These are the signs they’re the wrong person for you
Not everyone is deserving of the love we have to share. These are the signs that indicate you’ve chosen the wrong person.
by: E.B. Johnson
Whether we like to admit it or not, bad people exist in this world and (sometimes) they find their way into our lives and our beds. We can choose the wrong people to share our lives with. These are the people who go out of their way to hurt others, feed off of misery, or otherwise strive to manipulate or take advantage of us. They are people filled with hatred, rage and bitterness, and they are people who bring more darkness into the world. So how do we cope when we’ve chosen to commit to these people?
If we’ve found ourselves in a relationship with a bad or toxic person, we have to arm ourselves with knowledge and cultivate the understanding we need to free ourselves from their clutches. By learning to spot the signs of a truly bad or toxic person, we can wise up to their games and teach ourselves to fly free off the back of our own merits and strengths. We are the only people who have the right or the ability to effectively control our own lives. Start stepping up to the plate for yourself and get real about standing strong on the back of the opportunities and boundaries you create.
Love can make us blind.
There are a number of reasons we ignore the red flags our partners are showing us, and they come down to everything from our own selfish narcissism to our willingness only to see the best in our partners. In order to build happy, fulfilling relationships, however, we have to accept our partners — and the bonds we share with them — for who and what they are. Though we often claim to be blindsided by our good love gone wrong, more often than not, there are a number of critical moments we ignore along the way.
When our partners aren’t right for us, they have a funny way of showing us that truth, but it takes a dose of radical honesty to see these warnings for what they are. To see these red flags for their reality and accept them, we have to start loving ourselves and setting boundaries both inside and out. Only when we learn how to love ourselves can we truly start loving others and receiving the love we deserve.
Loving ourselves requires digging deep, and it requires facing up to the limits of both our joy and our fears. Facing up to the reality of a toxic relationship gone wrong takes time, and it takes creating the stable ground we need to launch ourselves into the future. Stop letting a bad person hold you back from the opportunities that could otherwise offer you joy. If you’ve chosen the wrong person, you have to get proactive about correcting this mistake. Learn how to free yourself and create a life that is entirely your own by leaning into your own strength and truth.
Signs they’re the wrong person for you.
There are a number of signs that you might be dealing with a toxic partner, or someone who only has their best interests in mind. From hidden depths to hatred, a lack of remorse and just general nastiness all the time — these are the warning signs that you’re sharing your life with the wrong person.
Hidden depths
Perhaps one of the most alarming signs that your partner is a dangerous, bad or toxic person is the scope of their hidden depths. For many of us, the face we present to the world is much the same face we wear at home. The truly bad or evil person, however, is capable of wearing many faces and presenting many different masks based on their own selfish needs. Is your partner the perfect person in public and a vicious and controlling monster at home? Deep and dark depths might be a sign.
Cruel to those around them
Cruelty is a sign common to the bad and evil among us, and it can manifest in a number of ways. If your partner is mean to animals, friends, family, or children — it’s a sign that there’s darkness in their heart and a complete lack of natural compassion or empathy. There’s no justification for cruelty, and there’s no joy to be found in it. Either is a sign of someone who has a broken sense of what is right and what is wrong.
Humor as a weapon
Not all inherently toxic or bad people seem bad at the start. To many manipulators, subtle weapons are a much more effective tool and there is little weapon more subtle than humor. A toxic partner might weaponise their humor in such a way as to belittle or demean you; and they might even use that same weapon to make those jabs in public. Think about the bully who used humor on the playground to body shame and terrorize those perceived as “weaker” than them. It’s the same thing in this case, and just as toxic and wrong.
Weird vibes
As humans, we often forget the close link we share with animals, and we often forget our own animalistic nature and instincts. Off-putting or strange energy from a partner — especially when you step outside of their expectations — can be a sign that you’re dealing with someone who is toxic or bad for you. We pick up on energy, emotions and intentions for a reason. Just as dogs and cats can sense anger or sadness in our emotions before they manifest physically, we too can pick up on the energy and intentions of those around us. When you “get bad vibes” for a partner, there’s usually a reason.
Pleasure in pain
Truly wicked or cruel people love to see other people fail, struggle, or suffer and they seem to get pleasure from the misery of those around them. They love drama and they love to stir to the pot. To the truly toxic and evil person, there is no pastime more fun than throwing a bomb into the middle of someone’s otherwise tranquil and normal life. The pain and the misery is like food to them and provides an energy and an excitement that’s disturbing. (Pro tip: we should never be rooting for someone to fail.)
Manipulation as the norm
Bad people know their behavior is wrong, and they also know that it wouldn’t be tolerated by society outright. For this reason, evil people engage in manipulation — in order to maintain control of their environments and relationships, but also to normalize actions and decisions that we might otherwise question or resent. This manipulation can happen both mentally and emotionally, but physical coercion might also be involved.
Belittlement all the time
Belittlement isn’t normal, no matter what kind of relationship you find yourself in. If someone belittles your hopes or your fears, or if they go out of your way to play down and dismiss your emotions — they don’t have your best intentions at heart. In fact, it’s really quite the opposite. When we love someone, we don’t belittle them. We encourage them to succeed and desire to help them achieve the things that bring them peace, courage or joy.
Lying as an art form
We all tell little white lies from time to time, but outright lying is one of the most toxic and relationship-destroying behaviors a person can engage in. Evil or wicked partners, however, take their lying to a different level. Starting out extremely truthful, this kind of person lures you first into a false sense of confidence before pulling out the rug to get what they want from you. They lie about everything, and they use lies to manipulate and keep you unstable and unsteady.
Zero remorse
Bad people have no remorse, and they never feel guilt or shame for the terrible things that they do. A truly evil or bad partner will show a total lack of empathy, and therefore a total lack of guilt, shame or remorse for their poor behavior or the destruction that they wreak. Everything is about them, and anything outside of that doesn’t matter or just holds very little value to them at all. They don’t care how other people feel, because they only care about how they feel. So it’s impossible for them to feel sorry for the pain that they caused.
Hate, hate, hate of any kind
Racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia — all of these things (when consciously committed to and acted upon) make you a bad and toxic person. You don’t have a right to hold beliefs that injure other people. It is one thing to hold subconscious beliefs that are addressed and overcome. It is entirely another thing to tout those same beliefs proudly, or embrace them as something to be welcomed and celebrated. Conscious hatred of innocent or disenfranchised people is unacceptable, in any form, and is always poisonous to our own personal growth (and the growth of surrounding people).
The toxic behaviors they’re teaching you to normalize.
Toxic people keep us around by normalizing their behavior slowly over time. They break us down with their manipulation, lies and belittlement; then using the provided opportunity to shape our reality in their image. Don’t understand why you keep clinging to someone you know is bad (or bad for you)? The answer might lie in these toxic relationship behaviors that you’re normalizing.
Passive-aggressive manipulation
Because toxic people are master manipulators, they often rely on passive aggressive behavior to get what they want from the people around them. These behaviors can be as subtle as the “freeze out” whenever you say or do something they don’t like, or it can be as malicious as going behind your back to a family member or doing things you know will make the other person mad. It’s toxic and shows a lack of respect and unwillingness to communicate and resolve.
Constant scorecards
Scorecards in a relationship aren’t healthy, and they aren’t normal, but they are one of the favorite tools of the toxic and wicked partner. The scorecard happens when one party constantly holds the past against the other party, using it as a justification for their own poor behavior. “You did this, so I’m doing that,” behavior is juvenile, and only goes to reaffirm the mixed signals and erosion of trust that’s already underway.
Hostage situations
Toxic partners hold their partners and their relationships hostage with threats, subterfuge and various manipulations that make it difficult for the other party to find stable ground. The minute they’re crossed, things escalate, leading to threats and blackmail along the lines of, “If that’s how you’re going to be, I can’t date you,” and other statements that cause their partner to think that the whole relationship is off if they don’t comply. In this kind of relationship, neither party can trust the other and communication becomes unsafe.
Jealous outbursts
Bad people often play off their poor behavior by masking it in a false package of “care”. At its weakest, this caring might look like jealousy — in which the abusers claims that their deep love and affection for you causes them to lash out. When we take a deeper look at this excuse, however, we often find that it is empty. It’s just another manipulation meant to keep you in line and chained to their selfish desires.
Buy outs
More often than not, bad people know that they’re bad people. That’s what makes them bad. When they step out of line, they know it. Unable to feel any guilt or remorse, however, they’ll often buy their way out of trouble with you…just to keep your better concerns quiet. While this might work for a while, it can’t work forever. Our emotions will always out, and so will our truths and frustrations.
Endless blame games
Toxic people love nothing more than to blame others for everything that goes wrong in their lives (or, indeed, anything that goes wrong in the world). They’re unable to step up to the plate, and they’re unwilling to admit when they’ve pushed things too far. Instead of saying “Sorry — I was wrong,” they retaliate with, “Look what you made me do.” They live in a reality entirely of their own making, and in that making they are always the hero and everyone else around them is always the villain.
How to deal when you’ve chosen the wrong partner.
Ultimately, the only way to deal with a bad partner is to remove them — before you get there, however, there are some crucial steps you have to take. Before cutting the cord and moving on to your joy, you have to first identify where that joy lies and establish the boundaries and limits that protect that happiness in the future.
1. Stop limiting your joy
The first step in dealing with a bad or toxic partner is finding the limits of your own joy. When we journey to the edges of our happiness, we also journey to the very edges of what we are willing and unwilling to accept in our lives. Finding what makes us happy helps us to establish those things that provide us fulfillment, which can slowly empower us (in turn) to find freedom from the bad and toxic people in our lives.
Separate yourself from your partner (either physically or figuratively) and spend some one-on-one time with you. Get yourself a quiet space, and find a time when you won’t be interrupted. Use this time quieting your mind, and exploring the things you want from your live, vs. the things you hold in your life in this moment.Explore too your emotions, and how you want to feel vs. how you feel right now in your relationship.
These are all facets of self that can help us to uncover our boundaries, or the limits of who we are and what we want. Boundaries are a critical part of who we are, but they are the stepping stones to our happiness. If we want to form boundaries and limits that work — boundaries we can stand up for — they have to come from a place of fulfillment and they have to come from a place of true and authentic joy (worth fighting for). Think you’ve got a toxic partner that you might want to cut ties with? Armor yourself for that battle by knowing what inspires your true happiness.
2. Cut out emotions
Our emotions are powerful things, which have the ability to move us to both empowering and self-destructive places. When our emotions ride too high, they become obvious and easy to take advantage of and manipulate. When we become the masters of our own emotions, however, we gift ourselves with a new power that can protect us from the worst machinations of bad or toxic partners and people.
Start peeling back the layers of your emotions, and use that knowledge to master them so they can’t be usedagainst you. Bad people are master manipulators that know how to use your emotions, so pull back and analyze the way your emotions take control of you. Notice how you allow yourself to react and consider better ways you could harness those emotions to react in the future.
When you learn how to remove your emotions from the equation, you can become more subjective and realistic about your relationship. Removing our emotions from the constant conflicts, blow-ups and breakdowns that happen with a toxic partner can help us to see reality. Tapping into this reality reveals who our partner truly is and also allows us to better see the ways we are being taken advantage of or otherwise pushed around — as well as new avenues for escape which we might have otherwise missed.
3. Focus on solutions
Because there is so much negativity involved in toxic relationships, we can get caught up in the details and forget to the look at the full scope of where we’re at and where we want to go. Manipulators like to keep you fixated with conflict and pointless confrontations that keep you stuck, confused or otherwise uncomfortable with where you’re at and how you’re feeling. In order to combat this, we have to start to look for solutions and stop looking only at the problems in our lives and our relationships.
Once you know your partner is a bad person (and you’ve accepted it) you have to detach from that behavior and start getting focused on how you get yourself where you need to be in order to be be fulfilled, joyful and happy.
You cannot change the other person, and you cannot tell them what to do with their lives. The only person you can control is you. For this reason, it’s critical that we leave their conflicts behind and get focused on the solutions we can sensibly control in our own lives. What can you take charge of right now that can help equal major change in your life? Things like job promotions, new hobbies or even making new connections are a great place to start and a great way to get inspired and focused forward on the future.
4. Voice your truth
The one thing that truly bad or toxic people can’t stand is the truth. When we are faced with the truth, we are confrontedwith who we are and the decisions we’ve made. There’s nothing more uncomfortable or scary for an abusive or otherwise damaging partner. Speaking truth to the abuses of power gives us freedom, but it also uncovers new depths to our strengths and helps us to recognize those things in our lives which inspire true meaning.
Speak your truth — first to yourself, then to your partner — even if your voice shakes. Learn how to stand up for those things that matter, and learn to stand up for your own emotional wellbeing by making peace with the fact that you (and your needs and desires) are just as valuable as theirs.
If it’s not safe to express your truth to your partner, open up to a friend or someone else that you trust. Let them know what’s going on, and let them know that you need to get proactive about protecting your joy and making some changes. Express what direction you want to move and listen to the perspective and ideas they can provide. Often, by opening up to someone else that we love, we can find new avenues for forward movement that we might not otherwise have recognized on our own.
5. Be above it
Above all else, we have to learn to rise above the fear and toxic negativity that keeps us chained to poisonous or abusive relationships. Rising above means stepping up to the plate for our own needs and cutting ourselves off from the people who take more away from us than they give. It means committing to becoming a better version of ourselves and celebrating our strengths and victories outside of those who would bring us down with them.
Get help from an experienced professional, or find a way you can move on and free yourself from this person who is holding you back with their darkness. Rise above it. Become determined to be the best version of yourself you can possibly be, and stop looking for excuses or reasons to keep yourself chained to someone who cares for themselves and their desires only.
We can only transcend our worst relationships and find freedom by taking that freedom for ourselves. Toxic people don’t set their victims free. We do that by taking the initiative and getting proactive about creating the relationships and futures that we need in order to become fulfilled and functioning adults. Rise above your misery and set your sights on a future that’s happy and within your own control and making. You can be a victim forever, or you can become the hero in your own story. The choice is ultimately yours.
6. Re-write your story
When we are in a partnership, we are co-authors who come together to create a new and special journey through our mutual talents. It’s an intricate game, and one that requires us to balance, pace and develop our character at a rate that can be both baffling and strange. The end of a relationship, however? Rather than ending the story, is a chance to start a new volume…this time entirely on our own as the authors of our own unique stories.
Take charge of your destiny and commit to becoming the author of your own story. If you’re looking for hope in the wake of heartbreak, take a step back from everything that’s going on and turn your focus inside. What do you want from your life? What action can you take right now to change it? Draw-up the outline of the future you want to have and get committed to the journey of getting there.
Committing to the authorship of our lives is a powerful commitment and one that can’t be superseded by superficial ideals of romantic love, or even the insecurities that plague us. When we take charge of our lives, we take responsibility for our own happiness, which can further empower us to understand that true joy and validation come from within…not from without. Write a new story for yourself and know that the things that you want from your life and your partner are valid and worthy of achieving to the highest degree.
7. Autopsy and reset
When looking for hope, it’s important not to lose sight of the very real highs and lows of pain that you will experience in the wake of a relationship breakdown. We cannot allow ourselves to underestimate the damage that has been done, or the very real effects the breakup will have on our sense of self. In order to move forward, we have to accept this pain, assess the damage and through that find a way to move forward in the way that suits us best.
After you’ve had some distance and time to strengthen yourself, give yourself some time to look back over your relationship and analyze it for what it truly was and was not. Do a relationship autopsy, and consider the part you played in the collapse of your partnership and consider the part the other person played too. What do you want to do differently next time? What can you change about the way you handle relationships in future?
Reset your sense of relationships. Reset everything you knew on building a partnership, and start over. What you did last time didn’t work. What did? Apply those things to future partnerships and combine them with the discoveries you’ve made in the process. Lessons are the silver lining that we walk away with, and the charge which can empower us to shine all the brighter. Stop hiding from what happened and study it. Learn from it. Let it be the guide that allows you to see the things you need, and the things you need to avoid.
Putting it all together…
Think your partner is bad person? We don’t always choose our partners wisely, but it’s critical to accept that in order to move on. If your other half is someone who enjoys inflicting pain on others, or if they make your life miserable — you might be dealing with more than just a relationship on the rocks. It’s our responsibility to keep ourselves safe from those who would take advantage, and it’s our job to create the future that brings us happiness. Take charge of your destiny and get real about the toxic and defeating people in your life.
Find the limits to your joy and use those edges to form the boundaries that protect your wellbeing from a toxic or otherwise demeaning partner. Get in touch with your emotions, and control them in such a manner that it removes them from the grasp of someone who doesn’t have your best interests at heart. It’s hard to stand up for ourselves, but it’s necessary to create a future that is both fulfilling and meaningful. Start looking for the solutions, rather than focusing on the problems, and let go of the endless distractions your partner presents you with. They’re trying to take opportunities away from you. Will you keep allowing them to be a distraction? Speak your truth and reach out to friends and professionals you can trust; people who empower to move forward with action and purpose. Rise above it and become determined to become the best version of yourself. You aren’t defined by your romantic partners. You’re defined by yourself. Take action today and free yourself from a good partner gone bad.
