Catch Cheating Wives and Husbands Before They Ruin You: 5 Sure-fire Ways To Sabotage Your Relationship

When we sabotage relationships, recognizing destructive behaviors is a vital step toward change.

Men of trauma often react in defensive manners. It’s understandable. Survivors would do anything not to relive such pain. It becomes a problem when these reactions find their way into the relationships we want to keep close. I consider this “reactive mode.”

Reactive mode is one where we give both positive and negative feedback to others without taking much time to clearly think through our response. It’s a kneejerk reaction we deploy in critical situations.

Which is why this type of response is more prevalent in familiar settings.

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One of those settings, of the utmost importance, is our immediate relationship…our relationship that really matters to us. I call these “significant relationships.”

Have you realized you tend to be more patient with people who are not as close, or important to you?

Have you wondered why you this is the case?

We want our near and dear to think well of us. We care about what they think.

This is not so much the case for those with whom we have a closer, or longer term relationship. We tend to take them for granted.

Am I the only one who shares these sentiments? I don’t think so.

What tends to happen in our busy world where our reactions are more immediate to those close to us?

Without realizing it, we sabotage those relationships. Have you lived these five signs of sabotage?

1. Stereotyping

Stereotyping is attributing to someone a set of qualities because of their background … a group to which they belong. In this case, it would be a family, friend or cultural group.

Let me illustrate with my own relationship.

My wife and I are from Jamaica. Certain stereotypes are attributed to most women from Jamaica. One of those is that they know how to cook and will follow the tradition of having weekend meals of soup and rice and peas with a meat dish.

When I married my wife, I could easily hold onto this tradition and expect her to have a meal or meals made on the weekend–typical of a Jamaican household.

My expectation, which would be not expressed because I assumed she should know this, even though she grew up in the States from early childhood, is this would be our weekend experience.

This has not been the case. I could easily get frustrated and become cold, distant and irritable if I chose. It’s a textbook example of how stereotyping could sabotage my relationship— simply because she didn’t follow tradition.

2. Relying On Old Information

Most of us who have had longterm relationships, have formed opinions of those individuals, which we hold onto. This leads into not giving a person a chance to grow, mature and change.

It is true, most of what we know of other people hasn’t been created out of thin air. They are the ones who gave us the script to read. They acted in certain ways and said things to give us data about them, which we now store.

However, that information given to us may have been presented under duress, during their immature stage of life, or in their attempt to create an unsustainable impression.

Now they have “grown” up and matured. They manage their stress. They no longer need to impress. But what do we do? We don’t let go of the past. It is used as leverage, or an excuse to behave a certain way.

This is one sure way of sabotaging your relationship with your mate, colleague, business partner or customer.

3. Practice Inflexibility

This is what we do with the Old Information stated above…we refuse to be flexible, to change.

Sometimes this is our way of remaining in control. It’s a powerthing. We have something with which to draw on when we need to have the upper hand. It is our Old Information Card.

We keep this card in our back pocket, so to speak. It might be perceived as a security weapon.

As much as it may serve you, it sure isn’t serving your relationships. On the contrary, it is slowly sabotaging it.

Have you experienced this? Have you done this?

Even though you’ve been faced with evidence running contrary to your old information, you refuse to let go of it. Why? It’s a manner of being in control.

4. Keep The Blame Game Alive

I’ve yet to find a relationship that survives when the blame game is played continuously.

I know there are times evidence can be overwhelming, where the blame lies squarely at the feet of another. I get that.

However, it is so much easier to shift the blame onto others rather than accept responsibility.

When we are in blame mode, we overlook the fact situations or circumstances are contributing factors to events. We make a lot of assumptions.

In my practice as a Marriage and Family Therapist, I see this a lot. Most times that is the posture couples take when they come into my office. They want me to align with one side as they point the blame at the other person for the demise of their relationship. Little do they know, this accomplishes only one thing: sabotaging the very relationship for which they want help.

When you stop the blamegame, you take responsibility for the role in your transpiring events.

5. Refuse To Take Responsibility

When you refuse to take responsibility, it is for one of these reasons: i) To save your skin; to look “good” (self preservation), or ii) Pride.

If you have other reasons, and there may very well be, I would love to hear them.

Researchers have a name for this behavior: it is called “selfserving bias.” What this means is that we perceive our behavior as more positive than others’ behavior. It is the tendency to take credit for the good things that happen to you while refusing to take blame for something that goes bad.

As I mentioned above, it is also an issue of pride. We don’t want to have to humble ourselves and say, “I did it. It’s my fault. I was wrong. Please forgive me.” Some people find apologizing exceedingly hard.

When we fail to take responsibility, blame others, remain inflexible, hold onto old information and stereotype, we have created a recipe for relationship failure.

Which of these surefire ways to sabotage relationships are you guilty of, or have you experienced?

I would like to know your thoughts. Please leave your feedback below.

July 22, 2015 by Kingsley Grant Leave a Comment