Stop Kissing Toads

Does your relationship look like this—you have an argument, a really nasty, verbally or even physically abusive argument about nothing and everything. Often this argument ends in a break-up. Then silence. Each of you goes away to patch yourselves up, both questioning the relationship and maybe vowing never to return. Then somehow you weaken, have second thoughts. You can’t live with him and you can’t live without him. You know what is going to happen next, and you can’t face living without that connection. So you call him, or maybe he calls you. There is the apology; maybe you say sorry first and maybe you don’t. There is the wonderful banter between you as you reconnect. You both promise it will never happen again. And then there might be fabulous, passionate lovemaking that somehow repairs the damage and makes anything that happened before all right again. For a time, life goes on, but no matter how hard you try, no matter what you do differently, nothing changes. So you argue again and it feels as though you are swimming around in circles and getting nowhere. What’s worse is that you’ve seen this territory before—your last relationship was eerily similar, and maybe others before that. At times, you can’t believe how unlucky you’ve been with men. If you have been in a toxic relationship, you know how easy it can be to get caught with someone who doesn’t turn out to be who you thought he was. It’s so easy to believe you have met a frog who, with just one kiss, will turn into your handsome prince. So you kiss him, but you can’t believe your bad luck—he has turned into a toad yet again. Croak, croak! What happened? Where are all the nice guys that everyone else seems to find? Could it be something you did—a mistake you made—that broke the magic spell? When we keep kissing frogs that turn into toxic toads, it can make us feel as though there aren’t any nice men out there, or that they’re all taken, especially if we have given our time, love and energy to someone who has handled our emotions carelessly or, worse, has made us emotionally and physically unsafe. You know you’re in a toxic relationship if you: • Feel on edge or as if you are walking on eggshells around your partner. • Feel you need to work hard to please your partner. • Worry and ruminate about the relationship. • Feel confused—you are sure you have agreed to something but experience something different. • Feel restricted about where you can go and what you can do. • Feel physically or emotionally isolated. • Feel you cannot trust or rely on your partner. • Feel you have to take all the responsibility in the relationship. • Feel disappointed because you are being constantly let down. • Feel criticised and as though you can’t please your partner. • Feel like you are never really heard. • Feel as if you want to save him. If you recognise any of those feelings within yourself, it’s a good sign that you are in a toxic relationship. If you feel like that with every man you choose, it’s a sign that you’re repeating your mistakes. This book will help you understand why and how you’ve found yourself in relationships with the wrong men, and explain how to avoid making that mistake in the future. This book is for you if: • You are new to dating and you want to understand how to choose a worthwhile partner. • You have just been in a toxic relationship and you don’t want to repeat the experience. • You keep choosing or finding men who are not worth your time, effort or energy, and despair that there are no nice men out there. • You want to understand more about your relationship and why you keep having the same arguments with your partner. • You want to understand more about yourself and how you are in the relationship. • You can’t stop thinking about your partner, his problems, where he is, what he is doing and what his intentions are. It consumes your thoughts, your time, your consciousness and everything you do. I know what a toxic relationship looks like because I witnessed one growing up. It makes me sad that my mother’s relationship with my father was not a happy one. My mum created more challenges for herself than most people through the naive way that she understood life. I suspect some of this was because she was a product of her time. People didn’t talk about dysfunctional relationships when she was growing up, and so it was difficult for her to be educated about the difference between a healthy and a toxic relationship. Instead, she absorbed the stories she learned as a child and believed in the fairy godmother. She thought that if she was gorgeous and glamorous, any man would just love her and spoil her. She didn’t think about how toxic some men can be, understand that a relationship can go horribly wrong, or look critically and deeply at her choices. I can see very clearly, as I have grown in myself, that she didn’t look inside herself for happiness and expected it to be provided by someone else. But if you expect happiness from others, you set yourself up for disappointment. The only person you can rely on to look after you is you. My mother provided a valuable lesson for me. It was through observing her life that I made significant choices about my future relationships. I knew I had to get to know myself intimately to understand what I did and didn’t want. I had a list and I knew what I was looking for. I married young, and I chose my husband according to the list. Even now, he laughs remembering how I asked him, ‘Do you like camping?’ as if I enjoyed it. Subtly, I was interrogating him to make sure his interests, thoughts, values and morals were in alignment with mine. I was ensuring I made the right choice. I wasn’t going to believe in fairy stories—I had seen what that did to my mother. Of course, life with my husband hasn’t been perfect. No relationship is flawless. But as a result of taking my time, I made a decision, even though I was young, that enabled me to enjoy a long and successful relationship. I got married at twenty-one and have been with my husband for twenty-eight years at the time of writing this book. Given my family background, it’s not surprising that when I unexpectedly changed careers ten years ago, I became a relationships therapist. As part of studying to be a psychologist, I processed all of the experiences I had: from watching my mother and her struggles with men to seeing her eventually find true love with my stepfather; from understanding the choices I made and how I made them to finding my own life partner and navigating a long-term relationship. And now I want to share this wisdom with you. What this book is about This book is about teaching you how to avoid getting trapped in a toxic relationship. It’s about the toxic toad who traps you: what he is like, how he might think or feel, and how he disguises himself as a frog and plays on your hope that he will turn into your handsome prince. Understanding how to identify a toad in the early stages of a relationship is important. If you can understand how to recognise the signs that a man might not be worth your while, that he might be toxic and/or abusive, you can take steps to keep yourself safe, both physically and emotionally, before the relationship becomes complicated. I call this ‘Turning on your toadometer’. However, this book is not just about toads; it is also about you. I am going to invite you to think deeply about yourself and really understand what you bring to a relationship. You see, you can’t have a successful relationship unless you understand yourself—intimately. Why do I say that? Surely it is about him and finding your handsome prince? No. The reality is that the definition of a nice man, a handsome prince, means different things to different women. If you don’t know yourself and what is important to you, if you’re not clear about what you will and won’t do in a relationship and what you will and won’t have done to and for you, how can you