Maintaining a healthy relationship takes a lot of conscious commitment, awareness, care, communication skills, time, and effort. And even when you establish a highly functional relationship with your partner, there is a chance that your love will encounter challenges, including a once happy relationship turning into a toxic relationship.

There are no perfect matches, or couples that are flawlessly connected- this is because we, as humans, aren’t perfect and therefore do not have the capacity to create perfection in love. The truth is that most of the best relationships go through very difficult times. These times serve as a chance for us to work out our deeply rooted childhood wounds.

Here are the top 7 ways to heal your toxic relationship

Resist your urges to control your partner:

When you are in a relationship that lacks trust and true intimacy, it is very easy to develop a controlling behavior towards your partner.

Because of the fear involved you might have the irresistible desire to ask a lot of questions about the whereabouts of your partner, or their friends, you might even want to influence important decisions your partner is about to make, or in general, you would try very hard to make them behave and think in a way that you desire.

Be assertive:

Assertiveness is a great communication skill that will support you in managing your struggling relationship and at the same time help you in improving the connection with yourself.

The ability and decision to assert yourself are way healthier than going into passive-aggressive behavior that usually causes a lot of damage between you are your partner. Eventually, the partnership spirals into a toxic relationship.

Learn about it, practice it, share it with your spouse, and see what it brings to your love life.

Hold space for each other:

Make sure you are maintaining the connection with your partner even through times of friction and frustration.

When you isolate, ignore, and escape such circumstances, the gap between you is growing, and it gets more difficult to reach contentment and closeness.

Rise above emotional manipulation and mind games:

Are you the one playing mind games in your relationship or is it your partner? No matter who is introducing these toxic manipulation attempts, in order to heal your toxic relationship, you will need to resist both initiating or participating in mind games or gaslighting in relationships.

Engage in crucial conversations:

More love, more passion, and more intimacy are usually to be found on the other side of truth. In order to re-start your struggling love, you will need to start taking some emotional risks.

You can begin by engaging in a crucial conversation, bringing up the truths that you have been withholding from your partner, and then stay in dialogue even when it is uncomfortable or scary.

Practice gratitude:

We often take what we receive on a regular basis for granted and we don’t see the value and importance of what our partners bring to our life.

By doing daily gratitude, like sharing three things we appreciate about our partner before going to sleep can help to switch the attention from negative to positive and heal our relationship.