Ines Lopez

The term toxic relationship is often attached to relationships of personal nature, whether a family member, friend or someone you know. Perhaps even someone you know at work. We have all heard the term toxic environment used for home or professional spaces.

I always felt that working with someone is a bit like a relationship. When you become employer of a company you can feel a bit like you are married. Same when you have a client if you are a consultant or freelancer. You are meant to be faithful and follow the agreement between the two parties (your contract or vows) and there would be a meaningful exchange in return. For a personal marriage it would be love and support, amongst other things. For a professional one there would be money and the promise of professional fulfilment and growth of some kind.

Some people choose their professional “partner” out of necessity. Some out of ideals and motivation. Those are the lucky ones! But regardless of your initial sensations when entering into this professional marriage, sometimes, like in all relationships things can go south.

You may be doing all that you promised to do as part of your vows. You meet your targets, work your hours, communicate in the best way with your teammates across all directions, even do the occasional extra thing because you have a good heart and are invested in succeeding in this relationship.

In turn it would be normal for you to expect recognition from upper management and your peers (or your client). Perhaps an increase in your responsibilities and/or pay, as a reward for the extra mile and dedication that you are putting in (or a bonus or referral of some kind). Training opportunities and flexible working arrangements are also things that could be a great reward for high performance. More and more companies are turning into these measures since 2020, and rightly so.

But there is another possible scenario. It could be that despite your best efforts what you receive is demands for more work, criticism, shutting down your ideas and even questioning your values and your expetise. Because some work relationships can behave as a toxic relationship.

According to this article, a toxic relationship has the following traits:

1. Lack of support: Instead of feeling uplifted and encouraged, interactions often leave you feeling belittled, inadequate, or sabotaged. 

2. Persistent unhappiness: The relationship is plagued by constant tension, arguments, or feelings of dissatisfaction.

3. Communication breakdown: Communication often turns into insults, accusations, or complete silence, leaving issues unresolved and feelings unheard.

4. Control and dominance: A partner may dictate who the other can see, what they can do, or how they should think and feel. This control is a significant red flag of a toxic dynamic.

5. Neglect and manipulation: Emotional needs are consistently disregarded, and manipulation often keeps one partner in a state of compliance or guilt.

Now let’s convert these issues to the workplace:

1. Lack of support. Your employer demands you to carry out work without giving you the resources you need to fulfilled it in a sensible manner. For example demands your team to complete a task too big for the time and amount of personal available and the only solution is for the people involved to do a crazy undertaking to pull it off. And this is not an isolated incident, but a recurrence in how the business operates.
2. Persistent unhappiness. When you raise an issue to your management about the business culture or something that you propose to change things up they dismiss it and remind you that if you are not happy with where you are you can leave because they will have no problem in finding a replacement. That suggestion can be done very directly or in a very subtle way, for example reminding you that your end of the year performance is coming up soon.
3. Communication breakdown. Upper management ignores messages when there are urgent issues that need solving at your end. Then they back a few days later asking how it was resolved and complaining if the solution you had to figure out was not to their liking. Or saying simply thank you to a 1 page proposal on how to reduce costs and improve team morale and performance by adjusting the pricing structure of their services. Completely ignoring the issue raised.
4. Control and dominance. Your employer tries to change your values and work ethic in an effort to present themselves as a good employer and you as the “one that is wrong”. For example telling you that in your industry the standard is working 12 hours a day even if your contract says 8, so that you don’t see them as an abusive employer but as a company within the norm. Or perhaps they tell you that you should be grateful that they give you free lunch at work; they present it as the best benefit ever. But the truth is they are offering you incredible unhealthy food that tastes awful because that super benefit they are selling, they don’t even bother doing it properly. They just do it for the appearance and to be able to sell it as a corporate image talking point. But you should talk about it with gratitude regardless even if they are poisoning you slowly.
5. Neglect and manipulation. They don’t pay your payroll on time and they blame the accounting department for the mistakes, when everyone knows that the problem is the cashflow. Or perhaps they don’t allow you to go to the doctor if you are sick and they complaint that the business would suffer if you are not on your post, trying to guilt trip you and coerce you into choosing between your health and your livelihood. Or they are not interested in respecting the rest day that each worker had by law which is paramount for wellbeing and health. If they had a desire for something to be done in a particular day and that person was on their assigned rest day they would call them and ask them to do the task.

I have seen all these examples happening with my own eyes. During 2024 I worked with a client that left me feeling extremely angry. We weren’t a good match in the sense that despite how they were presenting themselves my intuition was telling me there was a lot of stuff underneath. But despite my inner reticence things seemed to flow very easily and so I agreed to work with them. After all my intuition could be wrong!

I spent all the time during our work together in a constant state of education/creating awareness/polite fight. Living through some of the examples shown above. In a constant battle of my integrity and my sense of justice and fairness. Which are some of my core values. Because I can’t reconcile asking people in my team to do things that I am not willing to do myself or that I think are unfair, like 16 hours shift without a clear reliable way of compensation for the consistent extra effort.

Almost every time that I suggested an improvement in their operations by doing a small investment into a machine or item that would translate in less human effort and operating costs in the long run they dismissed it. They preferred having humans exhausted doing tasks that could be resolved easily with machinery for less than 1,000 USD of investment or less. For them human labour was cheap and unlimited. So why investing if the result was only going to be employee wellbeing and increased productivity!

There are many other examples, that can be categorised within those 5 points above. One day I had enough and I finished the relationship. I was not willing to have more fights. Clearly they were not going to change their way of being, because I had already given them enough chances and arguments to modify their modus operandi. And I couldn’t put in jeopardy my values anymore, so the only thing left to do was divorce.

I left quite euphoric for putting my values first, it was not the first time my life that I did that but because of all the struggles it felt very significative and empowering. The following days were a bit of a haze of what had happened. And I felt a lot of anger bubbling up, which surprised me.

I investigated what was the anger about. I discovered that underneath it all there was a deep feeling of being rejected and misunderstood. A friend of mine reminded me those were symptoms experienced by someone that has been going through a toxic relationship. And she pointed out at my recent work experience. And then it hit me. Even if I came into that work relationship with my eyes open that it may not work (thanks intuition, you were spot on!) and even if I was the one that left the relationship, I still had to process the fact that they ignored all my efforts and most of my proposals. That I felt they rejected all the value that I was trying to offer them and they never understood who I was, what could I do for them and for their business. Who knows, perhaps they understood it clearly and they were looking for a replacement, because clearly we are from different planets when it comes to business management. But a part of me felt rejected and misunderstood regardless. And now I had to learn to heal from it so I could move on in a healthy way.

Giving myself space to grief all that could have been so I could let it all go. Trusting that I planted seeds where I could. Perhaps that was all I was meant to do. You can bring the water to the horse, but you can’t make the horse drink.

All this helped me reconnect at a deeper level with my values and my sense of self that had been invisible in a way because of all the times that I said things and I was ignored or ridiculed. I think that is the trickiest part, to know and trust that all you are about is ok, despite having experiences that tried to move you some other way. And to keep your values intact when you are seeing that every day you are put in a new dilemma. The good news is that after you pass those tests you will feel your values and your sense of worth expanded forever.

Like with all toxic relationships and difficult experiences in life, there are always gifts and lessons.

Do your inner work so you forgive yourself for allowing the situation to happen to you. Sooner or later that will appear in your emotions and it is important that at that time you are clear in the fact that everything happens for you. Identify the lessons in this experience and keep them in your heart. This is why you went through that stuff so you could learn and grow in a very particular way, and maybe in the future share that growth and advice others that may be going through something similar.

It is also important to forgive the other side of the equation. Despite whatever they have done holding a grudge only keeps you stuck in hate mode. You don’t forgive them for them, you forgive them for yourself. So you can fully let it all go and your body doesn’t hold to any of that dense emotion.

A massive gift of overcoming a toxic work relationship is the boost and self-esteem that you get once you realise you deserve more and you quit. Once you trust that there are other opportunities for you out there that will match your values better. And in doing that your energy will expand. Your frequency will change and you will attract opportunities from this new energetic point. New paths will open up, you just have to trust in your worth for the right relationships to show up.