16 Behaviors That Will Ruin Relationship

Every human being has felt the negative energy of being yelled at. It’s disturbing. It’s frightening. It’s poor communication. In fact, the moment someone yells at you, your brain does not understand a word he or she is says. The only thing your brain understands is “DANGER,” and immediately sends feelings of anxiety throughout your body.

The behaviors of yelling and screaming should be nonexistent in your relationship. Of course, before reading this, it may seem like a normal behavior. It seems normal because many parents control their child through yelling. Or perhaps, a child observes parents yelling at each other. Then, the child grows up to yell at his or her partner. Regardless of where the behavior started, you and your partner need to work towards removing this behavior from your relationship.

Anger is a normal emotion. It is an emotion that brings about aggression and antagonism. According to the American Psychological Association, “Increased blood pressure and other physical changes associated with anger make it difficult to think straight.” People kill, fight and abuse when they are angry. If a person does not understand how to deal with anger, it will have devastating effects on oneself and others.

One devastating way of dealing anger is to throw something. While throwing something may help bring relief to the angry feelings, it causes problems in the immediate environment. In a relationship, it is considered a physically abusive behavior and leads to mistrust. If you have a habit of throwing things when there’s a conflict in your relationship, consider registering for anger management classes or starting therapy. Without anger management, you will always do something you regret when you feel angry, like throw something, and ultimately, sabotage your relationship.

Aside from throwing things, hitting is another behavior a person uses to deal with anger. Regardless if the hit is a punch, a kick, a slap or a push, you should never put hands on your partner with the intention to cause harm. This ruins the trust and safety a relationship requires. It also causes the abused person to feel devalued, disrespected and trapped.

According to Cambridge Dictionary, intimidation is the action of frightening or threatening someone in order to persuade them to do something that you want them to do.

It is a behavior a person uses to make another person compromise, not because they choose to, but because they are afraid not to.

Like other destructive behaviors, it is abusive and should be nonexistent in a relationship.

If it currently exist in your relationship, you and your partner need to hold each other accountable for removing it.

Criticism happens when you judge your partner’s negative personality traits and attack his or her identity. It is a psychological process where you center your attention on a problem or flaw in your partner. This is hurtful because humans are whole beings, which means every person has combination of negatives and positives. These negatives and positives will always exist. However, you control what you focus on and if you focus on your partner’s negatives, you are more likely to act out of criticism.

The more critical you are of your partner, the more likely you are to sabotage your relationship. “Criticism will make for a terrible relationship at best and soon destroy your relationship at worst,” reads an article on The Power Moves blog. You should also avoid criticizing your partner in conversations with friends and coworkers. It is a destructive behavior and should be nonexistent in your relationship.

Examples of criticism includes:

You are not your partner’s therapist, and your partner is not your therapist.

Unfortunately, there’s many relationships where one person feels like he or she needs to play the therapeutic role.

This person feels like it is his or her responsibility to fix the other.

Most times, this behavior comes from a subconscious desire to fix someone who hurt them in the past – perhaps, an abusive father or depressed mother. Regardless where the behavior comes from, attempting to fix and change your partner is not healthy. It is belittling.

Telling your partner he or she needs to read a book is not loving.

Telling your partner why he or she needs to stop wearing certain clothes, makeup or hairstyle is not loving.

Giving your partner unsolicited advice is not loving. There are ways you can get the same message across without having the motivation to change or fix him or her.

Name calling happens when you use words to insult your partner.

This includes words like “jerk,” “loser” “stupid,” “bitch,” ”fat ass,” “rude,” “asshole,” “needy” and “insecure.”

Regardless what you think of your partner, you should never call him or her anything outside of his or her name.

According to research, thoughts of breakup are normal. Whenever you are upset with your partner, it is expected to have negative thoughts about your relationship. However, it is important to remember that these thoughts are influenced by your mood and do not represent how you actually feel about your partner.

Unfortunately, most people do not understand how their brain works. They do not understand that thoughts of breakup are just brain waves influenced by their mood. Rather than being mindful of their thoughts about breakup, they express their thoughts by threatening breakup. They say things like, “I’m getting a divorce,” “I’m done with this relationship,” “I would be happier single.” Though a person’s rarely serious and is acting on impulse, making such threats damage a relationship.

If you are not prepared to walk way from your partner, do not threaten to end the relationship. It is hurtful and makes it hard for your partner to feel safe maintaining emotional closeness with you. You want your partner to feel safe, and it is not safe to worry about if your partner is going to decide to leave you or not. The goal of a relationship is to maintain the relationship in a harmonious way, and threatening to leave is counterproductive.

Cutting and running happens when a person starts unnecessary arguments just to have a reason to pull away from the relationship. This person finds something wrong or finds something to get mad about just to have a reason to leave you or stop talking to you for a couple of days. It is a strategy used by people who struggle with an avoidant attachment style. It helps them create distance when they feel too close to their partner.

The silent treatment is a behavior used to punish your partner when he or she wants to communicate.

Rather than communicating with your partner, you refuse to say a word. It is an extremely destructive behavior.

When you use the silent treatment during moments of conflict, you are training your partner to walk on eggshells with you.

Your partner will be afraid to say the wrong thing and do the wrong thing, because he or she will be afraid you will disconnect from the relationship by refusing to talk.

“We learn this strategy – the silent treatment – very early on to shut somebody out as a way to punish,” says Paul Schrodt, a communication studies professor at Texas Christian University. This strategy may have worked as a child, but you are an adult now. There is no need to use childhood strategies in adulthood relationships. It is hurtful and prevents healthy relationship maintenance. The next time you catch using the silent treatment, use your will power to not let it control you. 

Passive aggression is an indirect way of expressing anger and resentment.

Rather than openly expressing the anger and resentment, when you’re passive aggressive, you express them through hurtful behaviors.

These hurtful behaviors can include:

• withholding sex
• avoiding affection
• planning to “get revenge”
• procrastinating when your partner request for you do to something
• using backhanded remarks
• sarcasm

Anytime you avoid directly communicating your angry and resentment, you are going to be passive aggressive.

Passive aggression is a destructive behavior and you need to work on removing it from your relationship.

According to Verywell Mind, “compliance refers to changing one’s behavior due to the direction of another person. It is going along with the group, while still disagreeing with the group.”

This is a common behavior in relationships between dominant men and submissive women, or dominant women and submissive men.

In some situations, the man may take care of the woman financially and feel obligated to have control over other areas of her life. This includes what she has to wear, who she can hang out with, when she has to have sex and any other aspects of the relationship where one person has all the power and the other person assumes powerlessness

Anytime you are doing something you do not want to do, you are complying.

After complying to another person’s agenda for years, you are guaranteed to be dissatisfied with the relationship.

To minimize is to make something smaller.

In a relationship, minimizing means to make your partner’s needs, thoughts and feelings less important than they are.

There are many different types of minimizing, including belittling, downplaying and discounting.

For example, you confront your partner about him not spending enough time with you on the weekends. He responds by saying, “Well, you should be grateful you have a man in your life. Your other friends are single and would be happy to have a relationship. At least you have someone…”

The comparison between you and your single friends is your partner’s way of making your need for more time on the weekends appear less important than it is.

When a person uses minimizing behaviors, your needs will continue to go unmet. This leads to relationships full of unhappiness, dissatisfaction and resentment.

The goal of a relationship is to have empathy for each other’s needs, thoughts and feelings, not to downplay your partner’s needs, thoughts and feelings.

Defensiveness is a strategy a person uses to protect his or her reputation.

While it helps protect his or her reputation, it is destructive to a relationship and an unhealthy communication practice.

The Gottman Institute says defensiveness is one of the behaviors that predict the end of relationships.

According to Alisen Boada, “Defensiveness is about shifting the blame and not about finding a solution. Defensiveness changes conversations into contests over who is right instead of finding a way to relate to where the other person is coming from.”

If you or your partner struggle with defensiveness, then you have to remove this behavior from your relationship. It will take self-awareness, patience and practice, but it will save your relationship.

To enable someone is to encourage their abusive behavior.

It means to allow someone to behave in ways you dislike.

It means not speaking up for yourself and not setting boundaries.

To enable someone means to let them have their way with you, just because you are afraid to lose them or upset them.

When you enable someone, you sacrifice your own peace and happiness.

This is unacceptable and guarantees an unhealthy relationship.

If you want to avoid an unhealthy relationship, you have to understand that you have a right to tell your partner what behaviors feel loving and what behaviors feel abusive.

You have to understand that you have a right to make requests for your needs and set boundaries.

Gaslighting is a strategy a person uses to manipulate another person. It often leaves the person who gets manipulated confused, ashamed and guilty. According to Wikipedia, “Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which a person seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual… making them question their own memory, perception, and sanity. Using denial, misdirection, contradiction, and lying gaslighting involves attempts to destabilize the victim and delegitimize the victim’s beliefs.”

This can be one of the most difficult behaviors to notice, but it is something you have to learn to identify. 

The best way to identify gaslighting is a person’s failure to take responsibility for their own actions. When a person chooses not to take responsibility for their own actions, he or she will use one or two primary strategies (a) blameshifting or (b) denial.

When someone blameshifts, you approach them with a problem and they try to make you believe it is your fault. For example, you confront your partner after finding evidence of him cheating on you and he says, “I only cheated because you don’t spend enough time with me and your sex is not satisfying.” Rather than taking responsibility for his actions, he puts the blame on you. This is gaslighting.

When someone uses denial, you approach them with a problem, something you noticed or something you remember, and then he or she acts like it never happened. For example, you and your partner got in an argument yesterday and at the end of the disagreement, your partner agreed to stop . However, today when your partner does it again, you confronts him and he says “I never agreed to stopping that.” Rather than taking responsibility for his actions, he goes into denial. This is gaslighting.

Conclusion

A relationship does not become healthy by chance. A relationship becomes healthy because both partners create positive interactions using healthy behaviors. If you want to avoid damaging the health of your relationship, make sure you avoid any of the sixteen behavior mentioned in from this article. 

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