When people have issues in their relationships, they are often quick to point the finger at the other person. But when it comes to self-sabotage, we are responsible for our own negative outcomes. Self-sabotage is any action that ensures your own failure. And the decision to self-sabotage is often not a conscious one. In fact, many of the reasons why people might get in their own way are rooted in subconscious beliefs and fears.
Why do people self-sabotage?
Self-sabotage can happen in any area of life (including relationships and dating) and for a variety of reasons, including:
- to avoid being vulnerable and possibly getting hurt by someone or something
- to maintain a sense of control in life by ensuring their own failure
- to try to prove an underlying limiting belief
- to avoid facing unfamiliar and unknown hardships, especially if they doubt their own ability to overcome hardship
- out of fear that they won’t be able to get what they want, or if they get it, they won’t be able to maintain it
5 Common Forms of Relationship Self-Sabotage
Though there are many ways that people may sabotage their own love life, these 5 examples are among the most common:
1. Making Assumptions
Often, people make assumptions about others without even realizing that they’re doing so. In fact, relying on assumptions can become such a habit that it may be hard to separate fact from assumption. And when these assumptions are based on our own negative beliefs and fears, they may be used to convince ourselves that we should give up on that date or break up with that partner. For example, if you have a fear of being cheated on, you may start making an assumption that your partner is being unfaithful. Then, when you believe that assumption to be true, you may use it as reasoning to sabotage the relationship.
2. Dreaming of Your Ideal Partner
When you constantly compare your partner (or a potential partner) to your image of who they “should” be, you may be sabotaging your relationship. While it’s important to have standards and deal-breakers, it may be tempting to dream of an ideal partner that is almost too perfect to even exist. And often, this idealization of a dream partner is a coping mechanism to maintain distance from others. After all, when no one is good enough for you, you never have to get too close or vulnerable. In this way, you may feel that you’re staying protected, but at the same time you’re sabotaging your chances at building relationships with real people.
3. Relying on Indirect Communication
When people feel insecure in relationships, it can be especially hard to practice assertiveness and clear communication. And when you stay passive and indirect, it leaves a lot of the relationship up to chance. Rather than speaking up for what you want or directly sharing your feelings, you may take a wait-and-see approach: let’s wait and see if they will be right for me, if they’ll understand me, if they’ll know what I need… But without assertiveness and clear, honest communication, it’s hard to build authentic connection in a relationship. In this way, relying on indirect communication and remaining insecure or passive can easily sabotage the future of a relationship.
4. Testing The Other Person & Their Boundaries
When someone has a subconscious belief that a relationship will fail, or that the other person will eventually leave them, they may behave in ways that hurts the other person. By acting in ways that go against the values of the relationship and of mutual respect, you can essentially test the other person to see how much they will tolerate. And often, they won’t tolerate much. In this way, you can intentionally push them to break up with you, or leave the relationship in such a damaged state that you can easily create your own exit strategy. For example, you may decide to flirt with people outside of the relationship, start talking down to your partner, or spend less time together. This can create some friction and distance, which will likely lead to the end of the relationship.
5. Pursuing Unavailable People
When you fall for unavailable people, you ensure that your relationship with them will never work out. That’s because they are clearly unavailable from the beginning: they are emotionally unavailable, they’re already in a relationship, or they state that they don’t want a relationship. But these types can be irresistible because, subconsciously, we know that there’s no chance it will ever work out. And in this way, we can keep ourselves from having to open up and become vulnerable in the way that a truly interested partner would require of us. However, this strategy to protect ourselves also sabotages ourselves.