Starting a new relationship is incredibly exciting. But on the journey to finding the ideal partner, many people end up in abusive relationships.
What’s worse – some may end up staying in these abusive relationships for a very long time…reliving the abuse day after day, while their self-esteem, self-worth, and confidence are pummeled.
In most cases, people aren’t aware that the person they’re falling in love with is an abuser. That’s why it’s important to go into a relationship having a strong list of non-negotiable relationship deal breakers.
This list is not something you should take lightly. Having this set of standards clearly defined can help save a lot of heartache.
Protect Yourself with These 10 Relationship Deal Breakers
A lot of people have a relationship deal breakers list for things like laziness, messiness, no sense of humor, or being tech-obsessed.
These are based on personal preferences.
The relationship deal breakers that should be on everyone’s list, though, have nothing to do with preferences – they have to do with emotional and physical safety. It’s crucial to be able to recognize the top relationship deal breakers in order to determine if your relationship is destined to last forever or meant to end right away.
1. Physical Abuse
You would probably never dream of hurting another person, but not everyone feels the same way. Some people have so much anger inside of them that they have a hard time controlling their temper. While everyone loses it every now in then because they’re frustrated, that doesn’t mean they have a right to take their anger out physically on their partner. Violence is never justified.
2. Verbal or Emotional Abuse
Degrading you, talking behind your back, making fun of you to their friends – these are red flag warnings of verbal and emotional abuse.
This type of abuse is often used in conjunction with physical abuse, but not always.
The difficult aspect of this type of abuse is that people can’t see emotional bruises. But these internal bruises and scars can last a lifetime.
Verbal and emotional abuse is often used as a form of manipulation and is common in situations of narcissistic abuse.
3. Financial Abuse
If your partner doesn’t like to work or contribute to the financial well-being of your family, this is a major red flag.
Not everyone likes to work – usually because they don’t like their job. But there are some people who simply refuse to make any effort to get and keep a job. They look for partners who are hard workers and rely on them.
Eventually, partners find themselves feeling frazzled, drained, and frustrated because they’re doing all the work – inside and outside the home. All the while, their partner is at home playing video games, hanging out with friends, or browsing social media all day.
Another form of financial abuse is manipulating a partner with money. How does this work?
The abuser controls the purse strings. They don’t allow their partner to work. Or, if they do, they demand that they give all their money to them to be kept in a joint account – an account which the abused partner is not allowed to access.
This abuser is intent on controlling and manipulating their partner.
4. Child Abuse
This one doesn’t need a lot of explaining. If someone ever lays a hand on your child or starts using manipulation, threats, or any other type of verbal abuse with them – get your child out of there!
But, it’s equally important to remove your child from their home environment if you have a narcissistic spouse or partner.
There’s no way to soft sell it – a narcissistic parent can cause deep emotional damage in children. It’s not dissimilar to the negative effects that alcoholism or other types of addiction have on families. This is because, at its core, the emotional wound for children is the same – an emotionally absent parent that loved something else (themselves, alcohol, drugs) more than their own children.
Adult children of alcoholics, for example, develop very common and typical coping mechanisms as children, which end up as dysfunctional behaviors when they become adults.
Dysfunctional behavior might include literally looking for love in all the wrong places, self-sabotage, and poor coping skills. Children who grow up in toxic environments will have a hard time coping in the outside world, so it’s best to get them out as early as you can.
5. An Affair
Some people are willing to forgive their partner after an affair. In some scenarios, a partner will forgive the cheater, who acts remorseful. Down the road, though, there’s another affair and then another. Serial cheating will only wreak havoc on your self-confidence. No one deserves to go through that, let alone continually put up with it.
If your partner has cheated more than once, you should be looking for the nearest exit.
6. A Partner Who Is Emotionally Unavailable
One of the wonderful elements of a healthy relationship is having someone that you can lean on. It’s not possible to do this, though, with someone who is emotionally unavailable.
Some people act this way because it reflects the environment they grew up in. This doesn’t mean it’s right, nor does it excuse them from not trying to be there for their partner. In fact, if your partner resists talking about emotions or being emotionally supportive (or worse, becomes angry when you bring up your feelings), they probably have an avoidant attachment style.
Avoidant attachment is associated with being isolated and emotionally distant. People with avoidant attachment styles basically turn off their need for any emotional or intimate attachment. They may come across as being agreeable and sweet, but whenever their partners express any emotion, the avoidant person becomes angry and dismissive.
Because of these tendencies, those with an avoidant attachment style make the worst partners for empaths, INFJs, and sensitive people. This category of avoidant attachment style includes narcissists, as well as the garden-variety love avoidant.
If you explain your concerns about their emotional unavailability and they refuse to even try to make some changes – it’s not worth your time to stick around. You should never be the only one to care in the relationship.
7. Cluster-B Personality Disorders – Including Narcissism
A lot of people deal with mental health conditions and diseases and are still able (with a lot of work) to be in a healthy relationship.
There are some, though, who have personality disorders that endanger your emotional and physical well-being.
Some of these fall under the category of cluster-B personality disorders. These can include:
- Narcissistic Personality Disorder
- Antisocial Personality Disorder
- Histrionic Personality Disorder
According to the Mayo Clinic, many of these disorders can be recognized by the overly emotional, dramatic, and often unpredictable behaviors. Those who have narcissistic personality disorder engage in narcissistic abuse of their partner, which can include manipulation.
If you have a partner who has a personality disorder and is refusing to get help, it’s healthier for you to leave.
8. Your child has started underperforming in school
If you have children and you live with an abuser, your children are at risk of developing brain abnormalities which can cause aggression, depression, ADD symptoms, and other forms of psychiatric illnesses.
Recent studies using brain scans have shown that chronic stress, negative thinking (brought on by emotional abuse), and spending time with unhealthy people actually hurts the brain!
It shrinks the hippocampus and prevents new neurons from forming. Simply put, chronic emotional abuse and living in a high-stress environment not only kills existing neurons, but it also prevents new ones from forming, leading to cognitive impairment or memory problems. [1]
So, if your child can’t seem to improve in school, you can chalk it up to living in a toxic environment.
But worse than that, it leads to PTSD, which is one of the most difficult injuries to treat as it is stored throughout the brain. [2] One of my readers recently wrote in to tell me that all of her children had been diagnosed with PTSD, sharing how remorseful she felt that she’d stayed in an abusive environment.
The takeaway here is that toxic stress derails healthy development in children and can affect brain development, leading to potential long-term consequences on learning, behavior, and health. [3]
You can see, then, how the old adage of “staying together for the sake of the children” is not only harmful on many levels, it’s the root of generational dysfunction which has led to the epidemic of clinical depression, anxiety, and wounded adults in our society today.
9. Threats have been made to either hurt or kill your pet or worse, they’ve actually done it
This might seem obvious, but I’ve worked with a few coaching clients whose partner hurt or killed a beloved pet…yet, they were still in the relationship.
If the narcissist in your life has harmed or killed your pet or your farm animal, this should be taken seriously, especially if you have children in the home. Not only does this point to the fact that your children could be the target of this psychopathy at some point, it would be highly damaging to your child’s emotional and mental well-being, scarring them for life.
If this happens, contact your local domestic violence center immediately for laws in your state and guidance on how to safely leave the relationship.
10. You’ve begun to compromise your personal integrity and values
In the past, you stood up for what you believed in, but inside your relationship you’ve started tolerating (and possibly taking part in) things that make you uncomfortable because, ironically, doing these things is how you’ve come to believe you can show your love to your partner.
You focus all your energies on how to make them love you and treat you once again like the soul mate they said you were. Paradoxically, in the “name of love,” you may have found yourself considering demeaning intimate activities that make you feel sick to the stomach when you think of them.
In other cases, you may have stopped leaving tips at restaurants, donating time or money, volunteering, and participating in other philanthropic activities because your partner has told you those things are a waste of time and money and mocks you for doing them.
Even worse, your children may have taken a back seat to the constant drama.
A caring and trusting person would never force you to participate in things that make you feel uncomfortable or insecure, nor would they coerce you to stop taking part in charitable activities.
If this person has led you to believe that you can only prove your love by violating your values, this is another clear relationship deal breaker.
Protect Yourself with Your Deal Breakers List
No one is going to be the perfect partner. Everyone does or says things they’re not proud of. And at some point, you’re going to hurt your partner’s feelings and they will hurt you. That’s just a part of being in a relationship with an imperfect human being.
But this does not excuse abuse.
Make a list of absolute relationship deal breakers before entering a relationship.
If you want to have a safe, healthy relationship, it needs to be full of love and respect. You need to show that to your partner, and they should show that to you.
It’s also important to show those things to yourself.
By creating a relationship deal-breakers list, you’ll be less likely to stay in an unhealthy relationship and more likely to keep your physical, mental, and emotional well-being intact. Emotional abuse is real, and once you have identified it, you must treat it with the same severity as you would physical abuse.
If you’re in a relationship that breaks most or all of your deal breakers, it’s probably time to focus on your exit plan as opposed to fruitlessly establishing bones of contention at this point. If you feel miserable and trapped in your relationship, that’s a problem that likely won’t improve on its own. Join the many wonderful folks in The Break Free Bootcamp who have finally found freedom and are healing their own lives.
[1] Bremner, J. D. (2006). Traumatic stress: effects on the brain. Retrieved December 30, 2016, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3181836/
[2] Your Brain on Trauma. (n.d.). Retrieved January 01, 2017, from https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-time-cure/201211/your-brain-trauma
[3] Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. (n.d.). Retrieved January 03, 2017, from http://developingchild.harvard.edu/
