Toxic relationships have a predictable pattern that can be learned. However, if you are in a toxic relationship, this pattern will be hard to spot since you’ve been in it all of your life. You will not realize that you are in a maze that you can’t get out of until you go through the healing process. If this describes you, you can just skip the healing part for now and focus on recognizing the stages of a toxic relationship. Two half-people trying to find themselves in each other do not create a whole relationship.

Love Bombing

The initial stage of a toxic relationship includes love bombing. This is an intense chemistry between two individuals that seems to leave the weaker person dreaming about the stronger person intensely at the start of the relationship. It is termed limerance in the mental health field. What is happening is that the more dominant person is displaying a facade that the weaker person falls for. Mirroring also happens during this stage. The weaker person tells the more dominant person all of their wants, needs, and desires, and the dominant player mirrors them. None of this is real as the weaker person will soon find out. 

Devaluation

After getting their victim on the hook, the relationship moves to a devaluation stage. All of a sudden, this person who was placed on a pedestal is no longer cutting it. The dominant person begins to throw subtle insults at their victim, keeping them in a state of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. This encourages the weaker person to start to make changes to appease the dominant person. It also keeps the weaker person thinking about what they can do to get the relationship back to how it started. Unfortunately, the initial stage of the relationship was a facade, which the weaker person will eventually discover.

Consistent Manipulation

The dominant player wants to keep their victim in fight, flight, freeze, or fawn mode at all times while isolating them. This keeps them off balance and reduces them to nothing more than an animal. The benefit of being human is the ability to reflect on our actions. When always in fight, flight, freeze, or fawn mode, there is little thinking being done, and that’s how the dominant player likes it. There is constant lying, gaslighting, negative hidden commands, playing the victim, silent treatment (ghosting), isolation, and much more that goes into keeping the weaker person in an animal-like state away from help. 

Raging / Withdrawal of love / Setup

Once the weaker person has had enough, they start to push back. This pushing back brings punishment from the dominant person. A punishment we’ve already discussed is the silent treatment, but if that doesn’t work, it gets to a much more dangerous state. To reassert their control, the dominant person may start to rage at the victim. This rage is dangerous because it is likely that the dominant person does not have any empathy and could lead to significant bodily injury or death. They will also try to love bomb again to get their victim back on the hamster wheel, or withdraw love to have their victim think that something is wrong with them. If the rage and heightened manipulation tactics do not work, they will eventually set up their victim by playing on their childhood wounds. The rage might be part of the setup that forces the victim to act in their best interest, confirming the wound as they take prejudiced video of the events to dish off to their flying monkeys.

Discard

The discard phase is when the dominant person throws the weaker person into the trash. They are no longer relevant, and they find another weak person to replace them. At this point, they can be cut off in a cold, remorseless manner, without any closure. The weaker person has effectively been replaced by a new one.

Smear Campaign

The weaker player does not realize the dominant one has seen the relationship as a game the entire time. As time goes on, the dominant player gossips behind their partner’s back while gaslighting them. After the discard phase, the abuser starts an elaborate smear campaign, reaching out to their flying monkeys. The flying monkey is someone who reflects back to the narcissist their image and is usually too weak to stand up to them as they chase their approval. During this phase, the partner’s image is smeared, and gossip is confirmed with prejudicial evidence, possibly obtained during the setup. This isolates the victim even more, as it seems all of their fake friends are turning against them.

Hoovering

This stage occurs after discard. The dominant person keeps tabs on the weaker person to keep them emotionally invested. This will string the weaker person along in case the new supply does not work out. This is termed “dick in the jar” by abusive people. At this stage, having sex is common, so that the weaker person can say something like, “I’m still getting some” to have a sense of pride that they are valuable.

Conclusion

The toxic relationship cycle is quite predictable, since unconscious choices primarily drive it. To get out of this cycle, you must make what is in your unconscious conscious. This includes integrating your shadow and reclaiming the parts of you that you were taught to disown. You must also learn to set healthy boundaries that are consistent with your being. This process is long, lonely, and arduous, but can have a profound positive impact on your quality of life.
‍