Is my relationship toxic?

“Toxic” isn’t a clinical term, so no article can stamp it on your relationship, but the word usually points at one of two very different things. One is a hard season, where two stretched people fight more and support each other less; the other is a pattern of control, where one person monitors, restricts, threatens or punishes the other, and that is not normal friction in any season.

Why does it feel worse now than it used to?

Meet Bridget, 48. She’s a school district HR manager, and she’s been with Wes, 50, for five years. They live ten minutes apart. She has a 13-year-old daughter at home; his two sons are in college. Last year Wes was laid off, and in March Bridget’s mother moved into memory care. Since then, they’ve argued more than in the four years before combined. Last Sunday her daughter asked, from the stairs, whether everything was okay. That night Bridget typed four words into a search bar.

Some of what she’s living through has a well-studied shape. In a University of Michigan study of 815 recently unemployed job seekers and their partners, financial strain raised depressive symptoms in both people. That, in turn, led partners to offer less support and more undermining, and both lowered how satisfied they were with the relationship.1 In plain terms, hard times can make decent people harder to live with.

That doesn’t make the strain okay. It does mean “we fight more since the layoff” is a different fact from “I’m afraid of him.”

What makes something control instead of a hard season?

Control is about one person’s freedom, not a shared problem. The CDC counts psychological aggression as a form of intimate partner violence, including insulting or humiliating a partner and coercive control, which it describes as behaviors meant to monitor, control or threaten.2

In daily life that looks like:

• Checking your phone, messages or location.
• Controlling money, or your access to it.
• Keeping you from friends or family, or making you pay for seeing them.
• Threats, intimidation, or breaking things.
• Punishing you with silence until you give in.

None of those are normal friction, even in a terrible year.

The National Domestic Violence Hotline draws the line in a way that’s easy to test. All relationships have conflict, it says, but arguments shouldn’t turn into degrading or humiliating attacks, and if you can’t express yourself without fear of retaliation, you may be experiencing abuse.3

So try three questions. Does the hard stuff go both ways, or mostly one way? Does it ease when the stress eases? Can you say no, or disagree, without bracing first? A hard season usually goes both ways, eases when the stress does, and still leaves room to disagree. Control tends to fail that last question even on good weeks.

What about the kids hearing it?

Ordinary arguments, even loud ones you regret, aren’t the same as abuse, and this isn’t a guilt test. But if control or abuse is in the home, the research on children is clear enough to name. A 2023 systematic review of 18 studies found that children exposed to domestic violence can show more aggressive behavior, symptoms of post-traumatic stress, and slipping school performance and social skills, effects that can last.4

Separation doesn’t always end it. In interviews with 29 children in the UK and Finland, researchers found that fathers or father figures who used coercive control could keep directing it at the children after the couple split, through threats, monitoring and manipulation.5 That’s one reason an advocate’s safety plan usually covers the kids, the handoffs and the phones, not only the adults.

If your teenager is asking whether everything is okay, a calm, honest, age-right answer is better than pretending. Never ask them to take sides, carry messages or report on the other adult.

Will couples counseling fix it?

For a hard season, a good couples counselor can help a lot. When one partner is afraid, or there’s abuse, it’s a different situation. Government guidance from Washington County, Oregon, lists why couples counseling is not recommended when domestic violence is present.6 In that case, the safer route is individual support and an advocate, not a joint session.

Who should you talk to?

Start with someone who knows you: a friend, a sibling, a doctor. If anything on the control list is familiar, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline linked on this page. You don’t need to be sure it’s abuse, and you don’t need to have decided anything. Don’t confront a partner you’re afraid of. An advocate can help you think through what’s safe first.

If the stress is constant, or it’s affecting your sleep, work or patience with your kids, a licensed mental-health professional is the right help, whichever kind of trouble this turns out to be.

What to do this week

• Write four lines about the last bad night. What happened: “He slammed the cabinet and said I don’t care about money.” The reading: “He resents me now.” The fear: “This is who he is.” The next step: one thing that would tell you more.
• Sort the year. Put each hard moment in one of two piles: shared strain, or one person’s freedom. Look at which pile grows.
• Talk to one person outside the relationship, using a script below if it helps.
• Contact the Hotline if the second pile has anything in it.

What doesn’t the research show?

• The job-loss study followed unemployed people and their partners, so it shows how strain can spread, not how your relationship will go.1
• The children’s review covered domestic violence, not ordinary arguments, and its studies varied in design.4
• The post-separation study is qualitative, built on 29 children’s accounts.5
• No list can tell you what your partner intends, or name your relationship. It can help you see which pile your hard moments belong in.