How to Cope With an Unhealthy Relationship

Before you start asking hard questions about your life, you have to get your head in a steady place first. Spending time with a teacher who can help you settle your mind, a Zen Master or someone like one, is worth the effort. With that said, here are the numbers. Each year, around a million high school students across the country go through some kind of physical abuse at the hands of a romantic partner (Love is Respect, 2015). If any of this sounds like your situation, you might be due for some new coping tools, or for a clear look at whether the relationship should continue at all.

What does a healthy relationship actually look like? Love, trust, respect, honest talk, and the sense that the person has your back. Compare that to its opposite: anger, violence, constant frustration, criticism, hostility, and judgment. The unhealthy version doesn't stay still. Left alone, it can slide into abuse, into real danger, in the worst cases into death. There is good news buried in that, though. You can learn to handle a troubled relationship, and the starting point is refusing to let problems rot quietly. Problems you ignore don't disappear. They eat away at whatever you have left.

One thing is not negotiable. Never stay in an abusive relationship. If you believe your life, your children's lives, or the lives of people in your family are at risk, say so to someone. Call the police and file a report. File a restraining order against the person hurting you if you are able to. At a minimum, reach out to the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 and let them help. For those who aren't prepared to walk away yet but still want better ways to get through the day, the rest of this is for you.

Start by digging down to where the trouble began. Figure out what actually pushed the relationship into decline. Run through the pattern truthfully. Have there been times when you or your partner picked a fight for no good reason, or said and did things purely out of spite? Replay the last big blowup. What set it off? What came out of your mouth? What came out of theirs? If your habit, when you feel ignored, is to shout at your partner and cut them down, that itself is a sign something is wrong. Ask why you do it. Is it a reaction to what your partner said or did, or is it coming from your own fear and insecurity? Poor coping habits feed dysfunction. When your insecurities are a big part of the mess, a mental health professional (a social worker, a counselor, a therapist, a psychologist) can help you untangle them.

Owning your part matters too. One of the better things you can do is stop pinning things on your partner that they can't control, or that you yourself caused. Take responsibility for what you do. If you keep brushing off your role in the fights, the relationship curdles over time. And when you genuinely aren't the source of the hurt, try to stay calm and forgive the person who wronged you. Here is the reason: holding onto anger damages you more than it damages them. Those bitter feelings also help turn a relationship sour. Letting the anger go clears your head so you can think straight. Give yourself and your partner room to heal. If you both truly want things to get better, the repair work is something you do together.

You also have to actually deal with problems as they come up. Don't shelve a difficult conversation because you're bracing for how your partner might react. A word of caution here: if your partner is abusive and you're frightened of them, do not confront them on your own. Tell a close friend, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline, or get the police involved. If you're nervous but the situation isn't dangerous, pick a calm, public spot to talk, and bring a friend or family member along. Lay out how you feel and let them answer. The moment it turns into verbal or emotional abuse, walk out. No form of abuse should ever get a pass. You don't deserve to be treated that way.

When your partner seems checked out of you or the relationship, tell them plainly. Stay honest and resist blowing things up bigger than they are. Skip the accusations. "You make me feel terrible about myself" lands as blame. Owning the feeling works better: "I feel terrible when I can't live up to your expectations." A partner who cares as much as you do will sit with you and work through what's broken.

The last piece is learning the warning signs. Knowing how to tell a healthy relationship from an unhealthy one, and spotting the markers of abuse and domestic violence, protects you. Ask yourself whether your relationship is drifting toward abuse. If it is, that's your cue to find a professional. A relationship that brings you more joy than grief is probably a healthy one. Healthy relationships don't run on a steady diet of high stress. They carry love, friendship, a feeling of safety, respect, honesty, trust, and real commitment. The people in them lift each other up instead of tearing each other down, feel good in each other's company, and share things they both care about.

Unhealthy relationships look different. The people in them carry a lot of stress, frustration, disappointment, sadness, and anger. They often dread being together and end up apart more than they're together. Nonstop arguing, cold indifference, and missing respect are the usual tells. Coping, in the end, comes down to reading those signs and knowing when a relationship is worth fighting for and when it's time to let it go. (Dr. R. Y. Langham. References: Healthy Place, 2008; Love is Respect, 2015; Meads, A., 2014, Huffington Post.)