All relationships can go through rough times and experience problems at one time or another. If there is genuine love between you and your partner these problems will not daunt you and you will want to save the relationship and rescue it from further decline. Things can be worked out if you and your spouse both exert effort to avert further troubles.

But at times things get so out of hand that it is not that easy to mend things up. If this is your case, you may be in a toxic relationship. How do you know that you are in one? There are signs to look for if you are indeed in one. These you need to know especially if you are at a point where you are to determine if it is worth it to save the relationship or not.

1. Your partner keeps on putting you down and makes you look bad to others

2. Your partner has been manipulating you and trying to making you into something you are not

3. You have given in to your partner's attempts to change you and you have done this just to satisfy him/her

4. Your partner has made you reliant on him/her that you have become an emotional wreck without them telling you what to do

5. Your partner has become a control freak and has ruled your whole being

6. Your partner professes his/her love but shows otherwise

You would think that if a person is in this situation, he or she would have left the relationship a long time ago. But in actuality, people in general stay in spite of these demonstrations. Frequently a person in this situation will all the more do everything to save the relationship.

The reason for this is that a relationship goes through a cycle with 3 stages:

1. Honeymoon stage, where a couple is mostly in seventh heaven and everything is faultless and it seems that nothing can go wrong

2. Problem stage, where the issues begin to happen take place

3. Reconciliation stage, where the couple kiss and make up and vow to repair their ways and do better

There is nothing wrong in going through these stages but what frequently happens is that the chain repeats itself and the couple goes through the same problems over and over again. Why? The underlying problem lies in the fact that the couple, when going through the reconciliation stage, do not deal with the source of the problem and only tackles the surface. Thus, whatever resolution they undertake to make up is short lived.

The more durable solution will be to sit down and talk about it and go into into what precisely caused the spat. No matter how big or small the issues are, couples should take time to deal with these issues and really work on it. They should establish what caused the problem and deal with the core cause. It is only when you have a definite identification of the true cause of the problem can you carry out enduring solutions to these. And when you have defined the real issues plaguing your relationship will you be able to make a determination if it is indeed worth it to save the relationship or not.