This is what I have found to be a list of personality traits that produce and keep a relationship stuck in dysfunction and toxicity. The severity of these personality factors can go from mild to structural, with the latter forming a personality disorder.

10. Holding a grudge and being unforgiving – this comes from a paranoid personality disorder – it’s really difficult to resolve issues when somebody won’t let go of the past. This symptom really keeps people stuck. The toxicity lingers, so this traps the toxicity in so to speak. Also, over time, the original act is usually exaggerated and/or the interpretation becomes more negative than the circumstance was when it happened. Moreover, if healing does start to take place, when that grudge is remembered, when it’s retained and brought back, the healing seems to go back to square one.

9. Inappropriate provocative behaviour – specifically the kind we see with a histrionic personality disorder – it’s tied to infidelity and infidelity in relationships is toxic. When this is linked to narcissism, the person will take on this type of behaviour as being normal, they simply see no wrong in acting this way.

8. This tightly links to a sense of entitlement that we mostly see with narcissistic personalities. A sense of entitlement is really much more than believing you’re entitled to objects –  it’s that too though – people do think that they’re entitled to nice cars, nice clothes, nice things in general, but the reason this is toxic is because it also includes feelings. People with this symptom feel like other people’s feelings should be a certain way, they’re entitled for other people to feel a certain way about them – for example they’re entitled to be loved or cared for. When somebody feels that feelings are entitled, they don’t work to get those feelings through legitimate means like loving and caring for somebody else, so they don’t put a lot of effort into the relationship and when this happens, this creates toxicity, you have kind of a one-sided relationship where one person just expects everything to be given to them. Again, they deserve it, they’re entitled and the other person is really working hard to do that – it’s imbalanced and again, toxic. Another aspect of this, is that the person considers their feelings to be of prime importance, whereas the other person’s feelings are in some way, skewed. Lenghty efforts are being made in invalidating the other person’s feelings, while the feelings of the narcissist are primordial. This is also called gaslighting. Somehow, someway, the partner’s feelings have no right to exist.

7. Being arrogant, condescending and pretentious – this is from the narcissistic personality disorder as well – an arrogant attitude shuts down discussions because it frustrates people, so if you’re dealing with someone who’s arrogant, they’re going to frustrate you, it makes people not want to work to heal a relationship, or they might be too intimidated or confused to even try to implement health. Also, there’s a sense that arrogance should go away before progress is made, before healing is made in a relationship and this is really similar to what we see with feeling sorry and being forgiven. People look at that situation and say somebody should feel sorry first before they are forgiven, so not feeling sorry is a block to being forgiven. Being arrogant, again, is a block to a relationship making progress.

6. Reckless disregard for the safety of others – this is from an antisocial personality – feeling safe is the key part of any relationship. If someone disregards safety, there’s no way to feel comfortable or relaxed around them and without safety you don’t see things like tenderness, sensitivity and understanding, so just like the arrogance, the disregard for safety is kind of a block, it keeps a relationship from moving from a toxic place to a place without toxicity. In the case of a narcissistic personality, this can also manifest as a lack of proper assessment of someone else’s safety or well-being status, which is always going to be diminished in a way. For example, it is quite normal for this type of personality to see their partner in huge pain or discomfort and sort of brush it away, minimize it in some way, whereas when it comes to their own discomforts, those are presented as life-threatening and totally handicapping.

5. Inappropriate or constricted affect or coldness – this one is included in schizotypal and schizoid and the difficulty of this symptom is similar to some of the others – it blocks tenderness, sensitivity and understanding. If somebody’s not expressive, regardless of whether it’s intentional or not, that becomes toxic in so many types of relationships, so if somebody is not reacting in a way that communicates what they’re feeling or they’re not having that feeling in the first place, that contributes to toxicity. There’s a feeling of smashing into a wall of ice when interacting with this type of people, because they will literally block any type of intimacy, any bond-forming interaction between themselves and the other person. There will be little or no interest in what the other person is bringing in, or, when this is really toxic, even a disgust, a form of rejection of what is being shared.

4. Any extreme position on conscientiousness – this borrows from two personality disorders – on one side we have breaking the rules in the case of extremely low conscientiousness associated with APD (antisocial personality disorder) and on the other side we have over-conscientiousness, so perfectionism and rigidly adhering to rules – this is found in OCPD (obsessive-compulsive personality disorder). It doesn’t really matter which extreme, either one is toxic, although certainly it could be argued that low conscientiousness would be more toxic than high conscientiousness, but either way, both can be problematic. If you have an extreme characteristic like this where you’re breaking all the rules or you’re following them dogmatically, that could contribute to toxicity. It’s hard to trust somebody if they always break the rules or if somebody’s really fixated on the rules – they lose flexible thinking, so both roads really lead to a toxic relationship.

3. Being manipulative and deceitful – manipulative from NPD (narcissism) and deceitful from APD (anti-social). Now, technically, of course, you don’t have to lie to manipulate, but usually, that’s what happens when somebody’s trying to get something from you or they want you to do something you don’t want to do or get you to do something that’s not good for you – that’s toxic. A relationship can’t grow when manipulation and lying are present.

2. Lack of empathy – from the narcissistic personality disorder and a lack of remorse or guilt – antisocial personality disorder. When we see a lack of empathy, this really leads to many other problems – it prevents people from understanding the impact they have on other people, so it makes them feel justified when they’re doing things that are wrong. At some level, we really have to be able to empathize with other people in order to treat them appropriately and in order to treat them in a way that’s conducive to a positive and productive relationship. That doesn’t necessarily mean that one has to have affect of empathy – one could have cognitive empathy as well, where affective is feeling the same way someone else feels and cognitive is understanding how somebody feels, but what we see here with the lack of empathy, of course, we’re talking about lack of affective empathy – the cognitive empathy could still be in place but typically, with these two personality disorders, the cognitive empathy isn’t used effectively so the net effect is a lack of affect and cognitive empathy.

1. Aggression and anger – this is typical in antisocial personality and in borderline personality disorder – the aggression with the antisocial and the anger with borderline. This is simply the most dangerous, it’s directly toxic. If somebody’s aggressive or angry, there’s really no getting around the toxicity and no progress can be made when somebody’s aggressive and little or no progress can be made when somebody’s angry. Anger is a strong emotion and it’s tied to a lot of bad outcomes, so in toxic relationships, we may hear, from the person who’s being toxic, we hear things like, if you don’t let me be angry, you are invalidating my feelings – we see a lot of justification. People want to be able to express anger, they don’t want to be judged for being angry, which could be understandable in some circumstances, but it’s really mixing anger and manipulation together, they’re really looking for an excuse to continue unproductive and hurtful behaviour. While it may be understandable why somebody would feel angry, there’s really no excuse to act on anger. Also, if somebody has anger for a long period of time, they really need to seek help with that. Anger may be natural and in some cases normal, but when taken too far, especially in the context of relationships, it can be quite destructive.

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