Randi Gunther - Relationship Saboteurs: Overcoming the Ten Behaviors that Undermine Love

Relationships are formed from the first moment of our lives. The way we are touched, the approving or rejecting voices we hear, and the interactions we observe all become part of the positive and negative alchemy that makes each of us the unique person we are destined to become.

Our emotional and physical interactions with our childhood caretakers form the core of what we will expect in our adult relationships. Children are small, powerless people whose world comes to them prepackaged. They do not know whether their own experience is better or worse than it should be. They can only maneuver their way through a maze of approval and disapproval, and struggle to ensure that they will at least survive.

Sabotaging patterns can be learned at any time in life, but the earlier they are observed or experienced, the greater the chance they will be unconsciously internalized. When negative childhood patterns emerge in adult relationships, it may be difficult to discern where and how they originated, reconstructing them is like putting together a three-dimensional puzzle with pieces missing, but they hold the information we need to understand the present.

Childhood Interaction

If children are fortunate, they are exposed to successful relationships as they mature. They also receive accurate and supportive feedback on how their own personality traits might aid or hinder their relationships with family members. Sadly, many parents are unable to demonstrate successful relationship behaviors because they themselves have never learned these behaviors.

Ideally, throughout each developmental stage of life, people have opportunities to alter negative childhood patterns they may have developed. If they are not hindered by internalized limitations, they can seek more information and learn from the successes and failures of each new interaction. With each new opportunity, they can continually better the balance between satisfaction and sorrow.

Inherited Dysfunction

Family patterns are transferred from generation to generation. Unless questioned, they will become traditions, passed on exactly as they were learned.

Unfortunately, children cannot sort out dysfunctional interactions from those that are not dysfunctional. They experience both positive and negative interactions as an expected part of family life, and assume they are necessary components of every succeeding relationship. If their parents dont learn from their own mistakes while their children are young, they will pass on those dysfunctional patterns.

When those children become adults, they will likely create relationships that are similar to those they witnessed and experienced in childhood. Familiarity is a powerful magnet. It will draw people to re-create what they were taught, even if those lessons were unfulfilling or painful. Their partners will also come with their own set of healthy or damaged relationship expectations. Given the sheer possibility of crisscrossing positive and negative connections, its no wonder so many hopeful relationships stumble and fall over time.

Whether from childhood teachings or societal reinforcement, most people believe their relationships fail because they didnt choose the right partner or because they should have done something differently. Its easy to fall into rationalizing traps that encourage you to look for accountability outside of yourself. It feels better to believe these kinds of statements:

• My partner just isnt there for me.
• No matter what I do or say, he wont bend.
• All you have to do is make one big mistake, and shes gone.
• Hes so self-centered, hell never understand me.

Or you may rationalize with these kinds of assumptions:

• I just cant find anyone decent, so I start off compromising. Why do I even think I have a chance?
• No one makes it long-term anymore.
• Men are commitment phobic, and women only stay with guys who can take good care of them.

But what if you are the problem? What if you have had a series of relationships that ended before you wanted them to? Or what if youre in a long-term committed relationship that has become contaminated and you dont know what when wrong?

If you are someone who has started relationships determined to love and be loved, given everything you had to make the relationships work, yet watched them slowly fall apart no matter how hard you tried, your own behaviors may be the reason.

Its not easy for anyone to look at that possibility. New partners often refrain from telling you what they dont like, hoping your good qualities will outweigh your liabilities if they just hang on long enough. Established partners may feel cumulative resentments but either have not shared them or have resigned themselves to accepting those behaviors because youve been unwilling or unable to change them.

Whatever the case, sabotaging behaviors slowly build toxicity in a partnership that might otherwise have succeeded. What once may have been tolerable or even acceptable eventually evokes an emotionally allergic reaction in the partner of a saboteur.

It takes courage for any of us to turn the mirror of responsibility on ourselves. Its less painful to rationalize our own negative reactions as being justified by what others have done to us. But when your hopeful relationships always end in the same way, or your long-term relationships continue to falter, you are probably the one who has to change.

Most relationship saboteurs are not intentionally destructive. They dont set out to torment their partners or to destroy their relationships. In fact, most of the people Ive worked with who have repeatedly failed in their relationships are heartsick about it, and dont understand why their relationships havent worked out.

Some committed relationships do manage to survive despite long-term sabotaging interactions. The partners in a continual conflict-love relationship may be unwilling to give up what they treasure about each other, despite the cost. Their relationship continues to endure, but it will always operate on less than its full potential unless the partners stop their sabotaging behaviors.

Sabotaging behaviors can take many forms, but they share some common characteristics:

• They often are tolerable, even desirable to some partners at the beginning of a relationship.
• They are not meant to create the damage or disruption that they do.
• Their negative influence on a relationship evolves over time.