The Dr Raquel Peel He has dedicated part of his career to studying why there are people who unconsciously sabotage their romantic relationships. Together with her research team, she has created the Relationship Sabotage Scale, with which it aims to empirically measure self-sabotage after having interviewed both psychologists specialized in romantic relationships and ordinary people. The psychologist has described three types of relationship self-saboteurs: those who chain dates, rush from one relationship to another and make quick evaluations while looking for “the right person”; those who are in a long-term relationship, but end up emotionally distancing themselves, and those who decide to stop getting into relationships altogether.
“There is not enough knowledge to explain why some people who have begun a healthy relationship embark on a path toward destruction. The moment they meet someone great, they start finding fault and distrusting that person. They assume that the relationship is going to end. There are four most common features of these profiles, and they were already pointed out by the psychologist and researcher John Gottman: constant criticism, defensive attitude, contempt and evasive attitude. In most cases, the goal is to protect themselves,” he explains in his TED Talk Why do we love sabotage? (Why do we sabotage love?). Delving into her research on the matter, he points out in the talk the case of a 34-year-old participant who explains why she believes that her relationships never work. “I avoid people who like me. “I think there is something wrong with them.”
When saying the phrase, the audience laughs immediately, but far from being a joke, these beliefs are more common than we think. “I’m seeing a man who clearly likes me, and that makes me distrustful. I think something is wrong with him, that he has some problem. Since I was 14, I’ve been rejected by men and hearing ‘you’re very nice, but…’. So, at 40 years old, there’s no way my brain thinks anyone in their right mind would want to meet me. It is totally normal for me to think that if a man wants to meet me, that man is not okay. “It is a matter of logic and following a pattern,” he explains to S Fashion Carmen Raya, 40-year-old Project Manager. Do you think that sometimes, when she has a bad time in a relationship, she is actually in some unconscious way causing precisely what she fears to happen? “Completely. One gets hooked on being right. My sentimental/emotional life has been built through rejection. It’s a safe bet to say that they’re going to leave me or that they’re not interested in me. As she said before, it’s a pattern. If that pattern wasn’t met, my life would fall apart. I can’t let that happen, so I’ll do everything I can to make them leave me. “I can’t allow myself to be wrong,” she replies.
Silvia Sanz, psychologist, sexologist and couples therapist, points out that this is a clear case of a self-fulfilling prophecy, often motivated by past experiences, which lead people to anticipate the possible scenarios that may happen. In this way, unconsciously, they provoke what they fear. “We can realize that we are really sabotaging our relationship when we suffer during it, causing everything we fear. Or what is even worse, when we do not even try the relationship due to avoidance or when it causes a distancing from the other,” he warns. “In this sense, we could talk about multiple types of self-sabotage: by excuses, by blocking, by procrastination, by impulses, by not finishing things or by perfectionism. Although, regardless of the type, strong consequences appear, such as frustration, disappointment and failure, which reduce self-esteem and are unequivocal signs that indicate that we are in a clear case of self-sabotage whose purpose is to avoid happiness,” he says. Sanz.
Self-sabotage is a way in which some people manipulate themselves to launch a defense mechanism that aims to avoid future suffering or situations of uncertainty. Silvia Sanz explains that there are different reasons that lead to self-sabotage, which is usually caused by some unconscious thought capable of keeping the person who has it in a ‘safe’ place. “It makes us believe, without realizing it, that it is better not to move forward or make changes to stay in the position we already know and in which we have a sense of control fallacy. It can also be caused by the fear of suffering in the future because of the step we are taking, of change, of not knowing how to handle the uncertainty of what will happen next, of lack of control over the situation, of low self-esteem…”, he explains. . “Getting involved in a relationship and feeling can be positive on many occasions, but because of these acts of self-sabotage, we do not allow ourselves to enjoy it. Another reason may be not feeling prepared to move forward or commit to a relationship, focusing on all the negative aspects of it, or simply on our flaws or fears of what may happen next, imagining unlikely scenarios that keep us in that step. before starting a more committed relationship,” he says.
Núria Jorba, director of the Center Núria Jorba, psychologist, sexologist and couples therapist, indicates that the most important thing is to be able to identify the emotion that leads to the opposite side of the desired one. “Many times we try to work on things too much from the action without first considering what the emotion is like. Self-sabotage occurs because there are underlying feelings, unresolved emotions. Maybe we want to be well with our partner, but there is a hidden anger because we don’t feel cared for. Or maybe we want to connect sexually, but we feel insecure with ourselves and our bodies, so we avoid it,” she says.
The first step to avoid unconscious sabotage is none other than making it conscious, that is, recognizing it. Those who do not communicate their desires, needs and thoughts, those who always focus on the dark side of things, those who do not draw any lessons from their past relationships, those who always say what the other wants to hear to avoid confrontation and those who provoke Those who are deliberately jealous must be aware that these signs, which are sometimes not noticed until they are indicated by others, are those of someone who sabotages their relationships. “Whoever wants to break the pattern of sabotage must be kind to themselves. It is normal to want to protect ourselves, but the way to get out of that cycle is to think about how we are in a relationship, what we expect from our partners and how we can collaborate with them. Because after all, who knows who he is in a relationship allows the couple to get to know him, so they can break that pattern of sabotage together. Love will never be easy, but without self-sabotage, it is much easier to achieve,” says Dr. Raquel Peel at the end of her TED Talk.
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