One main reason why relationships fail

You may be unaware of it, but your attempts to get closer to your partner could actually push your partner further away, as the main  reasons why relationships fail.

When you blame your partner for not loving you, you can push them away because of your own insecurities and self doubt due to your fear of abandonment. This is one main cause for relationships to fail.

A fear of being alone, fear of abandonment and feelings of not being good enough, are the main underlying reasons why marriages get into trouble.

Many avoid dealing with issues in their relationships because they do not want to be alone or fear ending their relationship, not realising that addressing issues could rebuild their relationship. It is when the underlying feelings remain unresolved that relationships can end, because avoiding these feelings can actually get in the way of having wholesome relationships.

Signs your insecurities and fear of abandonment are causing your relationships to fail

• You put up with things  because you do not feel good enough to make a stand for yourself, so you settle for things that are not good for you. You end up supporting problematic behaviour rather than addressing it, enabling the dysfunction to continue.
• You avoid raising issues due to your fear of the relationship ending , causing the issues to build up and get out of control.
• Trauma bonding with your partner – putting up with abuse in the hope of feeling loved, in order to stay attached to your past car giver.
• You avoiding abandonment by caretaking or rescuing, people pleasing, co-dependency, and self-sacrificing by prioritising others so that you can  get your needs met by meeting others needs, rather than meeting our own.
• Losing yourself to your relationships and becoming unfulfilled.
• Holding onto the fantasy of being loved rather than seeing the real relationship and dealing with it.
• Holding onto the blind hope that your partner can magically make you feel good, by relying on others to feel good about yourself, rather than building your self confidence.
• Thinking your partner can meet your unmet needs.
• Blaming others for how we feel rather than dealing with the feelings inside
• Misinterpreting your partner based your feelings of mistrust and insecurity.
• Holding onto unhealthy relationships because of the fear of being alone.

Why your relationships end up failing?

Have you ever wondered why your relationships keep failing or end badly? Have you ever accused your lover of doing something that they never did, such as flirting ? Sometimes you can project our fantasies onto your partner as a way to protect yourself from feeling underlying pain.

Sometimes you may have had painful experiences that caused us to feel unwanted or unloved, in times of separation from a care-giver. So when a partner works away or does not contact you, it can feel like they’ve left you or abandoned you, causing you to feel unloved or unwanted.

At Counselling Melbourne,  many who attend therapy feel their partner makes then feel worthless, unlovable or unwanted. In actual fact, these feelings often become triggered within and get projected onto the partner for causing them to feel this way

Sometimes these feelings are so intolerable that one reacts to escape from them. If we feel mistrust, insecurity or jealousy we may lose grip on reality. The outcome is usually pushing loved ones away when they feel wrongly accused for things that they have not done. A person can send angry messages, as a way of protesting for the love that they are looking for.

Sometimes we may have felt worthless, defective or inadequate as a child when we were reprimanded for doing the wrong thing. So, when our partner addresses our behaviour, it is easy to take it personally and feel blamed for doing the wrong thing, by beating oneself up, rather than learning from the behaviour and moving on. Sometimes our past feelings can distort the way we process information, so that they cloud our judgement and get in the way of seeing our partner and relating to them.

The man that feels his wife is putting him down and berating him, when she asks him to contribute toward house hold-chores, will avoid her in an effort to escape what he considers to be abuse. In actual fact, his buried feelings of being abused by his care giver become triggered and projected onto his wife for causing him to feel this way. Instead of hearing his wife and taking in the reality of the situation, he his trapped by his past and protects himself from his feelings by avoiding his wife, in an attempt to avoid feeling abused. In reality, his wife is not abusing him, like his parent did. His wife then gets to a point where she feels she is mothering him, taking responsibility for him. In actual fact this man elicits his wife to take care of him, because deep down he is yearning for a mother to take care of him, so he can feel loved. Similarly, the wife allows herself to be manipulated and blamed, giving into her partners guilt when he deflects responsibility and gets her to back down, so he can get away with his regressive behaviour. She learned to rescue her mother who was emotionally unstable and took the rap for her, to avoid feeling abandoned. This is an example of how our past can get in the way of our relationships and blind us from living in the present.

A woman who felt loved by a sadistic father feels drawn to men who violate her, because it ties her with the love that she received from her father. She wishes that she could get the love he gave her, in the form of trauma-bonding with abusive partners. In fact, many individuals will connect with their partner through the wound, by trying to get back the love they yearn for. This way, they stay trapped in their past and unable to move on, until they let go of these patterns by seeing our relationships expert in Melbourne.

Splitting allows individuals to hold onto feeling loved, by avoiding the bad aspects of the parent, so these bad feelings later get projected out onto loved ones who trigger them. When splitting, individuals can feel completely in love and then moments later feel unloved or feel angry towards their partner. Similarly, one minute we might feel good about ourselves and the next minute we might feel unworthy or unlovable when the partner prioritises their friends over the relationship. Splitting occurs when others are perceived as either all good or bad. The abusive boyfriend is seen as charming (good), by ignoring the warning signs (bad) that something is not right.

Splitting also occurs when we see ourselves as either all good or all bad. Those with  borderline personalities may feel bad about themselves and a narcissistic individual can feel overly good about themselves. Both the good or bad split positions distort the way individuals see themselves and others. Hence, they affect the way we relate to our partner, when the actions of others are misinterpreted through the negative lenses that we wear to see the world. These lenses protect us from feeling the pain buried deep within ourselves, to shield us from unwanted feelings, caused by childhood abandonment, neglect, misattunement etc.

A borderline person may have internalised that they were bad ( unlovable or wanted), when they were abandoned, where as they were loved and felt good when they complied. Many narcissistic personality disordered persons came to believe they were perfect and could do no wrong when there were idealised by the parent, yet they were criticised and felt inadequate when they did not meet the parents expectations, leaving them to feel bad.

A person who does not call straight after a date might be perceived as rejecting, when in fact this might not be the case. Splitting prevents us from seeing the real situation and distorts the way we perceive ourselves and others.

The more we displace our past wounds or feelings onto others, we repeat the pattern of feeling this way. It is painful to process where these feelings came from and therefore we discharge them onto others, so that we feel better momentarily in order to protect us from feeling worthless, unwanted or inadequate. If we are triggered to feeling bad, we can accuse our partner of treating us badly, by avoiding our feelings.

In splitting, they can also see abusive partners as all good, by holding onto the belief that they are all bad, thinking something is wrong with them, so they stay in the relationship as an attempt to feel good. The more you idealise a person, the more you deny the bad aspects about them, often getting into trouble later when the bad behaviours were not addressed, or making the wrong choices about partners. It can cause them to stay in unhealthy situations and not protect themselves.

Resolve underlying issues why relationships fail

At Counselling Melbourne’s services learn to overcome these feelings by working through them, in order to not be trapped by them, so you can engage in healthier ways of relating and prevent relationships from failing.

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