Five Obvious Behaviors That Ruin Relationships
Yet, most of us do them anyway.
If you want to accelerate your own healing and growth, get into a committed relationship, but make it a conscious one. It will be the best therapy you’ll ever give yourself.
When you commit to the full empowerment of those around you, your partner, or spouse, you’ll realize the full potential of who you are more quickly. That’s not why most of us enter relationships, but if you strive to have a conscious relationship with your partner, personal healing is inevitable.
Those we are intimate with have an uncanny way of acting as a mirror and showing us who we are.
ONE — You make unspoken agreements
So many people don’t make conscious agreements from the start.
We often start relationships with our hearts, not our heads. The habits we form with a partner are mostly unspoken agreements that develop as we go along and become implicit contracts.
It isn’t that we don’t have agreements, but that they get cemented by default, without a word spoken.
Leaving us to eventually wonder why we are unhappy when he does this or that, when she spends money differently from you, when he didn’t do ‘x’ at the beginning of the relationship, but now he does ‘x’ all the time.
Make agreements to lay the groundwork for a healthy relationship in the beginning.
Laying the foundation and talking about agreements before they are set unconsciously is vital to limiting misunderstanding and confusion later down the road.
TWO — You break spoken agreements
Once the agreement is spoken, make sure you keep the agreement. Safety in a relationship is non-negotiable.
When we keep our agreements, even small ones, it establishes trust and leads to an environment where both people can be vulnerable, making the relationship more solid.
Safety in a relationship is non-negotiable.
Feeling safe makes it possible for couples to open up with each other, drop their guards, and become present to each other.
The quickest way to lose faith in a partner is when they don’t keep their agreements, even the little ones. Often, breaking agreements is a way of discharging hidden anger, or, as some would label passive-aggressive behavior. A great example of this is when one partner always shows up late, this is one way of communicating hidden anger and does little to convey trust.
Only when you acknowledge a broken agreement can you move forward. It’s part of taking responsibility, saying, “I’m responsible for my part in this,” — it’s being a grown-up and not shifting blame onto your partner when an agreement gets broken.
THREE — You go negative
When communicating, frame the positive.
When you frame the positive first, before saying what you want, you have a better shot at conflict resolution than you would if you start with a negative.
Instead of starting a conversation with “you do this and that, and I can’t stand it,” start with the positive and the observable and leave how you feel for later.
Instead of “you never pick up after yourself,” try,
“We need to do better keeping the place clean. When I came home, I tripped on your shoes in the middle of the floor. We made an agreement to keep the shoes in the closet. Let’s keep our agreements.”
This may sound like a lot of work, but how partners talk to each other is way more important than what they talk about.
The best communicators are those who listen and seek to understand, which requires empathy; they do not react.
Communication, when not based on understanding, does not seek to connect, it causes distance. Communication that connects is not venting your anger and frustration onto your partner when they’ve made a mistake or disappoint you in some way.
Practice zero negativity.
If the space between you and your partner is filled with judgment, criticism, negativity, and shame, this will rupture the connection you have with your partner.
FOUR — You assume your partner is identical to you
Many of us enter into relationships thinking the person we choose is similar to us in a lot of ways.
When this doesn’t pan out, we get upset.
We object to our partner having different opinions from how we see it, maybe not right away when we are in the honeymoon stage, but eventually.
In Getting the Love You Want, Harville Hendrix says, “There is no time in our lives when our denial mechanism is more fully engaged than in the early stages of a love relationship.”
Hendrix continues,
“the source of the most obvious challenge comes from childhood wounding that leaves most of us so self-absorbed that we are unaware of the inner world of others.”
In an unconscious partnership, you insist your partner be more like you. In a conscious partnership, you move away from assumptions and judgment and toward curiosity about your partner.
You accept that your partner is not you, and you cherish their individuality. They have separate thoughts, feelings, and opinions from those you hold.
If you assume your partner’s thoughts are identical to yours, you can guarantee there will be a lot of miscommunication between you.
Don’t assume, ask.
Five — You take them for granted
We treat our partner with less respect than strangers sometimes.
There’s something about the seal of marriage, the legality of “I do,” that grants permission, for some, to act subpar with their partner — to give the best of themselves to everything in their lives — except their spouse.
Far too often we bring the best of ourselves to our work, friends, colleagues, children, even to our hobbies, but to our partners, we bring the leftovers.
Because we are the most comfortable and “real” with our immediate family, we save our harshest words for the people we think will be around forever.
Not a great strategy for closeness or meaningful intimacy. And not a holistic approach to relating with those we claim to love.
The people we want to spend our time with, and sometimes, our lives with are the most important. Yet, so often, we reserve our kindest words for strangers, for the cute barista who makes our daily morning espresso drink, our neighbors, our friend’s children, and not our own.
Brené Brown, the author of Daring Greatly, says,
“Love and belonging are the irreducible needs of all men, women, and children. We’re hardwired for connection — it’s what gives purpose and meaning to our lives. The absence of love, belonging, and connection always leads to suffering.”
As the universe itself is interconnected to all things, so do we want to experience connection, it is our nature to be connected. Our intimate relationships are the best way to experience deep connection.
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Jessica is a writer, an online entrepreneur, and a recovering Type A personality. She lives in Los Angeles with her extrovert daughter, two dogs, and two cats.
