the passion, the attachment, the fear, the longing) actually make something extraordinary when they are combined properly.

Healing does not happen by throwing the ingredients out. It happens when both partners agree to eat the cake together, which means doing the messy, uncomfortable work of loving each other in their most vulnerable places. The places where they have flour on their faces and egg on their hands. The places where they look nothing like the polished, “healthy relationship” Instagram tells them they should have.

The Two Suffering Bubbles (And How to Merge Them)

Here is the image I use most often with couples who feel toxic.

Imagine each of you is trapped inside your own suffering bubble. Inside your bubble, all you can see is your own pain and your partner’s worst behavior. You cannot see inside their bubble. You cannot see that they are hurting too. All you know is that every time your bubbles collide, they both burst, and you are left more alone than before.

This is what a “toxic relationship” actually looks like from the inside. Two people in two separate suffering bubbles, each convinced the other person is the problem, each unable to see that their partner is drowning in the exact same ocean.

The work of repair (whether in therapy or through your own courageous effort) is learning to merge those two bubbles into one shared bubble. Not “your pain is valid and mine is not.” Not “I will hold space for you but you need to fix yourself.” One bubble. One shared experience. “We are both hurting, and we are both looking at each other negatively, and this is so painful for both of us.” Labeling them toxic is easier than admitting you are both terrified. Talk it through with Figlet.

When couples achieve this, something shifts at the nervous system level. The hypervigilance quiets. The defensive walls lower. For perhaps the first time, both partners experience what it feels like to be held while they are falling apart. That is the missing experience. That is what was supposed to happen in childhood when you were scared and someone bigger and stronger showed up and said, “I have got you.” For many of us, that never happened. So we built protectors instead. And those protectors are what your partner now calls “toxic.”

The truth is, your protectors are not toxic. They are outdated. They were brilliant strategies for surviving a childhood that required them. They just do not work in an adult relationship where the person across from you is not your parent. They are your partner, and they are as scared as you are.

When a Relationship Actually Is Toxic (And You Need to Leave)

I would be doing you a disservice if I did not address this directly. There are situations where the label “toxic” is not just accurate, it is urgent.

If your partner is physically violent, if there is active addiction with no willingness to seek help, if there is a pattern of gaslighting so severe that you genuinely cannot trust your own perception of reality, or if your physical safety is at risk, the framework I have described above does not apply in the same way. Systems theory does not mean you absorb abuse. Co-regulation does not mean you tolerate violence.

The distinction I draw clinically is this: in a toxic dynamic, both partners are contributing to a destructive cycle and both have the capacity to change. In a toxic situation, one partner’s behavior is so dangerous or so pathological that systemic work is not safe until that behavior is addressed individually (often through specialized treatment for abuse, addiction, or severe personality disorder).

If you are in the second category, please reach out to the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233. Safety comes first. Always.

But if you are in the first category (and statistically, most people reading this are), then what you have is not a toxic partner. You have a toxic pattern. And patterns can be changed.

The Frog, the Scorpion, and the Part Nobody Mentions

You know the fable of the frog and the scorpion. The scorpion asks the frog for a ride across the river. The frog says, “You will sting me.” The scorpion says, “If I sting you, we both drown.” Halfway across, the scorpion stings. “Why?” asks the frog. “It is my nature,” says the scorpion.

This is how most people think about toxic relationships. One person is the frog (the victim) and one person is the scorpion (the toxic one). Clean. Simple. Completely wrong.

If any of this is landing close to home, you can talk it through right now with Figlet, Figs’ AI mini me, and get an answer about your own situation in seconds. Ask Figlet about calling your relationship toxic..

I told this story to my kids once, and my son had an immediate insight that took most of my couples months to arrive at: in a toxic conflict, both partners are simultaneously the frog and the scorpion. You are both carrying the other across the river. You are both stinging. You are both drowning. And neither of you can stop, because the stinging is not cruelty. It is a survival reflex you learned before you had words for it.

When you can see that you are both the frog and the scorpion, something softens. The moral high ground disappears. The villain narrative collapses. And what is left is two terrified people clinging to each other in the middle of a river, both convinced the other one is trying to kill them, both actually trying to survive.

That is not toxic. That is tragic. And tragedy, unlike toxicity, can be transformed.

How to Start Repairing a Toxic Relationship (5 Steps That Actually Work)

If you have read this far, you are not looking for another list of “red flags.” You are looking for something real. Here is what I tell every couple who sits across from me, convinced they are beyond saving.

1. Name the pattern, not the person.

Stop saying “you are toxic” or even “I am toxic.” Start saying “we have a toxic pattern.” This is not semantics. It is the difference between a diagnosis that traps you and a framework that frees you. The Waltz of Pain is the enemy, not your partner.

2. Learn your 1-2-3 step.

What is your negative perception when you are triggered? What emotion shows up first (not the deep one, the reactive one)? What do you do? Criticize? Withdraw? Go cold? Get loud? Name it. Own it. Not because you are the problem, but because you are 50% of the system.

3. Get curious about their 1-2-3 step.

Your partner’s worst behavior is step three of their Waltz. Underneath it is a reactive emotion (step two). Underneath that is a negative perception of you that comes from their own wounds (step one). You do not have to agree with their perception. You just have to acknowledge it exists. That acknowledgment alone can interrupt the cycle.

4. Share the bubble.

The next time you are in conflict, try this sentence: “I think we are both hurting right now.” That is it. You do not have to solve anything. You do not have to be right. You just have to name the shared reality. “We are both in pain. Neither of us is doing well. Can we just acknowledge that for a second?”

5. Repair before you resolve.

Most couples try to resolve the content of the fight (who said what, who was right, who started it) before they have repaired the emotional rupture. This is backwards. The rupture is the problem. The content is just the stage it played out on. Repair the connection first. Resolution follows naturally, and often, once you are connected again, the content does not even matter anymore.

The Question You Should Be Asking Instead

You came here asking, “Am I in a toxic relationship?” That is the wrong question. The right question is: “What pattern are we stuck in, and do we both have the willingness to change it?”

If the answer is yes, then what you have is not a toxic relationship. What you have is a relationship in crisis, which is a completely different thing. A crisis has an arc. It peaks and it resolves. Toxicity, the way the internet uses it, is a life sentence. I do not believe in life sentences for relationships that have not even been properly understood yet.

Ninety-nine percent of the time, your relationship problems are not a me or you issue. They are an us issue. And “us” issues have “us” solutions. Not one person doing all the work. Not one person being the “healthy” one while the other gets fixed. Both of you. Together. Rearranging the same ingredients that looked like a disaster and discovering they were always capable of making something beautiful.

Your relationship is not a bag of M&Ms. Stop feeding it junk-food advice and wondering why it feels sick. Give it the real nourishment of mutual understanding, co-regulation, and the hard, sacred work of actually seeing each other.

That is not toxic. That is love doing what love does when it is scared.

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