5 Toxic Relationship Red Flags

There are a plethora of red flags that might pop up when you are in a toxic relationship and some of them you may notice while you are in the relationship and some that you may not notice until after you have departed. The 5 toxic red flags that I am going to walk through today are ones that I noticed before I left my ex-husband and how they specifically looked in our relationship.

Obsessive Control of His Cell Phone

One of the first red flags that I noticed with my ex-husband is that he was incredibly obsessive and secretive with his cell phone. He was on his cell phone constantly. He absolutely spent more hours in the day on his cell phone than he spent on anything else. What was he doing? Texting, surfing the web, posting on social media, and arguing with people on Twitter & Reddit. You name it, he was doing it all day ,every day. With this came neglecting tasks that needed to be accomplished, making us late, ignoring conversation at gatherings, and preventing us from communicating as a couple.

Not only was he on his cell phone constantly, he was also incredibly secretive and controlling of his phone. I was never suspicious of him and never creeped through his phone, but if I would grab his phone to take a picture, change a song that was playing, or hold it while he was doing something he would get very angry. He would yank his phone out of my hands and put it out of my reach or scream that he wanted to do it himself.

This is actually one of the behaviors that I spoke out to him about and tried to make improvements on through the advice of my therapist at the time who had suggested that we go out to dinner and I hold onto his phone (just in my pocket), so that we could have a real conversation about our relationship. After experiencing such an angry reaction from him regarding me holding the phone, we settled on that it had to stay in his pocket. That lasted for about 15 minutes, on one occasion. I couldn’t get him to do it again, even after expressing how I just wanted to be able to spend real time with him because I loved him.

Disappearing

The next red flag that I noticed in my relationship is that my ex-husband would disappear or not show up at things that he had plans of being at without warning. This happened several times in a row.

1. The first time was actually our anniversary and he “went to help his mom with something”, but three hours later he still wasn’t back (his mom lives 5 minutes away). I called a couple times to check in because we had anniversary dinner plans and I was worried something might have happened to him. When he finally answered he just angrily said he was on his way back and then never wanted to talk about it again.
2. The second time was with friends. He was supposed to go golfing with one of our mutual friends. They called me in a panic because he didn’t show up and they were concerned. Neither of us could get a hold of him for hours and he finally called them to say he was running late and neglected to tell me that he was okay. When we talked about it, it became his friend’s fault for not being flexible and playing golf hours later than they planned.
3. The last and biggest time that this happened was when we were fostering a toddler. I had just put the toddler to bed and got cleaned up for bed. When I came back out to tell my ex-husband goodnight, he was gone. When I called him he told me he went to get gas and a snack (yeah at 10:30 at night after we just ate ice cream…) and that he would be right back. I waited over an hour and he hadn’t come back yet. When I tired to talk about this experience, it became my fault and I was making too big of a deal about it because I should have been in bed and not known he left anyway.

Disrespect of Your Time

Another red flag that I noticed in my relationship with my ex-husband was that my time and big events in my life didn’t matter at all to him. Meaning that he would consistently be late, miss things, or “forget” about events that were special to me. Here are a few examples of how this looked for me and how it might look in your relationship as well.

• Forgetting your birthday or other special occasions
• Not showing up at celebrations of your accomplishments
• Making alternative plans on days that family plans were already established on
• Always being late for dates or appointments
• Always sleeping in/arriving home late so that you become responsible for tasks they didn’t want to do

Anger or Extreme Emotions

This red flag for me is so intertwined with all of the other red flags that I have mentioned so far because anger and extreme sadness were always apart of any conversation that I tried to have with my ex-husband about any of the toxic traits in our relationship and how they made me feel. No matter how I tried to have the conversation, everything, inevitably came back to being my fault and resulted in him being incredibly angry.

• Throwing items (game controllers, tennis rackets, remotes, etc.)
• Screaming
• Banging fists on walls, counters, steering wheel, etc.
• Doing any of these things while there was the presence of a gun/weapon within reach

Displays of anger that happen every single time that you try to have an important conversation with your partner is definitely a red flag that you should be looking out for. We are all human and we all get angry with people we are in relationships with on occasion. However, if that happens all of the time and causes you to walk on egg shells or feel like you are always in the wrong, that is a problem.

Refusal To Go To Therapy

The final red flag that really started pushing me to think that nothing was going to change in our relationship was the fact that my ex-husband was not willing to go to couple’s therapy to talk through what was going on between us. I was still very invested in staying with him and fixing our relationship because I loved him and was committed to our marriage. I had numerous conversations with him about getting us into couple’s therapy and he would agree and promise me that he would do so. This was a promise that he made me multiple times over a span of 8 months and we never went to couple’s therapy, he never went to regular therapy, and he was completely unwilling to talk with me about how I was feeling and what I needed from our relationship.

In Conclusion

If you are reading this and realizing that you are experiencing toxic red flags in your relationship take a deep breath to start. These don’t necessarily mean that your relationship is over. Try having a conversation with your partner about what you are feeling and what you need from your relationship. If they are willing to put in the work and meet you in the middle that is great! If you are in a relationship with a narcissist, they will never truly change because they can’t and they don’t want to change. You have to know what your boundaries are and what you are willing to accept from your partner and be sure that you are communicating those things clearly. If you are doing those things and you are not seeing any changes, you need to think about whether or not you should still be in that relationship given that it is toxic for you.

These are just 5 of the many red flags that I noticed in my narcissistic and toxic relationship. Keep your eye out for my next post in which I will discuss more red flags that I was able to see after I got out of my abusive marriage.