As part of the self-sabotage series, I wanted to focus on how our behaviours can play a significant part in our partner’s behaviours and reactions to us.
As you go through this post, you will see the problem, and at the end of these stories, you will see how a struggling relationship can be rebuilt.
Have you ever considered how we treat our partners? It might shape who they are when they are with us. I see this ping-pong effect daily in sessions, so I wanted you to have this insight to help you.
For instance, imagine one person constantly complaining that their partner is too negative. What you’ll often notice is that the complaining itself is also negative, so it reinforces the negativity they will feel and practice together.
It’s no surprise that negative plus negative rarely results in the positive outcome the person claims to want.
It’s like shouting at someone to cheer up.
I recall one woman who joked that she had four children—three she’d given birth to and one she’d married. When I asked her why she described her husband that way, she explained, “It’s how he acts.” Yet, during our session, I observed her treating him like a child.
Another couple stands out in my memory: she was a passionate, expressive Italian woman; he was an older, quiet, and private man. He’d complained that she was too gregarious and excitable, so she turned off her passion for life to please him. But in doing so, she was switching off her passion for him. Passion was a fundamental part of her identity—if she couldn’t connect with herself, how could she connect with him?
Similarly, I worked with a woman who screamed at her husband for not being loving or caring. You can probably guess the result—her approach only pushed him further away.
I watch men who are too harsh or aggressive with their wives, confused as to why they don’t feel safe enough to get close to them.
I’ve seen women emasculate their husbands and then complain they are weak.
If you listen to as many couples’ stories as I have, you would see that whatever a person fears in the marriage is the very thing they end up creating without meaning to.
The Ripple Effect of Behaviour in Relationships
People are often unaware of the impact of their own behaviour. In many cases, they unknowingly contribute to the behaviours they dislike in their partner.
One woman overly controlled her husband for 30 years. He complied until one day, without a word, he kissed her on the forehead, left for church, and never came home. She controlled because she feared she would lose him; her fears took away his freedom and one day, he took it back.
The key takeaway is this: your partner will only love how they feel about themselves when they’re with you if you help them become the best version of who they truly are.
The Ping-Pong Effect of Stacked Resentment
Many couples fall into a pattern of resentment, bouncing negative emotions back and forth until the gap between them grows too wide to bridge on their own. Of course, every relationship is different, but recognising that some behaviours can never work naturally leads to the question: what will?
What Does Work?
What works is a combination of two elements. Most couples I see do not have these skills yet, hence their never-ending problems.
- The mechanics of what always works to create connection.
- The emotions that either support or sabotage those mechanics.
The split is approximately 25% mechanics and 75% emotional patterns.
After two decades of working with couples in crisis, one common issue I’ve observed is a lack of understanding of basic relationship mechanics. Without these fundamentals, the connection between partners is put under immense emotional stress.
Emotionally, this stress compounds over time, leading to an ever-increasing sense of disconnect. Many couples find themselves in this situation when they seek help.
Aligning Mechanics and Emotions for Success
Once the mechanics of a healthy relationship are understood, the next challenge is aligning emotionally. Each person must connect their true self to these mechanics so that the energy in the relationship feels genuine and authentic.
The key is not to change the person but help them become more of who they really are. This way, the changes will last.
When this happens, the relationship becomes much easier to evolve. Problems stop being overwhelming sources of stress and instead become manageable everyday challenges.
In essence, many people don’t know what to do, nor do they know how to shift their mindset to empower themselves emotionally. This lack of clarity keeps them stuck in unhelpful patterns.
So, instead of triggering their partner positively, they trigger them negatively, and it’s a matter of time before one person emotionally disconnects.
A Process That Works
The interplay between mechanics that always work and understanding the emotion patterns that help or hinder the mechanics is why individuals who come to me alone to save their marriage have a greater chance of success. They learn how the process works, and in doing so, they gain the tools to rebuild connection, trust, and love in their relationship.
In essence, they come wanting to learn how to become an empowered and more effective partner.
Couples who learn and practice this end up with a powerful new understanding of their relationship—they understand what works and why.
So, the question for today is: How might your actions shape the behaviours you don’t like in your partner? And what could you do differently to change that dynamic?
If it’s going wrong and you don’t know what to do, it’s either the mechanics have not been understood, or the emotions are not supporting the mechanics or both.
The key is to reframe a couple’s problem so they can see new ways to solve them.