Toxic relationships can be an addiction; you can be completely obsessed with something and have absolutely zero awareness of what kind of damage is being done to you; you just keep consuming and taking, whether it’s drugs or a toxic lover. Toxic relationships can range from having manipulators, controllers, abusers, and cheaters. This toxicity can do both physical and psychological damage to an individual, and it can be hurting you right now and you probably don’t even notice.

In a relationship, you believe that what you are in is completely healthy: both people are happy, no arguments, and happy times all around. The only problem is that you haven’t contacted any of your friends and family in a while, and your partner is asking a lot from you; they are controlling you. They have been demanding you to not talk to any of your friends, can’t go out without them going with you, and have ALWAYS been asking you for tasks. These are signs of a controller; they try to isolate you from everyone so they can have control over you without any outside perspectives peering in. From an outside perspective, your friends are wondering where you have been for the past few months, why haven’t you been contacting anyone? A victim of a controller could have 0 idea of what’s happening, only seeing the surface of their abuser. To avoid these things, “it’s knowing that there are things you don’t know that you don’t know”; being aware that there may be things past the surface level of something and that something CAN be hidden. Having this awareness can help spot the little things that an abuser might accidentally show.

Moving on from a psychologically abusive relationship, is a toxicity that is physically abusing. In a physically abusive relationship, there may be a lot of threats and there are usually a lot of obvious signs that a relationship is very abusive: a lot of yelling, hitting, slapping, etc. And although the signs are very apparent, leaving these relationships is hard. A lot of threats could be made to keep the victim in that environment, but that built bond keeps a victim there. An example of this in literature is in the story of Othello; after being manipulated into believing his wife is having an affair, Othello becomes extremely violent and abusive towards his wife, Desdemona, which causes a corruption in their relationship. At some point, Othello slaps Desdemona out of anger and calls her “very obedient” and to “Proceed you in your tears”. At this point in the story, Othello doesn’t even call her by her name or “wife”, just a woman; and with all this negative energy in their relationship, Desdemona continues to be extremely nice towards Othello. Desdemona never goes to tell anyone about Othello’s strange behaviors and never sits down with him to talk about it. And with that, Desdemona ends up being suffocated by her own husband, even blaming herself for her own death. Desdemona was very aware of the threat of Othello; her staying kept her in fear, and her keeping quiet kept her in danger. Awareness may not be enough to leave, and although it may be hard, reaching out to others about it is the best solution. 

We have seen some aspects in abusive/toxic relationships; how to spot them and avoid them. We saw the destructiveness of these toxic relationships and how the unknowns are not known and even connected it to one of the relationships in the tale of Othello.