Relationship defeating strategies:
1.Fighting to be right, proving your partner wrong.
Wisdom: you need to choose between being in a relationship or being right, you cannot have both. Feelings are subjective. We connect with each other through understanding the other, not necessarily agreeing with them.
2. Controlling: Telling each other what to do., how to be, what to think..
Wisdom: we are attracted to our unresolved issues. What we need from each other is what is hardest to give to each other. By loving each other the way we each need to be loved we are healing unresolved emotional issues and deepening our connection.
3. Venting: Expressing our frustration, our unhappiness in the form of,"you are.. you always , you never..results in distancing, negative energy, loss of trust and more resentment
Wisdom: It is each partner responsibility to set healthy boundaries, communicare needs and feelings and empower ourselves to take appropriate action including learning how to get our partners "attention" when they act in an hurtful manner. Venting is an expression of relationship helplessness.
4. Retaliation: Withholding love, sex, engaging in tit for tat.
Wisdom:When you focus on punishing your partner, withholding love from them, you are also punishing yourself depriving yourself and keeping the negative emotional stress. Punitive behaviors teach partners to fake loving behaviors to "get "their emotional or physical needs met. It does not contribute to better understanding or compassion.
5. Shutting down: Not talking giving each other "cold shoulder".
Wisdom: Shutting down not speaking is a form of relational abandonment. It triggers anxiety resentment and feeling of lack of trust. being loved becomes conditional to pleasing the other. This form of reaction to conflict increases the relationship unhappiness and the isolation in the relationship.