Relationships can be really tricky. On the one hand, you’ve met this person and you’re all loved up and seeing the world through rose colored glasses. On the other hand, you’re essentially merging two lives together — you have to consider someone else’s schedule and someone else’s needs. That kind of intimacy and balance of compromise is part of what makes a relationship meaningful. In a happy, healthy relationship, your partner often encourages you to be the best version of yourself.
However, there are a lot of behaviours in a relationship that can quickly turn things toxic. Perhaps your guy isn’t as health conscious as you are, and you find that his habits are negatively influencing you. Perhaps you can sense that things just aren’t working out, but you aren’t able to cut things off for good, so you just try to suffer through it. That can also have a massive impact on your health — and not in a good way!
Let’s face it — life is too short to be in an unhappy, toxic relationship that’s making us sick. Here are 15 signs we should all watch out for that our relationship may potentially be making us sick, and we need to dump him ASAP.
15He Loves Junk Food — So You Switch Up Your Diet Too
Everyone has heard this one — the idea that you immediately gain a bit of weight when you’re in a relationship because you’re feeling more comfortable with your partner. This isn’t always true, and if you were starving yourself to fit into your little black dress before meeting your partner, it might be fine to loosen up the reins a little. However, be careful of letting your partner’s eating habits switch yours up. If you normally follow an 80/20 kind of deal with mostly whole, healthy foods, and your partner is on a steady fast food diet? You’ll find yourself feeling seriously sick after a week or two of fries and burgers and pizza instead of your usual grain bowls and avocado and smoothies. Yes, you can totally opt to just not eat what he’s eating, but if you’re eating a lot of your meals together that can turn into a huge hassle.
14He Has A Different Sleep Schedule — And Doesn’t Care About Yours
At this point, everyone knows that getting enough sleep is an integral factor in staying healthy. When you’re constantly exhausted and sleep deprived, your body just doesn’t function the way it’s supposed to, and there are plenty of risks associated with long-term sleep deprivation. Now, there are plenty of people who make it work with different sleep schedules, for example someone who works shift work sleeping in the same bed as someone who has a 9 to 5. You just have to be considerate of your partner and make sure everyone is getting what they need. However, if your partner is depriving you of sleep because he keeps inconsiderately waltzing in at 2 a.m. when you have to be up at 6 the next morning, making a huge noise and waking you up, that’s an issue. You need enough sleep in order to stay healthy.
13He Teases You About Your Attempts To Get Fit
When you’re in a relationship, just like it’s easy to put on a few pounds because you’re more comfortable eating whatever you want around your partner, it’s easy to become a bit more sedentary. After all, when all you want to do is spend time snuggling with your sweetie, why not just stay home and watch Netflix rather than heading out for a night on the town? However, your partner should always be supportive of you being your best self. If you’ve expressed interest in joining a fun new workout class and he teases you endlessly about it, that’s not cool. If you say you want to go on a hiking date and he flat out refuses to do any activity where he can’t drive there, that’s not cool. You don’t both have to be gym bunnies with the exact same fitness goals, but your partner should support you trying to stay healthy.
12He’s A Smoker — And You’re Not
Everyone is entitled to make their own choices, but let’s face it — secondhand smoke is a huge danger to your health! Most non-smokers have pretty strong feelings about being exposed to all the toxic chemicals in cigarettes. Smoking causes a ton of health issues, from emphysema to lung cancer, and it’s one thing to make that decision for yourself and decide that the risk is worth it — it’s an entirely different thing to expose a non-smoker to some of those dangers just because you can’t stop yourself from lighting up. Plus, who wants their clothes to constantly smell like an ash tray because their partner is wafting smoke towards you several times a day? If you’re strictly anti-cigarette and your partner is constantly smoking around you, you need to have a talk with him, because that could be seriously affecting your health.
11You Don’t Do Things You Love Anymore
Most relationships involve a certain amount of compromise, but you should never give up everything you love and totally forsake your identity. After all, you were a fully formed, individual person with passions and hobbies before you were in a relationship — why would that change? Pursuing hobbies and passions has a significant impact on our lives — it helps us get through the stressful moments, it builds in a little bit of self-care and down time to ensure you don’t burn out from a tough work schedule. And, sooner or later, if you have to give up all the things you enjoy doing, you’ll find yourself resenting your partner in a major way. If you’re in a relationship where you feel like you don’t have any time for self-care and pursuing your own interests, sooner or later, that’s going to make you sick.
10Your Blood Pressure Is High
Constant stress over a long period of time is never good for the body — it’s why there are so many articles out there about the work/life balance and making sure you’re not too stressed out on the regular. However, it isn’t just things like jobs or bills that can spike your stress levels — relationship drama can majorly stress you out as well. And, when you get stressed, your heart pumps blood faster because it thinks there’s some type of danger or threat imminent beyond just emotional messiness, and going through that time and time again could very well lead to high blood pressure. So, if your relationship is packed with drama, take note — you could be majorly impacting your health by ignoring the stress that your relationship triggers, and it could make you sick in the long run. No guy is worth that!
9You’re Suddenly Always Anxious
Everyone has different personalities, and even if you don’t have legit full-blown anxiety, you might just be the type who has always been a bit of a worrier. It’s if your personality changes a bit that you have to worry. If you’ve always been a carefree person who doesn’t really get too anxious about life, and all of a sudden you find yourself constantly fretting about everything, it could be a sign that your relationship is toxic. After all, if you’re feeling anxious all the time, it could mean that you don’t feel safe or secure in your relationship, that you think your partner is going to leave you and you just don’t trust them, etc. Basically, it’s a big sign that something is wrong with your relationship that you need to address — and not that there’s something wrong with you.
8You Have A Constant Tension Headache
This goes back to the argument issue. It’s normal for couples to argue from time to time — it just happens. No couple is going to be completely in agreeance 100 percent of the time. However, if you’re in a relationship where you find yourself arguing constantly and disagreeing about everything, that’s a huge issue. Even if you’re not arguing and instead you’re just secretly seething, that could lead to the same issue — tension headaches. Tension headaches are very often kicked off by anger and similar emotions, so if you find yourself constantly struggling with the dull throbbing pain of a tension headache, that’s not a sign that you’re dehydrated or have been out in the sun too long or anything that might also cause headaches. It may be a sign that your relationship is making you sick.
7You’re Covered In Stress Hives
Of all the issues that the stress of a bad relationship can trigger, this may very well be the worst just because it’s so visible and physical. Sure, no one enjoys having headaches, and it’s certainly unhealthy to have something like high blood pressure for the long term. However, in the short term, hives are the worst — and, like all the other ailments that a bad relationship can yield, they’re all due to stress. If you’re experiencing a crazy amount of stress, your immune system can get a little wonky, and one of it’s responses to that is to bust out some crazy, itchy red bumps called hives. And, to make matters worse, a lower immune system means you’re more easily irritated by other things, such as certain soaps or detergents. So, basically, your bad relationship can make you an itchy mess — we know, it sucks.
6Your Stomach Just Feels Off
Stomach issues are the worst because it can be so hard to figure out what exactly is wrong. Perhaps you just ate something that didn’t agree with you; perhaps you ate too much; perhaps you ate something that was actually spoiled and can expect a disgusting case of food poisoning in your future. Whatever the case, there are a variety of ailments that can hit your stomach — and stress is one of them. If you’re stressing out day after day, your body goes haywire in a lot of ways, including your stomach getting messed up because you’re producing more acid, which can lead to heartburn. So, if you find yourself experiencing some stomach discomfort and your diet is basically the same as always, we’ve got news for you — it may be your relationship making you sick.
5You’re Experiencing Breakouts (And You Haven’t In A Long Time)
Again, this is another case where your body will tell you if something is wrong, even if it’s just that something is wrong emotionally. If you’re the type to always get pesky breakouts, well, that may just be the way your skin is. However, if you normally have crystal clear skin worthy of a dermatology advertisement and it suddenly starts erupting in angry red break-outs, it could be a sign that something is wrong — with your relationship. One of the many ways your body responds to stress is by pumping extra hormones, which makes your glands pump more oil. All that oil can get trapped up in your pores and follicles, and basically becomes the perfect breeding ground for breakouts. Seriously, it keeps coming back to the same things — if your relationship is stressing you out, your body is going to tell you, and you need to listen to it.
4You’re Losing Your Hair
Every woman loses a fair amount of strands every day, just through the regular cycle of old follicles being replaced by shiny new ones. However, if all of a sudden you find that you’re losing a way larger amount of hair than usual, that can be upsetting. And one of the main causes? You guessed it, stress. If you experience a ton of stress (aka you’re fighting with your partner every single night for weeks on end), it can make your hair enter what’s called a resting phase. And no, that doesn’t mean it just stops growing or something like that — it basically makes it so that a few months later, all those hair follicles fall out, meaning you’re dealing with some serious hair loss. Yikes! Seriously, no guy is worth that.
3He Takes Risks You Would Never Take
It’s good to have a partner who pushes you a little bit outside your comfort zone, who encourages you to do things you may really want to do but be afraid of whether you can or not. However, there’s a line between encouraging someone to take a risk on themselves, and just plain old encouraging risks. If your partner does things that make you feel unsafe, that can have a huge affect on your health. Besides just adding to your stress, there are plenty of things that his risk-taking may expose you to — ahem, STIs — that you normally would take a lot of precautions against. No glove, no love, ladies. No matter what your partner insists, if it’s something you really don’t feel comfortable with, he should be able to respect your decision.
2Your Partner Isn’t Affectionate
Physical affection can have a hugely beneficial impact on your health. All that cuddling and snuggling definitely makes you feel closer as a couple and increases intimacy in your relationship, but it also has an effect on your oxytocin levels. Namely, physical affection can cause your oxytocin levels to rise, flooding your body with those feel good hormones, and it can simultaneously cause your stress and blood pressure to go down. So, if for whatever reason your partner isn’t the type to be very physically affectionate, even when you’re alone, that can have a definite impact on your health. Plus, let’s be serious — half the reason you’re in a relationship is to have someone to snuggle with while you binge-watch the latest hot show on Netflix, right? A partner who hates that kind of thing is just no fun.
1You’ve Gained Weight
This is another one of those stress-provoked health issues rearing its ugly head. Many people joke about couples gaining weight because they get a little too comfortable with one another, but this isn’t anything to do with that. As some who have struggled with their weight may now, increased levels of stress lead to increased levels of cortisol, which sends a message to your body telling it to hold onto any excess fat because something awful may be in the works. It’s that old fight or flight response kicking in. And, to make things even worse, many of us are emotional eaters who may turn to junk food when things aren’t going well in our relationships — which can also cause your waistline to expand a little bit. There’s nothing wrong with gaining a few pounds, but if it’s in response to an unhealthy relationship, that’s not healthy.
