Is Your Body Rejecting Your Relationship?

Whether it's romantic or platonic, trust that when it's time to end things, you will feel it.

- WRITTEN BY GABRIELLE KASSEL

Pop culture likes to romanticize steamy, flawed connections to the point where passionate yet toxic dynamics have come to seem normal to impressionable audiences (see: Babygirl or Fifty Shades of Grey).

This kind of desensitization can bleed over into real life, making it harder to realize when a relationship has gone sour. Luckily, we all have something in our corner capable of signaling when it's truly time to move on—if only we knew how to listen.

You've probably questioned some of these signals before with friends over dinner, or maybe you saw them in a viral January 2025 Thread asking the question: "Girlies, how did you know your body was rejecting your ex?" About 2,000 people flocked to the comments section to share a range of physical and mental health symptoms they experienced in problematic relationships, including nausea, yeast infections, chronic UTIs, bacterial vaginosis, weight fluctuations, pain during sex, depression, anxiety, and more. Of course, all these issues could be attributed to more than just bad relationships, but let’s be clear: This is also 100 percent a real thing your body does.

“Toxic relationships can lead to toxic bodies,” says psychologist Candice Nicole Hargons, PhD, an associate professor at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health. Your body is constantly responding to your environment, including your relationships, adds licensed marriage and family therapist Cheryl Groskopf. “When you're in one that feels unsafe, inconsistent, or emotionally draining, your nervous system reacts.”