Understanding the psychology of toxic relationship patterns is a helpful step to break free from these cycles.
One of the key signs of being stuck in toxic relationship cycles is confusion. This is often reinforced by how much information may be contradictory you may see on social media.
To respect your time, mental energy, and safety, please know this article is written by the licensed marriage and family therapist and relational consultant, Krystal Mazzola Wood, LMFT who wrote the Toxic Relationship Recovery Workbook.
The Psychology of Toxic Relationship Dynamics
The psychology of toxic dynamics is often reduced to an endless process of labeling you, or your partner.
Have you come across terms that aim to explain why you may be stuck in toxic cycles like the following?
- Codependent?
- Love addiction?
- Narcissist?
- Bipolar?
- Borderline?
- Anxious Attachment?
- Avoidant Attachment?
- Disorganized Attachment?
Do you walk away feeling more confused, stuck, or embarrassed at times when you come across these terms? Perhaps the feeling comes up that if only you were better in some way you’d never be in a relationship with toxic patterns. Maybe then you find yourself stuck in self-blame that only makes it harder to know what you need or set healthy limits.
Or maybe you may feel more stuck because you can see what’s going on with your partner but you know you can’t change them? Perhaps you find yourself in mental loops obsessing over how to get your partner to understand what they need to change so you can have a healthy, happy relationship together.
When a person is in a toxic relationship it’s really common to feel confused and stuck. Often, a person knows that this relationship is hurting them and yet, the good parts make them want to stay.
Simplifying the Psychology of Toxic Relationships
To simplify breaking free from toxic relationships there is only one psychological truth that needs to be honored:
Attachment styles dictate if you experience relationships that are safe and supportive consistently or if your relationships tend to be distant, conflictual or consistently stressful.
Very simply, your attachment style reveals how you automatically want to show up in your relationships and what kind of love or attention you prefer receiving from others. This process is often unconscious at first because typically it stems from our earliest relationship experiences.
These attachment styles simply become an unconscious relationship blueprint that dictate the sorts of relationships we find ourselves in even if it’s not logical to feel trapped in toxic relationship cycles.
How Your Attachment Style Impacts Your Relationship Choices
Non-secure attachment creates relationship problems. You may learn more about attachment theory here, but very simply this theory explains how we form, and maintain, relationships psychologically.
For example, a person with an anxious attachment style may often feel being alone is worse than being in a toxic relationship. These people may find themselves stuck in mental loops obsessing over how to be better to make their partner less critical, for example. People with an anxious attachment style cling to relationships even as they harm them.
A person with avoidant attachment on the other hand still craves closeness deep down but their primary urge is to maintain their independence and freedom. They fear being suffocated by a relationship much more than abandonment. They often create distance in their relationships by working too many hours to spend quality time with their partner or cheating. However, they often stay in their relationship (or jump into a new one) because a person with an avoidant attachment style still wants closeness.
A person may also have an anxious-avoidant attachment style. Here they may cling to unavailable partners because deep down they like the distance that is created by their partner’s lack of accessibility. They may obsess over more closeness but may find themselves sabotaging relationships with a partner who is emotionally available because deep down this feels threatening.
You may assess your personal attachment style using the clinical assessment available in my Toxic Relationship Recovery Workbook.
Moving from Conflictual Love to Safe, Happy, Secure Love
When people are stuck in toxic relationship patterns, often both they and their partner have a non-secure attachment style. In fact, after 15 years of clinical practice, this is the unifying theme of all couples experiencing toxic relationship dynamics.
To move beyond a relationship that is marked by stress, conflict, and disconnection, a person must address their own attachment style. The goal is to become securely attached.
At its core, attachment theory reveals it is a core human need to seek, develop, and maintain connections with other human beings. It is not codependent or weak to want to be close to another human being.
In fact, the science shows that connection with others is essential to wellbeing. It may be an even greater need than exercising. For example, Holt-Lundstad found that being disconnected from other human beings is as harmful to health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
When a person is securely attached, they naturally accept this human need for closeness without internal conflict.
Scared, Survival Based Love Leads to Toxic Patterns
When a person is non-securely attached, they approach relationships with anxiety.
The person with anxious attachment wonders, deep down, if they are good enough and fears abandonment above all else. They will then work to have no sense of separation from their partner. They will want to spend all their time with them and know their partner’s every thought. Often, people with anxious attachment believe boundaries are unkind or unnecessary with your romantic partner. They fantasize about being one person sometimes.
This anxious attachment pattern which is based in fear naturally pushes their partner away – or reinforces enmeshment which actually prevents intimacy.
While not as explicitly stated as anxious attachment, a person with avoidant attachment is also nervous in their relationships. They want closeness because this is a human need yet they are often terrified of being suffocated by someone. Their overwhelming need for independence from their partner leaves them putting up walls with their partner. An avoidantly attached person may hear they never communicate but then they just shut down more which leads to a cycle in relationships in which one person pursues and then other withdraws. This is a toxic cycle as both people feel misunderstood, lonely, and stressed.
Secure Attachment Increases Confidence and Freedom
This pursue-withdraw cycle is mapped out in Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT). To interrupt this we must find the middle ground and cultivate secure attachment.
Dr. Sue Johnson who developed EFT explains why this balanced state is necessary for healthy relationships: “Secure dependence fosters autonomy and self-confidence. Secure dependence and autonomy are then two sides of the same coin, rather than dichotomies… The more securely connected we are, the more separate and different we can be.”
You can see this concept mapped out in my Differentiated Connection Framework:
Finding the Middle Ground to Have a Healthy Relationship
When a person’s sense of boundaries are too low, they want to be the same as their partner. This desire to be enmeshed – and the conflict of this – is perfectly described in the song, “I am you” by Nightmares on Wax. The lines, “I am you, you are me, so tell me why can’t we be?” highlight how enmeshment creates conflict.
This looks like trying to occupy the same circle as your partner rather than the Venn diagram shown above.
When you try to be “one” with your partner, you actually can’t tolerate their differences. Here any differences in opinion or emotional state become threatening. For instance, even your partner not being excited by the same thing as you can feel like a betrayal here. This intensity leads to a lot of conflict – and sweeping things under the rug.
Of course, when boundaries are too high, they become walls. You can imagine two circles far away from each other rather than the seeing it as Venn diagram. This is the natural urge of the person with avoidant attachment.
There’s a lot of distance when a person puts up walls naturally. Their partner will understandable want more closeness which leads to more distance (the pursue-withdraw) pattern. Or the partner will also disengage. These are both conflictual and lonely relationships. Two people completely disengaging from each other is a common contributor to divorce.
Healing a Toxic Relationship is Strategic
Breaking free from toxic relationship cycles is strategic.
It’s not based on hope. Nor do you have to wait for your partner to change.
Rather you simply decide to address your own attachment style which contributes to an imbalance in your relationship.
Even if there is abuse present in your relationship, you must address your own relationship patterns to break free. For instance, if you tolerate certain hurtful comments because you don’t want to rock the boat, you honor your need for respect as you become more internally securely attached.
Or if you put up walls, as you become securely attached, you learn that you are completely capable of tolerating the discomfort of emotional vulnerability with your partner to experience the peace and intimacy you crave.
Implementing the Strategy: Your Next Steps
Understanding more about the psychology that influences your toxic relationship dynamics is the first step. Now you can begin interrupting it strategically.
- Take the Relationship Safety Assessment: If you haven’t identified your specific score, start here. This data will allow you to better understand your personalized next steps.
- The DIY Path: If you are ready to begin incrementally make progress on your own to resolve your attachment style, The Toxic Relationship Recovery Workbook: Understand and Heal Attachment Wounds, Reclaim Your Confidence, and Build the Healthy Relationships You Deserve, provides clinical exercises to become securely attached.
- The Comprehensive Library: Access the Confidently Authentic Resource Library for practical and clinical skills to implement healthy boundaries, reduce negative inner dialogue, and communicate more effectively.
- The Strategic Private Partnership: For individuals ready to move beyond self-help into a permanent systemic solution to reclaim their mental focus, applications are open for the Secure Attachment System. This is a 6-month private partnership limited to 10 clients. You may apply here:
To your secure self,
Krystal Mazzola Wood, LMFT
Relational Consultant | Creator of the Secure Attachment System
At Confidently Authentic, we believe relationship transformation is a human lived experience requiring a human expert approach. All these articles are written from a human being with 15 years of clinical experience.
