Have you ever questioned whether it's you who is toxic or if it's your partner?

Here are 4 simple and powerful steps to take to assess where the toxic cycles are coming from and how to end these.

Start empowering yourself.

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Set yourself up for relationship success and get the best marriage advice. Whether you're surviving infidelity, solving relationship problems, improving your relationship, growing your self-worth and confidence amidst a trauma bond, here's the place to be.

Helping you to feel relationship empowered and set you up for relationship success.

LinkedIn Dr Sarah Alsawy-Davies
Instagram @dr.sarahalsawy
Website www.healtraumabonding.com
info@healtraumabonding.com

This is ESSENTIAL for you to pay attention to - like you bathe, brush your teeth, drink water, and eat every day; you better look at your relationship with the same lens.

1. Absence of communication. This is not just simply saying "don't be defensive and don't criticise". This is about disconnecting, the inability to empathise, pulling apart, and keeping conversations on surface level.

2. Emotional disconnection. Scientific research shows that 80% of couples who are emotionally disconnected end in divorce.

3. Frequent arguments. This can go from disagreements to being unappreciated - but either way you are disconnected from what is truly meaningful at your core values.

4. Lack of intimacy. This is not just about having sex but it's about being emotionally vulnerable and willing to expose oneself to be held by the other (and vice versa).

5. Loss of trust. This can be built up but you are definitely going to need to start from ground zero, with the ingredients of safety, honesty, and transparency to create trust again.

6. Different life goals. You are not going to be the same as your partner (and you shouldn't be) but you need to be able to grow together. This is foundational for your relationship to flourish.

7. Indifference. This is simply when you've stopped investing as much as you would have previously, or as much as you would like to invest in a relationship.

8. Avoidance. Time together feels like a chore and you even invite others around as a reason to 'be together'.

9. Constant criticism. This can have a huge negative impact on your self-esteem and self-worth.

10. Inability to move forward together. Being stuck and stagnating - if you're stuck you're actually deteriorating (not staying the same).

Support the show

Set yourself up for relationship success and get the best marriage advice. Whether you're surviving infidelity, solving relationship problems, improving your relationship, growing your self-worth and confidence amidst a trauma bond, here's the place to be.

Helping you to feel relationship empowered and set you up for relationship success.

LinkedIn Dr Sarah Alsawy-Davies
Instagram @dr.sarahalsawy
Website www.healtraumabonding.com
info@healtraumabonding.com

Sex can either be healing or cause further trauma in a relationship.

Sex isn't just a physical act, but it's the spiritual, mental and emotional connection that's involved within a relationship. But that can be absolutely destroyed when it comes to a relationship with someone with narcissistic tendencies.

No shame - only openness and compassion here. Let's delve into the 10 top problems experienced in sex with a narcissist.

1. Sex entitlement - This brings the issue of 'consensual' vs 'wanted' sex - and you get pushed into saying yes to at least avoid other problems like criticism, rejection or infidelity.

2. Hypersensitivity to criticism - rejecting any form of feedback, and it can be a slippery slope into being gaslit.

3. Lack of empathy and forming emotional connection during an act so vulnerable.

4. Expectation of extreme praise and admiration (again, potential to gaslight)

5. Withholding sex as a form of punishment, rejection and shaming.

6. Sexual exploitation as a tool for manipulation and 'transaction'.

7. Sexual aggression - its a 'consentual' form of punishment which enforces the power imbalance.

8. Infidelity and social humiliation

9. Openly speaking about the bedroom with others to compare and contrast sexual experiences - forcing you to 'perform more and better' (sex becomes a performance, not an act of intimacy).

10. Gaslighting and sexual creation, creating a whole heap of shame if you're not playing ball.

Support the show

Set yourself up for relationship success and get the best marriage advice. Whether you're surviving infidelity, solving relationship problems, improving your relationship, growing your self-worth and confidence amidst a trauma bond, here's the place to be.

Helping you to feel relationship empowered and set you up for relationship success.

LinkedIn Dr Sarah Alsawy-Davies
Instagram @dr.sarahalsawy
Website www.healtraumabonding.com
info@healtraumabonding.com