2 Beliefs That Lead To Relationship Failure

And how to spot them in people in your life

We all have core beliefs about ourselves and other people that developed in our early childhood. If we were able to form healthy and secure attachments to our parents, these beliefs will be predominantly positive. On the other hand, if we failed to form secure attachments, we end up with negative core beliefs that affect our relationships with other people.

Here are two beliefs that often lead to the breakdown of relationships:

1) People Who Don’t Love Themselves

There is a cliche saying that you need to love yourself first to love someone else. I disagree — I think it’s possible not to love yourself but love someone else. But if you don’t love yourself, you will never accept that someone else can love you.

These are the types of people who do not wish to be themselves. They don’t like their personality traits — they feel ashamed of who they are or parts of who they are.

In a relationship, you will never be able to convince this person that you like them for who they are. They will doubt and suspect you forever regardless of any reassurance. Because they don’t like themselves, they don’t see how others can like them.

“…when we are driven by shame, we don’t just fear losing a relationship, but we live in terror that if we let anyone really get to know us, we would never be desired, pursued, or loved. In us, that fear can be worked out in the development of unhealthy denial, workaholism, perfectionism, chameleon-type behavior, and sadly, even revictimization… When we live in denial or present a false self out of fear… we will do anything to be accepted by people… When we begin to tell the truth about what happened to us we also begin the process of turning about from this type of idolatry…” ― Wendy Mahill

How to spot:

People with this core belief tend to be very private — they don’t ever reveal who they truly are to others. In fact, they go to extreme lengths to cover up their real personalities. This is because they don’t think their genuine personality can ever be accepted by others.

My first ex was like this. Before getting into a relationship, we were best friends for a year, and I had known him for three years overall. Yet he rarely revealed things about himself. As a result, it took me a long time to get to know him.

For example, I didn’t know he had a sister diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder until about six months before we got into a relationship. Actually, I didn’t even know he had a sister before that, which is odd — if you’ve been friends with someone for that long, you’d expect to know that information.

These are the kinds of qualities you should pay attention to — if you go on a date, think about how much information they shared compared to you. Did you both share the same amount of information or did they share less?

I always think about what I know about a person after any date. How much information they revealed, how they revealed it, their choice of words, whether they dodged any of my questions — all of these tell me a lot about a person.

People with this core belief may be the quiet ones, letting you do all the talk, or they may dominate the conversation, but when you think back to it, you will notice they haven’t revealed anything of substance.

I was once involved with someone who did 90% of the talking. However, he mainly spoke about work and his accomplishments. He rarely revealed anything personal, and he did his best to dodge my questions regarding his life. As a result, the conversation was essentially empty and superficial. So you will notice you struggle to go deep with these people even if you try.

2) People Who Believe Others Hate Them

These people didn’t feel loved by their caregivers for who they were, but instead of concealing unacceptable traits, they decided to go the opposite way and rebel. As a result, they have a very defensive character.

They have decided that if people want to hate them, so be it. They have learnt to enjoy being hated, and they will often go out of their way to be controversial and provocative. They will purposefully take on a persona that most people will find offensive.

In a relationship, they will tend to be highly immature and think they are great regardless of their toxic behaviours. They usually have no capacity for self-introspection.

Surprisingly, people can initially be very attracted to them because they seem authentic, open-minded, and non-judgmental. But eventually, they will push people to hate them with their toxic behaviours.

“Abused children need to hate and they need to be hated. And this is as a defence of the false hope of ever being loved…These kinds of children not only act out antisocially, but also seek to provoke hatred in parents, caregivers and authority figures.” — Donald Winnicott

How to spot:

You will notice they have a pronounced lack of shame about their faults and bad traits, even if these are unacceptable and outright immoral by any social standard. This is because they coped with their childhood by either never developing shame or repressing it completely.

Most of the time, not only do they lack shame, they actually draw their sense of pride and confidence from being outrageous. If there is such a thing called toxic self-love, these people practice it. They love everything about themselves which make other people hate them.

The best way to spot them is to pay attention to how they introduce themselves. They will often present themselves as “bad”. For example, they may openly tell you that they are a**holes, selfish, womanisers, cheated in past relationships, are not girlfriend/boyfriend material, have a criminal record, etc.

They also often purposefully seek out people who have socially unacceptable traits. You will notice in most cases they never seem to have any regular friends. They are always friends with the underdog — subcultured people, misfits, drug addicts, alcoholics, drug dealers, people with criminal records and anyone else that doesn’t seem to fit into society.

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