The Number One Reason For Relationship Failure

The Number One Reason For Relationship Failure

When we read the statistics on the ratio of relationship failures, they look pretty grim. About 41% of first marriages end in divorce, 60% of second marriages and 73% of third marriages. What is the common denominator that brings happy relationships to a stop and end? One simple energetic personality imbalance that unfortunately most of us have, self-abandonment!

Shouldn’t people get better at picking someone after a few fails? The answer to that is that it’s not about the partner you choose, it’s about the person you take with you into the relationship. And that’s YOU! As the old saying goes; “wherever you go, there you are are!” You bring your issues from relationship to relationship, recreating those unhappy circumstances with someone else. You….are the one consistent equation in every relationship. If you have one failed relationship after another, it’s time to look at what basis you make your choices from.

You came into life expecting to be loved. But if your parents or caregivers didn’t know how to love, or see their gift in your beautiful essence, then one of two things happened:

1. You realized these people didn’t know how to love you. You understood that they were just limited in their ability, but you knew this didn’t mean anything about you. You were aware that whether or not someone loved you and cared for you was no reflection of your worth. You were confident in yourself, even in the face of rejection. Your love for yourself is self-contained from within. More than likely, however, this didn’t happen. Instead, like most of us, this happened:

2. You concluded that there must be something wrong with you. Even if you had very loving parents, you would have experienced some amount of pain. And if, when you didn’t feel the love, you decided there was something wrong with you, then you started feeling very uncomfortable feelings—depression, anxiety, emptiness, and anger. Those are big feelings that a little body didn’t know how to handle.

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Then you grew up and discovered something amazing called romantic love. “Aha!” the little child (controlling ego) inside you thought, “THIS person will give me the love I didn’t get.” In searching for that perfect partner, what you’re really doing is looking for someone to give you the perfect love your parents never could. You think if you can just get your partner to give you this perfect love, you’ll always feel okay. And this belief causes destructive behavior such as addictive neediness, inability to see your own self-worth, insecure jealousy and many more behaviors of desperation.

Because you’ve self-abandoned and abdicated personal responsibility for your feelings, you feel an urgency to make sure your partner gives you what you’re not giving yourself. You go into control mode, but not in the ways you might think. Control can show up in the form of being overly nice and accommodating or in being possessive and hyper vigilant. You can control by being overly compliant and by caretaking. In each of these cases, you’re trying to make sure the other person doesn’t reject you. You think that by doing all these things, you won’t experience the feelings that go along with believing you’re not lovable.

Unfortunately, under the universal “Law of Attraction”, when two people haven’t healed their self-abandonment, you attract the exact level of self-love that you carry for yourself. NOT a strong foundation to build a long and loving relationship. In trying to get love and avoid pain, both partners will engage in a variety of controlling behaviors that inevitably lead to fighting, disconnection, and infidelity.

As each partner tries to get more and more love from the other to feel secure, they end up pushing each other away, creating even more anxiety, emptiness, and anger. That is why the first rule in any happy relationship is how much you like and love yourself. It’s very important to learn how to create our own sense of worth rather than giving that power to your partner.

When you make your partner responsible for making you feel loved, you’re going to constantly “pull” on your partner. You will place an impossible burden on them to take away all your uncomfortable feelings. As a result, they will feel pressured, smothered, and controlled. And even if your partner does try to love you unconditionally, there’s nowhere for that love to land. If you don’t love yourself first, you will not be able to recognize or fully receive someone else’s love. You won’t feel worthy of the love you so desperately want.

Susan Z

Susan Z Rich is an emotional addiction counselor, spiritual intuitive and holistic therapist. She counsels others to see life in a more positive way and teaches personal accountability for life choices. She is also the author of several children’s books and Soul Windows…Secrets From The Divine.