Why You Keep Having Unhealthy Relationships (And How to Stop)
This article was originally published on Soulaia.com. This version has been lightly updated over time to reflect my current voice, links, and evolving understanding while preserving the heart and core message of the original article.
Relationships can be some of the most joyful, meaningful, and growth-filled experiences we have — and they can also be some of the most challenging. How we show up in relationships is often shaped by our past experiences, the examples we've learned from, the ways we've learned to protect ourselves, and our willingness to do things differently.
Most of us don't enter relationships intending to create disconnection, confusion, or unnecessary heartache. And yet, many of us find ourselves repeating familiar patterns — patterns that may have once helped us feel safe but that no longer support the kind of connection we truly want. So, in the spirit of keeping things light, honest, and human, what follows is a playful guide to some of the ways we unknowingly make relationships harder than they need to be.
If you recognize yourself in any of the examples below, welcome to the club. Most of us have tried at least a few of these strategies in the name of love, safety, or self-protection. No shame or judgment. Just an invitation to notice what isn't working so we can create something different.
How Not To Do It
Expect your partner to meet all of your needs.
Take your happiness and place it solely in your partner’s hands. Expect them to make sure that everything they do causes you to beam with joy. Expect them to be your predominant source of physical, material, psychological, and social support. Place the responsibility of your emotional, sexual, and life satisfaction solely on them, and don’t forget to remind them that it’s them who is in charge of building you the world that you want.
Being aware of, communicating, and ensuring the relationship honors your needs is key to a healthy, fulfilling relationship. Expecting your partner to meet all of your needs, however, is not. This may be part of why the word "needy" gets used so often in relationships, even though having needs is deeply human. When you know your needs and work together with your partner to honor them, relationships often feel more connected, sustainable, and supportive. When we expect our partner to meet all of our needs — and relieve us of any responsibility for caring for ourselves or co-creating a relationship that supports us — we often place an impossible amount of pressure on the relationship. A product of society’s well-ingrained idea that finding "the one" will make all our problems disappear, this expectation of having another person fulfill all our needs is something many of us come face to face with at some point or another. Then, sooner or later, we discover that no one person can carry that responsibility for us.
If you want to keep dating unconsciously and creating an unhealthy and eventually unhappy relationship, place loads of expectations on your partner, get really angry or upset when your partner doesn’t meet them, and eventually break up with them because they’re not doing their “job” of meeting your numerous needs. If you’re ready to do it consciously, acknowledge your needs and share the responsibility of meeting those needs with your partner, rather than placing the onus fully on them. Meeting all of someone else’s needs is a tall order that places a lot of pressure on a person, yet we constantly do it in relationships. The interesting thing is that when we free our partner of that responsibility (which no one can really accomplish for anyone else), they can show up as the loving companion, exciting co-adventurer, and present lover that you so deeply want them to be.
Pretend that you don’t have any needs.
Make your partner the center of your world, prioritize their needs, and forget about your own. When your partner asks, “Where do you want to go for dinner?” simply say “Wherever you want” and when your partner asks “How do you want to spend the weekend?”, say “Your choice”, “I have no preference”, or “I’m good with anything. Totally up to you.” When your partner shows up 20 minutes late without saying a word, stay mum about the fact that punctuality is actually really important to you, as is communication. When your partner asks how you like to be touched, tell them that what they’re doing is perfect even though you’d really like them to do more of that thing they did just a few moments ago.
The truth is that even the most easy-going person has needs and desires. However, it’s the people-pleasing person disguised as an easy-going person who acts like they have none. While it may appear that this kind of attitude keeps things flowing smoothly without a hitch, it’s actually setting the relationship up for otherwise avoidable challenges down the road. Having needs doesn't make you difficult — it makes you human. When you pretend you don’t have needs, there is no way that your needs can be met. Unmet needs, over time, lead to resentment and often undermine the trust that has already been built in the relationship.
Having needs doesn't make you difficult — it makes you human.
Hide or deny how you really feel.
Don’t be forthcoming with your feelings. Pretend you don’t care. Play it “cool”. Make them guess about how you really feel. Give mixed signals. Act hot, then cold. Draw closer and then pull away. Whatever you do, don’t let them know that the way they bounce when they walk, the way they light up a room, and the way they so passionately and dorkily talk about the thing that they love makes you smile like a little kid and that each successive time you make plans to hang out, you feel like the luckiest person in the world for having the chance to get to know them.
Healthy relationships often grow when both people feel reasonably secure in the connection — when the way you feel about me is close enough to the way I feel about you that neither of us has to spend all our time wondering where we stand. When we trust that the connection is steady unless one of us says otherwise, we can relax, be ourselves, and focus less on managing uncertainty and more on getting to know and be with one another. When you’re sporting a hot and cold demeanor, on the other hand, it breeds insecurity in your partner (after all, it’s very likely coming from an insecure place in you) which leads them to show you hot and cold behavior in return. Playing it “cool”, just like it sounds, keeps things cool and comfortable when what you really want is for things to get warm and intimate.
The antidote? Don’t play it cool. Don’t play it hot. Just don’t play. Sure, there can be excitement in the unknown. But when we're constantly trying to figure out how the other person feels, it becomes difficult to relax into the relationship itself. Feeling reasonably secure in where you stand frees up energy for what you actually want to be doing: getting to know one another without needing to hold back, without worrying about whether you’re ‘doing it’ right or what the other person will think.
Save your games for Xbox, and leave them out of your relationships.
Live in perpetual fear of losing (or being smothered by) your partner.
Don’t let yourself enjoy the present moments of your dating experience. Be crippled by the idea that this person may not want to be with you in a few weeks, months, years, or forever. Be crippled also by the idea that you may feel so compatible and grow to love this person so much that you start to share in each others’ hobbies, spend lots of time together, and decide to eventually to move in together, leaving you with less time and space for yourself.
To navigate relationships consciously rather than from old habits, it helps to become aware of your inner landscape — the thoughts, fears, and stories that arise around this person and the relationship itself. It can also be helpful to ask: "Is this fear coming from what's happening right now, or from something I've experienced before?” You may not have a present-day reason to believe this person will leave you or that you'll lose yourself in the relationship, and yet those fears can still feel incredibly real. Our fears often make sense in the context of our past experiences. The goal isn't to get rid of these fears or prove them wrong. It's to understand them well enough that they don't automatically shape our choices.
The goal isn't to get rid of these fears. It's to understand them well enough that they don't automatically shape our choices.
Which brings me to the next tip...
Pretend that getting close to someone doesn’t rattle you one bit.
Act like everything is hunky-dory, like you’re a pro at letting someone in and as if letting someone see parts of you that many others don’t doesn’t challenge you one bit. “Psssh, I’ve done this before. I got this. Dating ain’t got nothing on me”. Except that it does. Dating’s got something on all of us. Because it’s where we (hopefully) get vulnerable, get honest, take risks in going after what we want, and become insecure about things we thought we were over as we wonder whether the other person feels about us the same way that we feel about them.
Fear of abandonment can feel incredibly real in relationships. So can the fear of getting so close that you feel trapped. Relationships are, in fact, where our old fears and protective patterns often resurface. That’s why it’s important to acknowledge the fears that exist within and between us and our partner, so that we can navigate them, rather than habitually act from them. Often, our fears (like the fear of abandonment, or the fear of being smothered by another person) point toward the things we value most. If you are to create a satisfying, fulfilling relationship, you’ve got to share what’s important to you with your (potential or existing) partner as you explore where those fears come from and what they may be trying to protect. “Hey, I love your company so much, and I really value my independence too. I’ve noticed that I start to feel like running away when we spend more than 24 hours together at a time. I really don’t want to run from you; we’re building something great together.”
One of my mottos in relationships is “help me help us”. In order for me to help us, I need to understand what thoughts, fears, and triggers are coming up for you as a function of our relationship. For you to help us, you’ve got to know the same about me. It doesn’t mean we always have to talk about our feelings, but it does mean we need to practice, moment by moment, being open about what’s pushing our buttons and making us feel anything less than good. This is how we grow.
“Help me help us.”
See conflict as a deal breaker.
Sense disagreement? Hear a preference that you know is going to clash with your own? Runnnnnn. Fast. Tell them “I’m sorry; this isn’t working for me”. Break up and go find someone who thinks exactly like you do and wants exactly what you want. Live happily ever after in continual peace and harmony, relieved that you've finally discovered the secret to avoiding conflict altogether. Maybe even publish a book about it, wondering why it is that others haven’t discovered this fail-proof relationship formula, guaranteed to provide eternal relational bliss.
Conflict and disagreement are an inevitable part of intimacy. An expression of different perspectives, desires, preferences, needs, and values, conflict simply denotes an opportunity to understand each other better and to explore ways that we can co-create the best possible life experience together. Trying to avoid conflict altogether often means avoiding important conversations, differences, and opportunities for growth. If you resist the momentary challenge of disagreement with someone who thinks and wants differently than you do, you also resist an opportunity for greater self-awareness, understanding, and connection.
Conflict and disagreement are an inevitable part of intimacy.
By now, you may have noticed a common thread running through many of these patterns: fear. Fear of losing someone. Fear of losing yourself. Fear of rejection. Fear of conflict. Fear of vulnerability. Relationships have a way of bringing old patterns, protective strategies, and tender places to the surface. Perhaps the invitation isn't to stop being afraid, but to become more honest about our fears and gentler with ourselves when they arise. When we can recognize these patterns, communicate more openly about them, and choose connection over old habits when possible, we create the possibility for something different. Relationships invite us into some of our deepest growth. The work isn't always easy, but learning how to show up more honestly, compassionately, and intentionally — for ourselves and for one another — can really change the way we experience love.
Many of the patterns that show up in our relationships — fear of abandonment, fear of losing ourselves, difficulty expressing needs, or avoiding conflict — don't begin in our relationships. They simply become more visible there. Learning to understand these patterns and create healthier ways of connecting is work I support people with both inside my course Happy from the Inside Out® and through more personalized one-on-one support. If you're longing for relationships that feel more secure, authentic, and connected, I'd love to support you.
