How To Tell If You’re In An Imperfect Or Toxic Marriage

All marriages have their ups and downs. Some days are worse than others. Is it just a phase? Is it normal?

How do you know if your marriage is normal or toxic? Let’s find out…

Arguments

In any marriage, you will have disagreements. You won’t agree on everything with your spouse all of the time. The difference between an imperfect marriage and a toxic marriage is what couples disagree about and how they resolve it.

Scenario 1) You told your spouse that you want to travel more, but your spouse feels like that is a waste of money. Every time the subject comes up, you get upset because your spouse doesn’t agree with you. Your spouse also gets upset because you don’t agree with them either.

Voices get a little loud, followed by you both giving each other the ‘silent treatment’ for the rest of the day. The next day you both talk things over, compromise and come to an agreement.

This is a typical behavior of how a couple in an imperfect marriage can have a disagreement, yet come to an agreement. You’ve bumped heads, yet were able to understand each other’s point of view, compromise and make a fair agreement.

An imperfect marriage has disagreements, yet ways of working things out respectably.

Scenario 2) You want to plan a trip with your family. You bring it up to your spouse.

He/she expresses that they don’t want to go on a trip. Tempers flare, voices are raised, personalities are attacked, negative thoughts happen, foul language is exchanged and maybe physical attacks.

This is NOT a healthy relationship!

Even if you bring yourself to let it go, that does not mean that this inappropriate behavior is supposed to happen nor should it be accepted in a marriage.

Communication is lacking, respect is gone and there was no compromising.

Forgiveness

No marriage is perfect, therefore, no one individual is either. This means everyone makes mistakes.

Do not confuse honest mistakes as doing something over and over making a conscious decision knowing the consequences. Some marriages have partners that do hurtful things to their spouse knowing it will devastate them.

A loving partner should not do something to a spouse knowing it will hurt them. In an imperfect marriage, if a spouse hurts the other, he/she does what ever possible to help heal the hurt, thus allowing an opportunity for forgiveness.

In an imperfect marriage, you will be in positions multiple times to forgive your partner. Here’s a light situation of forgiveness:

Your hubby has not fixed that broken fan in your bedroom for six years now. You may feel upset about it because you have asked multiple times, yet it hasn’t been done.

He’s said he’s tired after a long day of work, he doesn’t have the right tools or he will get to it. This resulted in no fixed fan for a few years.

You can choose to argue about the fan, all day every day until the fan is fixed (but you won’t), you can hire someone to fix it if you can’t fix it yourself, or you can accept he will fix it one day.

When he does fix it, you will be able to forgive him for not fixing it when you wanted it fixed. In a healthy marriage, you are able to able to recognize that arguing over a broken fan is just not worth a battle.

This separates healthy versus unhealthy choices in a marriage, thus resulting in a stronger marriage.

On the other hand, in a toxic marriage, you’ve asked your spouse to fix that broken fan and he refuses to make it a priority. You fuss at him over and over again.

You just can’t seem to understand why it’s so hard for him to get up and just fix that fan—and you refuse to accept his reasoning.

You think he’s being unreasonable and lazy, so you argue with him to get your point across until he fixes it. This makes him agitated and angry and makes him argue with you.

Because this argument happens frequently, he now begins to have strong negative feelings towards you, and because you both already don’t know how to communicate effectively with one another, this has now escalated to a screaming match ending with hurt and disconnect because of a broken fan.

Commitment

When you agree to get married, you promised to stay with your partner through good times and bad. In a healthy (imperfect) marriage, when you are facing a difficult time, each spouse commits to the marriage.

You do what you can to get through the tough time together. No one is saying it won’t be hard, but when you learn how to talk things through, take on the other’s perspective, respect your partner’s feelings, you learn how to make it through these times together.

You don’t give up and start fighting with each other or leave the marriage. These behaviors turn into ‘on and off’ relationships.

This is NOT a healthy marriage!

If you find yourself ‘breaking up’ and going ‘back together’ over and over, as a couple, you have not learned how to communicate, connect, respect nor commit to your marriage and to each other.

Your marriage will never get stronger or better with these kinds of actions.

If you’ve ‘broken up’ because you’ve been hurt really bad (physically or emotionally), disrespected, don’t feel safe, or simply frustrated of being in a broken marriage, then you really need to face reality and decide if this toxic marriage is worth running back to.

My advice is, once abuse has entered into your marriage, it has broken or weaken your ability to commit to something that is no longer loving or valuable for neither one of you.

You can’t commit to a marriage that doesn’t feel like one. A toxic marriage doesn’t have what a strong marriage has—love and kindness.

Abuse

A healthy (imperfect) marriage does not have any kind of abuse. Period! I can’t sugarcoat this one.

Your spouse should treat you (as you should treat them) with ALL the love in their heart. The husband appreciates his wife, as the wife appreciates her husband.

The thought of abuse, much less the actions of abuse, shows up in a toxic marriage, not an imperfect one.

Physical, emotional, mental, verbal, sexual, financial, neglect and spiritual abuse is abuse!!

If you or your spouse are finding yourselves in a place of hurt, pain, suffering, depression, confusion, betrayal, anxiety, severe stress, medical issues, many times over, you may be in a toxic marriage.

It is not safe nor healthy for you and should never be accepted. No marriage should have any abuse.

If you have identified that you are in an abusive marriage, please seek safety and/or gain the help of a professional for support.

Please seek help here is you think you are in an abusive relationship.

If you think that abuse is something all married couples go through, I’m here to tell you, it’s not!

Don’t make excuses, don’t deny it, stop putting yourself and your family through it. This is NOT a healthy choice nor a healthy marriage.

If you’re wondering if your marriage is experiencing normal challenges like every other marriage, there are certain signs you can look for to see if you are in a toxic marriage or not.

How do you know if your marriage is healthy or harmful?

Is your marriage lacking commitment and forgiveness? Are you arguing all the time? Do you feel like you are in an abusive marriage?

Pay close attention to what makes a healthy (imperfect) marriage and what creates a dysfunctional or toxic marriage.

If you haven’t guessed it by now, because no one is perfect, all marriages are imperfect, but there is a line between a healthy (imperfect) and a harmful (toxic) marriage. Use this information to help you decide where your marriage falls.

RELATED TOPIC: STAYING IN A LOVELESS MARRIAGE BECAUSE OF THE CHILDREN

If you’re finding yourself in an unhappy place too often, make the best decisions for you and your family.

Did you think that your marriage was a toxic or imperfect marriage? Did you and your spouse learn how to work through the challenges and your marriage got stronger? What helped you build your marriage into a stronger marriage? We’d love to hear from you.