7 Subconscious Ways You Sabotage Your Relationship Without Even Realizing

If every relationship you've had ended the same way and caused you to become anxious about being left again, this can be a sign that you're sabotaging your relationships. If you’re in a relationship but still struggling to find love or feel loved and are afraid of rejection, then your fears could be pushing your partner away. And, this could be preventing you from forming a healthy relationship with your partner that is fulfilling and lasting. So, how do you sabotage your relationships — without realizing it — and destroy your chances of finding true love?

If you find yourself to be a naturally loving person and cannot understand why someone doesn’t love you back, then there may be a reason for this. A relationship self-saboteur finds ways to protect themselves from feelings of abandonment or feeling not good enough, in ways that push their partner away. You can push love away by protecting yourself from feeling rejected and you can sabotage yourself from getting the love you want, preventing you from having healthy relationships.

Here are 7 subconscious ways you sabotage your relationship without realizing it:

1. You feel jealous or insecure for no real reason

Maybe deep down, insecurities are controlling your relationship because you do not feel good enough and fear your partner leaving you. It’s hard to connect with you if you’re anxious about your partner leaving you, fearing that they will find someone better. If you accuse them of not wanting you, you might be driving them away. Unknowingly, you may believe you do not deserve to be loved, even though you want so much to be loved.

You can become threatened by another woman or man who you feel will steal your loved one, because somehow you feel not good enough, waiting for them to leave you. So, you sabotage your relationship to prevent them from leaving you. You can accuse them of cheating or wanting someone else when there is no real evidence, except your fears of abandonment driving your thought processes.

ways you subconsciously sabotage your relationship Pexels / Josue Feijoo

2. You think your partner is causing your feelings of abandonment, instead of looking within

If you have a fear of abandonment, you blame your partner or accuse them of causing you to feel abandoned when they trigger your feelings deep within yourself. When these feelings of being not good enough, or feeling abandoned, are outside of your awareness, you think that it is your partner causing you to feel this way. You end up blaming your partner for how you feel, thinking that they’re abandoning you or rejecting you, by displacing your fears of abandonment onto them. You think they’re the person rejecting you, by reading into things that are not there, to prevent yourself from feeling abandoned.

3. You blame your partner and accuse them of things they haven’t even done, instead of being open and curious

Your fears of losing your partner drive you to read into things that do not exist when you blame them and accuse them of things they haven’t even done. You become paranoid or suspicious that they will leave or cheat on you, so you question them or monitor them.

4. You find fault in your partner to escape feeling like you're not good enough

You can protect yourself from how you feel by finding fault in the other person. Instead of locating these feelings deep within yourself, which stem from repressed childhood abandonment, you end up blaming them for how you feel.

@joyfullyethan Here is what to do when you don’t feel like you are good enough A lot of people out there will tell you to fake it until you make it. And while a part of that can be true it’s also complete bullshit and a way to suppress and bypass how you really feel. You don’t get to feeling good enough about yourself by hyping yourself up. You get there by tending to the parts of you that don’t feel good enough. The way I view it is like a garden. Imagine that you are trying to plant seeds, and these seeds represent the belief that you are good enough. You head over to your garden and find out that is full of weeds (Representing the belief that you aren’t good enough). You don’t acknowledge the weeds. Instead, you plant the seeds hoping and praying they will sprout. But it doesn’t have a chance. The weeds are taking up all of the space in the garden. Only as you begin to tend to the weeds do you create space for new seeds to be planted. When you tend to the parts of yourself that feel like they aren’t good enough and you hold them, nurture them and give them what they want they begin to come back into the whole. They come back into you or into the wholeness that you are. By doing so, you begin to see that the weeds disappear. Leaving space for new seeds to be planted. Seeds that are rooted in the belief that you are good enough. Seeds in which may have already been there in the first place but have been waiting for a chance to grow :) ⠀ #personalgrowth #selflove #mindsetmatters #goodenough #tendingtoyourgarden #plantingseeds #believeinyourself #overcominginsecurity #innerchildhealing #healingjourney #innerpeace #confidenceboost #positivity #selfcare #selfacceptance #selfempowerment #selfdiscovery #embracingwholeness #mentalhealthawareness #spreadlove #spreadpositivity ♬ original sound - JoyfullyEthan

5. You attack your partner's character

You accuse them of not caring about you when they forgot to call. You make your partner responsible for changing how you feel by changing their behavior, instead of identifying your triggers.

6. You attempt to change your partner, fix them, or get them to be more loving towards you

You can end up projecting your past wounds onto your partner and want them to pay for the hurt that past caregivers have caused you, even hurting them back. This is an attempt to make them responsible for hurting you and get them to make up for it as if they’re responsible for the pain that was done to you. Putting your unmet needs of love onto your partner is an attempt to get them to make you feel better or feel loved. But, often this is too much for a partner to deal with and pushes them away from loving you.

You perceive that it is your partner causing you to feel abandoned or unwanted when they focus on their own lives and don’t focus on you. If you prevent them from being themselves, they will become pushed away because they can’t be themselves around you or walk on eggshells around your feelings because they have to cater to your needs to avoid you feeling abandoned. Eventually, they may feel controlled and want out of the relationship.

ways you subconsciously sabotage your relationship Pexels / RDNE Stock project

7. You threaten to leave to avoid feeling abandoned

If you feel abandonment is imminent, you can threaten to leave, as a protest to bid for their attention. This may be a last attempt to escape feeling abandoned to get your partner back. If the fear of abandonment is so pervasive, you can threaten to leave, before they can leave you. If you leave the relationship, then you don’t have to worry about them leaving you, so you kill the relationship.

Do you identify with these signs of relationship-sabotaging behaviors? Ask yourself: Is this fear of abandonment real or imagined? Are you sabotaging love because of your fear of abandonment? Are you looking into things that are not there and accusing your partner of things they haven’t even done? Or, do you sabotage the relationship using these self-saboteur tactics, causing them to leave you, or push them away to the point they cheat on you? Why would you re-create the same destructive pathway all over again?

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The more you externalize your feelings as being caused by someone else, by blaming your partner for how you feel, the more you do not address the feelings deep within yourself. You continue to repeat the pattern of abandonment in relationships. When the other person feels accused of things or attacked for things they haven’t done, you drive them away. This self-sabotaging tactic will destroy your relationship, even though you think it protects your feelings or protects your relationship. These patterns enact the original pain and repeat the pattern of feeling abandoned until you acknowledge the feelings, deal with the pain, and become unstuck from these destructive patterns that push love away. Overcome the relationship self-saboteur and transform your relationships.

Nancy Carbone is an author, relationship therapist, and psychodynamic therapist. She specializes in the treatment of personality disorders and relational trauma and is accredited as a mental health social worker.