This Is How You Sabotage Your Own Relationship

You are a part of a truly great relationship where both you and your beloved other half are fully satisfied and really-really happy. Every moment, every day seems to be flowing quietly and calmly and then boom. All of sudden, things get mixed up and both of you start feeling like the safety and security of your relationship are quickly slipping away.

Most likely, you still don’t even realize what you have done wrong as you have suddenly grown cranky with your girlfriend for no actual reason. Or maybe there is a reason but the two of you have been really focused on making plans for the future so that you’ve actually overlooked some of the issues constantly pushing them away.

Probably the most common complaint we hear a lot from guys is that they do not really know why their previous relationships turned out to be unable to last. Generally speaking, men sabotage relationships pretty often and unless something major rises to put an end to a romantic partnership, it might be quite complicated to diagnose the fatal turn. Somehow, a breakup just tends to occur and a man is left reeling, wondering what incorrigible mistakes he had made. In order to shed some light on why guys have that self-sabotage behavior in relationships, we have found several common reasons why men may be sabotaging their romantic relationships without even realizing it.

Why men sabotage relationships – let’s be honest

A decent relationship consists in a truly solid partnership, inside of which two people keep contributing as much as it is needed. In some cases, it might be equal. But oftentimes, one partner feels like he/she needs a lot more. In general, that is just how it usually goes.

First of all, if one of you keeps a score in your relationship, this might make a sign the person may be self-sabotaging. Most family therapists claim that if you “begin making mental notes of how much you give in and sacrifice for your significant other, how much money you invest in your partnership, how much of the everyday chores you take upon yourself, how much time your partner spends away from you” and some other stuff, then it could eventually lead you to ring the curtain down on the relationship. So, if you go on asking yourself “why do I sabotage my relationship?”, here you’ve got some of the reasons:

1. You haven’t found the way to prioritize your relationship

If one partner is always busy, like you spend more time out of your couple rather than in, this might be the first warning sign that you keep avoiding developing your relationship.

Small doubt, nowadays all of us are actually busy: we have duties at work or university, need more time for friends and our favorite hobbies. With all that said, if most of the given things have taken precedence above your relationship, you might just be setting it up for an early failure.

Once you’ve found yourself constantly dodging relationship commitments, hold up and take stock of whether you are busy for real or you may be engaging in some kind of self-sabotage actions. If so, change the course and grant your relationship all the time it needs.

2. You’ve failed to maintain individuality

If you have suddenly caught yourself on relying on your other half simply for every little thing — there’s a good chance you are self-sabotaging. Moreover, if you want to be with your lover just each and every minute, this can be pointing out a growing feeling of insecurity, which in its turn is known to be harmful for your relationship.

If you want to find out an answer to “why do I sabotage my relationships?” you’d better check out if you are “overly needy,” in that you refuse to give your lover any room at all for her just to maintain some individuality, and you don’t take any room to be yourself either, so this fact usually spells doom for the entire relationship.

Instead of rushing in a pursuit of your partner all the time, take up a bit of space, for instance, re-establish some of the old friendships you might have possibly let drifting away or sign up for a new hobby. Give your relationship the space it needs to keep growing.

3. You were overly critical

If you used to find even the smallest fault in whatever your partner was doing, it could be signalizing of your bad need to sabotage your own relationship. Most psychologists on family issues affirm it is quite a bad pattern. A person gets overly critical with absolutely no matter what his lover does and it can never be good enough. Right after, you often get hurt and upset when your girlfriend doesn’t take the initiative or she just tunes out and shuts down. Instead of bitching about every single trifle, try to appreciate the finer things your romantic partner does. As soon as you start paying enough attention, you will likely discover a lot more opportunities to be complimenting rather than criticizing.

4. You were unreasonably jealous

If your last relationship with a girl was filled with jealousy, you were definitely self-sabotaging your partnership. We say getting into that jealousy mode might bring up the need to control your partner’s life. You always have to be aware of her whereabouts regardless who she is with and if the girl does not check in with you on the schedule created by you, it makes you become more and more possessive.

That much control and jealousy can never be healthy and can lead to your relations slowly fading out. Work on your excessive jealousy by reminding yourself that your significant other is still with you because she wants to be and that your jealousy can hardly help the partnership grow and progress.

5. You have never fully committed

If you constantly “have one foot out the door,” your sweetheart could have sensed it out. You’ve probably failed to fully commit to your girlfriend no matter how much she wished to get closer to you. For instance, she wanted to introduce you to her family and you have always been putting it off, or your girl wanted to take you along to her best friend’s home party and you replied: “I don't know anyone there.”

This could have also shown up through your not including her in your life if you were keeping her away from your work, hobbies or family. If you think you might have been purposely pulling your woman away, try making baby steps to fully integrate your partner into your life next time. It will certainly help your couple in the long run and keep you away from self-sabotaging.

6. Your expectations were too high

Try to recall it: perhaps you’d set your expectations too high, which finally resulted in a total disappointment in your relationship. Whether the bigger part of your expectations was based on Hollywood models or on some other relations you saw in real life, they were still probably not really healthy. Each romantic pairing is completely different and, thus, you must be looking for the possible ways to build your romance uniquely instead of setting unreasonable expectations.

We won’t deny the fact most of us are actually guilty of engaging in certain self-sabotaging actions at one time or another. At the same time, the important thing is to learn to recognize them before they get gigantic and if you sincerely desire your relationship to only be growing on, take some effort to set the reasonable expectations only.

How to stop self-sabotage in relationships

1. Always show willingness to look at your current patterns without all that self-criticism. Most likely, you have already learned some of those patterns in childhood from adults around you trusted and were repeating them so often they seem to have become a built-in part of your personality. Now take a look at things through the lens of love and note everything you see.

2. In order to avoid self sabotage relationships behaviors in the future, keep looking for the patterns you’ve learned and those people who used to teach them to you. Travel as far back in your life experience as possible to reveal the external dialogues you’ve finally internalized now.

3. If you want to get away with self sabotage in relationships, search for the trigger points in your present romantic relations that are likely to be setting off those unconscious behaviors that got you in trouble.

4. Pay closer attention to when exactly those triggers are most likely to show up by being in really close touch with your senses of vulnerability and resilience.

5. When you need to avoid self sabotage behavior in relationships, do not hesitate to reach out to people you respect and admire who you are sure to behave in a different manner in the same sorts of situations and notice what they do differently. After, come up with a plan to try those healthy behaviors instead of those you have unsuccessfully practiced in the past.

6. When you are trying to stop self sabotage in relationships, be sure to carefully select individuals who will provide you with their support in your attempts to discover new ways to behave in a relationship. Be extra careful with those who have a particular investment in you remaining the same. Those personalities will surely do their best to counter-sabotage your efforts.

7. Create some kind of a plan to always stay on track by showing more care for yourself first. Keep in mind, every minute of your life the behavior of yours will take you either closer or farther from that type of person you are trying so hard to become. Do not be putting yourself down when you slip. Once you start living your brand new life with those fresh behaviors, you will finally triumph over the old ones and leave all your wicked sabotaging patterns behind.

Wrapping All Up

Relationship saboteurs make quite well-intentioned individuals who are not really out to destroy their romantic relationships or let down their beloved partners. In fact, they are under the strong control of the self-destructive patterns which can eventually cause a breakup. And once such people learn to change those unhealthy patterns, they may start looking forward to building relations that might go deeper in commitment and connection.

There are only two ways available: you can either grow apart really slowly over some time or you can become each other’s endorsement on the road of love. Nobody says you and your lover have to be of one mind on every point. Still, you can be of one heart and on one way to becoming a better couple. Everyone is bound to change, but no one wants to be changed by force. If you don’t encourage some changes for yourself to be a better man, no one really will.