10 Ways to Ruin Your Relationship
Relationships can tolerate a reasonable amount of stress. No-one is perfect or should be expected to be. There are ten specific behaviors, however, which are highly likely to ruin your relationship if you engage in them. You could call them “deal-breakers.”
Relationship Behavior Problems – 10 Ways to Ruin Your Relationship
Every person has within their psyche a mature, rational, loving adult identity and a highly emotional, impulsive, needy, greedy child-like self which doesn’t understand the concepts of responsibility or consequences.
When your actions arise from the former part of your psyche, your behavior in relationships will be appropriate but if the child-like self is in charge (due to unresolved emotional wounds, for example), it’s much more likely that one or more of the following relationship-ruining behaviors will emerge.
1. Selfishness: The whole point of a relationship is to share your life with your partner. This involves sharing your thoughts, feelings, time and possessions with them as well. If you are withholding, your partner won’t feel that you really care about them.
A relationship is a union of two equals. Regarding your needs and feelings as more important than your partner’s will not endear you to them. Being selfish leads to alienation and disconnection, and breaks down the intimacy in a relationship.
2. Contempt: The reason to be with someone is that you care about them. This means that you should also like them, respect them, enjoy their company and be glad to know them. Ideally, you should be best friends as well as lovers.
Contempt is the antithesis of what a relationship should be based on. When a partner experiences your contempt, it will make them hurt and angry. What they really want is for you to make them happy.
3. Shaming and humiliation: People are very sensitive to shame. Being in a relationship is supposed to make someone feel good about themselves. It should increase their confidence and self-worth. Being made to feel stupid or small is the opposite of what a relationship should do for a person. If you humiliate your partner in front of other people, consider that to be the kiss of death for the relationship.
4. Nagging: People want to feel like their relationship is their refuge, their haven, their “safe space.” If you nag and harass your partner, they will feel assaulted and unsafe. In a good relationship, your partner will respect you and will be open to hearing about your valid needs and feelings. If they don’t respect you, no amount of nagging will make them change.
5. Undermining or supportive: Your partner should feel like they can depend on you. They should trust that you’ll encourage them when they need a boost and that you’ll be there for them when they’re down. If you aren’t supportive, your partner will feel unloved and abandoned.
If you do or say things which cause them to doubt their abilities or their value, they’ll realize that being in a relationship with you is actually worse than being on their own.
6. Controlling: One of the advantages of being an adult is that we become autonomous and self-regulating. Most adults enjoy and appreciate this and don’t want it taken away. If you try to control your partner, they could easily end up resenting you or even becoming enraged with you.
7. Comparing with others: Your partner wants to believe that you’re with them because you see them as a special individual with wonderful, unique qualities. When you compare them unfavorably to other people, you make them feel not at all special and you humiliate them. Why would they want to be with someone who makes them feel this way?
8. Never being satisfied with anything: One of the nicest things about a relationship is the feeling that someone gets when they realize they can make you happy. It gives your partner great pleasure and a sense of empowerment to know that something they’ve done has lifted your spirits or has improved the quality of your life.
If nothing is ever good enough for you and your partner feels like they can’t ever really make you happy, they’ll end up feeling helpless and hopeless around you. They’ll become demoralized in the relationship, which will ultimately lead to its demise.
9. Lack of commitment or cheating: A major reason for being in a relationship is to feel loved and secure. If you refuse to commit, you’ll cause your partner to feel vulnerable and unsure of your true feelings. This will frustrate them and lead to conflict.
If you flirt too overtly with other people or worse yet, are unfaithful, you will undermine any trust that had developed between you. Your partner might stay, but if they do, they will be hurt and angry and will take it out on you, either directly or in passive-aggressive behavior.
10. Abuse (verbal or physical): Some people believe that being in a relationship gives them license to take out their hurt or angry feelings on their partner. This is utterly wrong-headed. Loving someone means that you should treat them with consideration and respect.
There is no place for any sort of abuse in a relationship. When a relationship involves abuse it is by definition, a bad relationship. You have every right to occasionally become angry or upset with your partner, but it is never OK to behave abusively toward them.
Many women believe that screaming at their husband isn’t abuse in the way a man beating a woman is. They are wrong. Going off on your partner for any reason is not acceptable in a relationship and will eventually kill the love that was once there.
If you take responsibility for your behavior in your relationship and treat your partner with kindness and respect, you will maximize the possibility of its success. If instead, you allow the angry, selfish or impulsive parts of your psyche to be in charge, you are highly likely to alienate your partner’s affection and permanently ruin your relationship.
Click HERE to Connect with your Daily Horoscope!
You will also enjoy 5 Ways To Be Emotionally Independent In A Relationship
About the Author
Dr. Marcia Sirota is a Toronto-based board certified psychiatrist specializing in the treatment of trauma and addiction, as well as founder of the Ruthless Compassion Institute, whose mandate is to promote the philosophy of Ruthless Compassion and in so doing, improve the lives of people, everywhere. Connect at: marciasirotamd.com
