How to Navigate in a Toxic Relationship

How do you navigate when you notice signs of toxicity in your relationship? Below are 5 important things you can do to keep your heart healthy and at peace.

#1. Regularly schedule some time away to be alone with God.

It would be ideal if you could leave your home or your familiar environment and stay somewhere in nature where you can unplug. This will allow you to draw close to God and hear from Him directly. When you go away, you can truly let go of all the things pulling on you. It gives you the mental, emotional, and spiritual space away from the toxic relationship to really hear from God.

When you spend more time with God, the following things will happen:

You will have more peace. Jesus is the prince of peace, and he is always calling us to cast our cares on him. When you cast your cares on him, you receive His supernatural peace in exchange.
You will be more grounded in your identity in Jesus.
You will receive divine wisdom. When you ask God for wisdom, he gives it generously. When you ask God for guidance, he gives it to you. He is a good father who answers prayer. So by spending time with Him and asking Him for these things, He will give you a strategy on how to navigate the situation.
When you get away and spend time with God, you will be able in a better position to hear with He is saying to you, which will enable you to be better equipped on how to handle the relationship going forward.

#2 Communicate your feelings to the person.

If you're in a relationship with someone who puts you down, undermines you, or makes jobs at you, have a conversation with him or her to see what is going on. Remember that confrontation doesn't have to be confrontational. You can start the conversation by affirming the things you love about this person and then segway into how his or her words or behaviors affect you.

Your conversation may go one of two ways. You may succeed in having that heart-to-heart conversation, enlightening this person and motivating him or her to change their ways for the sake of preserving the relationship. Or, if you are dealing with someone who is narcissistic or who has a high-conflict personality, they may get hostile, making the issue to be about you and not them. They may retort, “It is you who is too sensitive and needs to change, not me!” Such people believe that if you have a problem with them, it is because there is something wrong with you.

That said, at least by initiating that conversation and hearing the response, you have clarity on where you stand in the relationship. You will now need to decide whether you will continue the relationship or adjust how you relate to them.

#3 Guard your heart by distancing yourself from this person or ending the relationship.

Proverbs 4:23 says, “Above all else, guard your heart for everything you do flows from it.” It is so important to guard your heart because it is the core out of which you function in life.

Proverbs 12:18 says that “thoughtless words cut like a sword,” so someone who is toxic is often notorious for being careless with their words. Their words have the effect of stabbing or cutting. Just as you wouldn't let someone stab or cut you with a real knife, you would want to avoid someone who is sharp with their tongue. So keep away from anyone who is reckless and destructive with their words because it can have the same effect on you emotionally and spiritually as being physically stabbed with a knife.

#4 Set boundaries. Practice saying no.

If you're not comfortable saying no on big issues, start with saying “no” on the smaller, minor things. This practice will help get your “no” muscle strong with a toxic person. It will also enable you to train that person on how to treat you, especially if you have not been able to set boundaries with him or her in the past.

The other person may resist the change. However, if you start small and stick with it, moving into the more serious boundary-setting, it will either force the other person to take ownership of their issues or bring swift closure to a relationship that was not good for you in the first place.

#5 Minimize contact with such people in your life and open your heart to new and healthy relationships.

The world is so big, and there are so many amazing people out there. Sometimes we think our world consists of just the people right in front of us or the people we're in a relationship with, but in reality, it doesn’t. The truth is, God, may have someone else He wants to bring into your life or new people to meet. But before he can introduce you, you may need to let go of the relationship you're in.

So be open to the new people God wants to bring in and the possibility of ending your relationship in order to make space for the new ones.

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Downloadable Resources 

• Signs of Spiritual Abuse or Cultish Environments Checklist 
• 20 Signs that You Might Be Experiencing Narcissistic Abuse
• How to Pray for a Narcissist Guide
• Healing from Gaslighting