It’s no secret that love is blinding. When we fall in love, our logic becomes clouded with affection for that person and a desire to keep them around, no matter what it costs. This, among other socialized and internalized expectations, often leads women to tolerate behaviors in relationships that are damaging to their happiness and health. Only by recognizing both the detriment of these behaviors and our own worth can we be sure to protect ourselves from letting love or loyalty place us in harm’s way. Here are 19 things women should never have to tolerate in their partnerships.
Lying
Of course, lying is one of the big ones. Healthy relationships are built on trust, and if you can’t rely on your partner to be honest with you, you really have nothing. Whether they lie about something big, like who they've been spending time with, or something small, like whether they vacuumed the bedroom, it’s all the same.
Manipulation
Manipulation in a relationship can manifest in many ways, but it’s essentially a method of mental control. It’s generally used to skirt responsibility, hide true intentions, and muddy the waters. Many of the following behaviors fall under the category of manipulation.
Infidelity
Once a cheater, always a cheater. This isn’t always the case, but if a person can change from being a cheater, they’re the exception, not the rule. Putting up with cheating is something no woman should ever do. It shows so many negative things, from a lack of respect to a lack of trustworthiness. You deserve someone who only wants you and never lets you forget it.
Lack of Communication
Your partner doesn’t need to tell you about every little thought in their head, but for the most part, they should be communicating their feelings rather than burying them deep, which can lead to resentment. They should also be keeping you relatively up-to-date on their whereabouts at whatever level of detail works for you as a couple.
Shaming
A toxic partner might shame you for past sexual experiences, which is a clear sign of jealousy and deep-seated insecurity. In such instances, there is nothing you can do to help them. They also might shame you for certain parts of your personality or appearance, which could really affect your self-esteem. You can’t allow an insecure partner to do the same thing to you.
Threats of Self Harm
Some people threaten self harm when they are fighting with their partner or if their partner tries to leave them. This is deeply manipulative and abusive. If your partner does this, it’s important to alert the police and/or their family. You can’t let it stop you from walking away.
Physical Abuse
Physical abuse is anytime someone attempts to touch your body with the intention of harming you and/or without consent. This sort of behavior, while obviously dangerous to your physical body, is also dangerous to your state of mind. It can impact confidence and security and cause anxiety, depression, PTSD, chronic fatigue, fertility issues, chronic pain, dissociation, and more. It can be incredibly hard to leave an abusive partner, but there are resources out there to help.
Snooping
Different couples have different expectations when it comes to privacy, particularly regarding devices. Some healthy couples have each other’s passwords but never use them without explicit consent, while some don’t have each other’s passwords but don’t feel a need to. Regardless, your partner should never go through your phone, computer, personal drawers, etc., unless you are okay with it.
Leaving Without Telling You Where They’re Going
Sometimes, in a fight, people need space to walk it off or just be alone to process. That is fine and often healthy, but it’s essential to tell your partner where you’re going and assure them that you are coming back. Not doing that can trigger fears of abandonment.
Weaponized Incompetence
Weaponized incompetence is a fairly new term for an age-old phenomenon. It means tactically avoiding responsibility by pretending to be incompetent so that you don’t have to do things. This is more commonly seen from men in straight relationships and fosters a sense that the woman is the only one who can do household chores. It’s selfish and manipulative and should be called out and shut down.
Stonewalling
This means refusing to converse with your partner and pulling away to create distance between you. It’s the opposite of communication. It can be used as a tool to manipulate your partner and force them to take blame without accepting any personal accountability. It’s a very hurtful action and damages trust, leaving your partner to feel alone and like you won’t fight for them or the relationship.
Gaslighting
A term that has blown up in recent years and is often misused, gaslighting means to psychologically control and manipulate someone by intentionally giving them misinformation that leads them to doubt their own reality and sanity. Gaslighting tends to be used very lightly with the rise of colloquial therapy speak, but it’s actually really cruel and shouldn’t be thrown around.
Siding With Their Family Over You
If your partner and your family are at odds, this can cause a great deal of tension and discomfort for everyone. When you commit to someone, though, you commit to being on their side and sticking up for them. This doesn’t mean they always get to be right, but it means they need to feel like you’re a team. If your partner chooses his family over you, it might not be the right relationship.
Lack of Reliability
It’s essential to be able to rely on your partner to show up for you. If you constantly have to check up on them to make sure they’re coming to an important dinner or coming home after work like they said they would, you’re not their partner, you’re their parent.
Attempts to Make You Jealous
In the second season of White Lotus, there is a couple named Cameron (Theo James) and Daphne (Meghann Fahy), whose relationship feeds off jealousy and jokes about cheating on and leaving one another. It’s justified by Daphne as keeping things interesting, which perhaps is true, but this is not a method that works for the majority of couples. A partner should never try to make you jealous, intimidate you, or make you insecure about the security of the relationship.
Sexual Coercion
Your partner should never try to push you to have sex when you’re not eager to do it. There are nuances to this which can make it very complicated, though. For example, some couples have a dynamic in which one partner tends to chase the other one, and both are happy with it. There are also times when one partner needs more sex than they are getting, and it’s causing issues. In that case, it’s important to communicate about it outside of the bedroom so nobody feels pressured in the moment.
Threats of Harm
Threats of physical (or emotional) harm should be taken just as seriously as the harm itself. These are used to control and hurt victims, and they very well could be a stepping stone to actual physical abuse.
Extreme Impulsivity
You don’t want to spend your life worried about your partner’s safety because they make reckless impulse decisions. You need to know that they are taking care of themselves because someone else relies on them.
Controlling Behavior
This could mean telling you what to wear, where to go, what to do for work, who to hang out with, and so much more. Some men are just controlling (toxic masculinity at its peak) and are not in a healthy place to be in a relationship. You are in charge of your own life, period.
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