How to Ruin a Perfectly Good Relationship

How to Ruin a Perfectly Good Relationship

Several years ago Pat Love Ed.D. and Sunny Shulkin Ph.D., two Imago trainers and therapists, published a book titled How to Ruin a Perfectly Good Relationship. Below is part of their list of some behaviors they identify which can, indeed, ruin a relationship:

• Control everything and everyone
• Never take the blame yourself; instead, make your partner wrong
• Make it a habit to spend more money than you have
• Win every fight, even the ones you couldn’t care less about
• Keep score
• Use threat often
• Find your partner’s weak spot and use it against him/her
• When your partner tries to please you, find fault with their efforts
• Hold fast to the belief: “If you loved me you would know what I want”
• Demand your partner remain faithful but refuse to meet his or her sexual needs
• Use silence as a weapon
• Pretend that you don’t hear
• When your partner tries to apologize, bring up more complaints
• Refuse to give information
• When you realize you haven’t given your partner some important info, insist that you did
• Claim to be the only one interested in the relationship
• Never ask for help
• Confide only in friends
• Take it personally when your partner wants time alone
• Discount your partner’s physical complaints
• Give advice where it isn’t welcome
• Never pick up after yourself
• Refuse to seek help for your depression
• Refuse to talk
• Focus on changing your partner
• Focus all your needs on sex
• Take all problems as further proof that the relationship will not work
• Put your friends before your partner
• Keep romantic gestures to a minimum
• Focus on your partner’s faults and deny your own
• Let days go by without a kind word or loving gesture
• Practice verbal abuse
• Do not listen to your partner’s ideas or suggestions
• Ask your partner to share feelings and when s/he does, EXPLODE
• Start conversations when your partner is busy, or better yet, exhausted
• Let disagreements fester
• Say what you think your partner wants to hear, then do as you please