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9 Ways to Screw Up a Relationship

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1 — Guilting

wish

Guilt trips are one of the most com­mon games played in dys­func­tional rela­tion­ships. The pat­tern is “If you love me, then you will…” The expec­ta­tion is that your part­ner is there to meet your every need, and to ‘make’ you happy (horny, secure, safe, or whatever.)

It’s sort of as if peo­ple expect their part­ner to be a 24-hour genie, end­lessly ded­i­cated to meet­ing their every want and need.

Need­less to say, this doesn’t work. Ini­tially, dur­ing the very early stages of dat­ing, peo­ple tend to go out of their way to do this stuff. There’s this pan­icky ten­dency to say or do any­thing to keep the other per­son around. But, sooner or later, the nov­elty wears off, and then the expec­ta­tion changes from “I’ll do any­thing to keep you.” to, “If you love me, you’ll accept me as I am.”

Now, the joke is, I’ve never met a client who said, “If you love me, you’ll accept me as I am, and because I love you, I’ll accept you as you are.”

Guilt­ing is always in one direc­tion, and it’s based upon the fer­vently held belief that I am right and you are wrong.

In a sense, all of the Ways to Screw Up a Rela­tion­ship are based upon this fallacy.

Exper­i­ment # 1

Replace this behav­iour with this: Spend 30 days say­ing, “I accept you as you are.” As you upset your­self over some­thing you don’t like about your part­ner, say, “I’m judg­ing you and upset­ting myself.” In other words, rec­og­nize what you are doing, and thus stop expect­ing your part­ner to put your inter­ests first. After all, you don’t put your partner’s first, do you?

2 — Blaming

anger

Blam­ing is also com­mon. Rather than using ‘sweet per­sua­sion’ (guilt­ing) to change your part­ner, you rant and rave and finger-point. “My life is mis­er­able because of you! You need to change, and change right now!”

As you can see, this is sim­ply an esca­la­tion of guilt­ing. Manip­u­la­tion becomes demands and threats.

Mostly, what this gets you is the same thing thrown back at you, or a deflec­tive behav­iour like ‘the silent treat­ment,’ spend­ing time away from home with ‘friends,’ pas­sive — aggres­sive behav­iour, etc.

The main thing to get over in a rela­tion­ship is think­ing that rela­tion­ships are about chang­ing your part­ner. I like to say that your part­ner is always and only what he or she does. So, if your part­ner, 90% of the time, is quiet, and 10% of the time yells and stomps around, your part­ner is both of these behav­iours. The 10% is not an aberration—it’s what (s)he does 10% of the time.

You do not get to pick and choose who and how your part­ner is.

Exper­i­ment # 2

Replace this behav­iour with this: Spend 30 days notic­ing what your part­ner does in var­i­ous sit­u­a­tions, with­out com­ment. Here is a hint. You are not your partner’s mommy or daddy. You are not there to ‘fix’ your part­ner. Your only job is to decide whether you want to be with your part­ner as time goes by. Most healthy mar­riage part­ners say, “I haven’t been with her for 25 years. I’ve been with her one day at a time, by choice.”

3 — Comparing

Remem­ber essays, and ‘com­pare and con­trast?’ It’s how each of us learned to cat­e­go­rize things. Thus, some­thing is big­ger, com­pared to some­thing smaller. It’s also smaller than some­thing larger. We could say, then, that all char­ac­ter­is­tics are rel­a­tive.

Where this behav­iour becomes a prob­lem is when we com­pare each other to any form of arti­fi­cial, exter­nal stan­dard. “Other men treated me bet­ter than you do.” “Other women thought I’m a good lover.” “No one else yells at me.” “My last boyfriend treated me like a queen.”

As you see, this is exactly the same behav­iour as the last two—it’s just another tack. Instead of com­par­ing your part­ner to your imag­ined part­ner and find­ing him lack­ing, you com­pare him to an imag­i­nary third per­son, or the infa­mous “Every­one” (as in ‘Every­one knows…’)

You are likely notic­ing a pat­tern here: These behav­iours are all designed to change your part­ner (through var­i­ous ploys), and of course are des­tined to fail.

This par­tic­u­lar one is espe­cially weird, as it is all about expect­ing some­one to change to be more like your imag­i­nary friend.

Exper­i­ment # 3

Replace this behav­iour with this: Speak only for your­self, and only in the present. When tempted to com­pare, try, “I was won­der­ing if you would try this…” In other words, ask for a spe­cific thing. “I would like you to sit and talk with me for 15 min­utes,” is more effec­tive than, “All my other boyfriends wanted to talk with me.”

4 — Sex as a Weapon

sex

I was talk­ing to a client last week, and her rela­tion­ship wasn’t going well. She wasn’t sure about get­ting mar­ried, as her fiancé liked to walk out when stressed.

I made a com­ment about ask­ing him directly for what she wanted, and she said some­thing to the effect that she couldn’t keep him around with­out with­hold­ing sex. And then she felt used.

Sex is a phys­i­cal activ­ity, and a way to pro­cre­ate. Sex is not a weapon, a proof of ‘love,’ (as in, and I’ve actu­ally heard this, “I really enjoyed the sex so we must be in love,”) or an indi­ca­tor of any­thing other than that phys­i­cal plea­sure feels good.

To use sex as a bribery tool (“Be a good boy and, I’ll have sex with you”) is juve­nile and stupid.

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  1. Clear­ing Rela­tion­ship Gunk
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1 Comment
  1. WendyJ (Reply) on Thursday 9, 2007

    Wayne;

    This is really great, I’ve sent it off to all my nieces and nephews who are start­ing down the road of rela­tion­ships, I wish I would have known this when I was their age, instead of prac­tic­ing all nine ways in numer­ous rela­tion­ships – over and over again –until one day the light went on!

    Cheers!

    Wendy James


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