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In fact, everything is going well in the relationship, but several things are happening that are pushing the relationship more and more towards the abyss. And this is not due to external factors such as financial problems or stress from work. It comes from within. Sabotage in a relationship happens to many people.
Sabotage sometimes comes from both sides, sometimes from the partner and you can also be the culprit yourself. Because it is not always the partner’s fault. Sometimes we do the damage ourselves in the relationship with self-sabotaging behavior. You push your partner away, you constantly start fights over small things or you get angry at every little thing. These could all be signs that you are sabotaging the relationship. But why are you doing this?
Sabotage in relationships
Sabotage often involves a deliberate action with the aim of weakening someone’s position. For example, during war, sabotage was used to cause harm to the enemy, through disruption or destruction. With sabotage in a relationship you may not put a physical bomb under the relationship, but if we look at it figuratively, it doesn’t make much difference.
Self-sabotage is a sabotage that you often – not always – unconsciously do to yourself. It makes you keep yourself small. Self-sabotage can occur in many different aspects of your life. Study, career or relationships. When you believe that you are not valuable or not enough, you often fall back into the pattern of self-sabotage. In this way you hinder yourself and the consequences are enormous, because you cannot grow and progress in your career or relationship.
In fact, you prevent yourself from realizing your own dream life. The bad thing is that you are your own worst enemy, because you create the problem yourself. This also makes it all the more difficult to do something about it. But… it is certainly not impossible.
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12 examples of sabotaging behavior
Before you can change your behavior, it is important that you first recognize certain patterns in your own behavior. Do you recognize yourself in one of these examples? Then that first step has already been taken. So you are (unconsciously) sabotaging the relationship. Think carefully about why you are doing this.
Is it because of an event in the past? Do you have low self-esteem? Or are you actually not happy in the relationship, but you don’t dare to take the step to break up? Talk about it with your partner or seek help from friends, family or professional help if the cause is deeply rooted in you. These are 12 signs that show you that you are sabotaging the relationship.
1. You cling to your partner
Sometimes you can act like a child clinging to its parents. When you feel so desperate, you only cling to your partner even more. And that is not healthy behavior. In a relationship, both people should not be completely dependent on each other’s happiness.
2. You isolate yourself socially
If you are self-destructive, you also don’t want to talk to your friends or family. You are ashamed of your behavior, so you put up a wall to keep people out of your personal life. By pushing the people who care about you further and further away, they will never find out what is really going on. What happens if nothing changes? You are left alone and continue with self-destructive behavior until there is no one left for you at all.
3. You push your partner away
If you have gotten it into your head that you are worthless, undeserving of love, and no one really loves you, you will also think that you don’t deserve your partner’s love. So you will slowly push your partner away. You cancel plans, snap, make an elephant out of a mosquito, and find ways to make your partner angry with you. This can often happen completely unconsciously. You may not even realize it yourself… but your partner does.
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4. You act manipulatively and play games
When you feel powerless over love, life, and yourself, you may manipulate your partner to feel in control. You manipulate by completely ignoring him or her, pretending you don’t care about them or by making them jealous by bringing someone else into the picture. You play these games to feel good about yourself, but it never quite works out – no matter how hard you try.
5. You are looking for reasons to be dissatisfied
When you act in a self-destructive manner, you are never satisfied with happiness. You are always looking for ways to be dissatisfied and argue. You’re doing your best to recapture all the aspects of the relationship that once upset you, or in other words, you’re rehashing old cows.
6. You make everything worse than it is
You feel very insecure about yourself and therefore you project everything onto your partner. When you don’t feel good about yourself, it seems like everything goes wrong. This makes everything worse than it really is. You know it’s actually unfair to him or her, but you still can’t do anything about it.
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7. You don’t trust your partner
You don’t trust what your partner says or where he or she was. You jump to conclusions and conclude that he or she is lying. A trust issue is the worst way to ruin a relationship by sabotaging it like that. Trust is one of the most important values in a relationship: if it is not there, the relationship is on the verge of collapse.
8. You lie about everything
Sometimes you can’t stop the lies that keep coming out of your mouth. You’re lying to the person who cares about you and you don’t even know why. This web of lies will catch up with you in the future, but you cannot stop it.
9. You are very self-pitying
The negative voices in your head can cause you to feel sorry for yourself. You will then think that life is unfair and that everyone and everything is against you. Your partner wants to receive attention and love from you, but you are completely focused on yourself and how worthless you are. Self-pity takes over.
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10.You over-analyze everything
Do you tend to constantly assign meanings to certain things that are not actually there? You are constantly worrying, overthinking and analyzing. These sabotaging thoughts can mean the end of the relationship . For example, instead of listening to what your partner says, you fill in everything for him or her. You twist his or her words and look for other meanings behind the things your partner has said.
11. You’re cheating
Another example of self-destructive behavior is the inability to be loyal. You cheat by sleeping with others, meeting up secretly , or contacting exes. It may feel great in the moment and make you feel in control. But afterwards you will always feel terrible about your partner and about yourself.
12. You get angry about everything
You can’t control your mood. You get angry about everything. You snap and have explosive outbursts of anger when things don’t go well. Especially when your partner asks you what’s going on, you notice that you become uncontrollably angry.
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