Finding someone who ticks all the boxes in the relationship department isn’t easy. Dating can sometimes be quite taxing so when you eventually do find that one person, you can finally relax.
Or maybe not.
Have you noticed yourself getting the ick over your partner lately, for no real reason? Your love bubble has finally popped and you’re starting to rethink the relationship. You could have valid concerns about the future of your relationship – or maybe you’re just in full self-sabotage mode.
The anxiouslovecoach on TikTok is a relationship and anxiety coach and she knows all about self-sabotaging as she nearly broke up her own relationship doing it.
It’s for this reason that she is sharing five different ways people might be purposely trying to ruin their own relationships.
You take your thoughts about your partner too literally
People often say the wrong things, this doesn’t mean that they are a bad partner. If you choose to focus on the bad things your partner has said, you might be trying to find issues within your relationship.
“This means, if your partner says something embarrassing in front of their family for dinner, they make a whole judgement on their character,” she says.
You don’t recognise an unconscious love of chaos
For some people, relationships are always about drama. They can’t imagine experiencing love without some sort of chaos. So, when they eventually do find someone who is drama-free, they feel like something in the relationship is off.
“They don’t recognise an unconscious love of chaos, maybe created from childhood. So when the relationship suddenly doesn’t have any drama it feels boring to them, so they bolt,” @anxiouslovecoach says.
You complain about issues within the relationship but have little to no solutions
No relationship comes without problems. However, if you aren’t finding any solutions to those problems you could be purposely trying to find problems in your relationship.
You don’t separate work and love
“If they’re a teacher they’re trying to teach their partner, if they’re a therapist they try to therapise their partner, stop,” she says. By doing this, you’re not allowing the relationship to simply be.
You can’t handle the ups and downs in relationships
Your partner is going to annoy you but this doesn’t you should continuously bring up their flaws or the issues in your relationship. “
They need to make all the unknowns, known. They need to answer all the unanswerable questions and they can’t relax,” she says.
So, why do we self-sabotage in relationships?
Counselling Directory member ’Dr Kirstie Fleetwood Meade previously told HuffPost UK that we might self-sabotage by choosing unhealthy romantic partners because we have difficulties around self-worth and self-esteem.
“We don’t believe that we are deserving of good things or stable relationships, or we don’t trust that we won’t be hurt in some way, so may unconsciously create situations which prove this to be true,” Meade says.
“We may also seek out someone with difficulties with a wish of wanting to ‘fix’ them in some way - perhaps it helps us feel we are resolving something from our childhood,” she adds.
If you feel like you’ve been intentionally harming your relationships you should try to learn about your patterns and unpack why you have unhealthy beliefs about yourself.