destroyers

Advanced Relationship Skills

Couples - Families - Singles - Seniors

From
W. Shuford Davis, Ph.D

Relationship Destroyers

Anger: Either passive or aggressive anger hurts. Underground anger that does things to sabotage the other person or seeks revenge is not overt but still hurts and destroys. The tongue can be a verbal fist used to deliver a knockout punch. Sarcasm by definition means to rip the flesh as to inflict severe pain. If you want to destroy your relationship, keep it up.

Withdrawal: Silence, pouting, leaving the room, leaving the house, stop hugging or other types of affection all say, “ I‘m pissed and I‘m punishing you.” Asking what’s wrong often leads to the “nothing “ response, but we know by the tone we are in deep do. Sometimes withdrawal is OK to cool off, but prolonged emotional distance is a bad sign for most relationships.

Abuse: Verbal abuse takes the form of demeaning words, comparisons, profanity, accusations all with the purpose of putting the other person down, or manipulating them into right behavior with a verbal barrage.

Physical abuse is grabbing, choking, hitting, throwing the person or throwing objects at the person. Most physical abusers are control freaks who are jealous, accusatory and totally hypocritical because they are often doing the thing they accuse their spouse of namely “messing around.”

Emotional abuse takes many forms from demeaning words to lower self esteem, to false accusations to keep the spouse on the defensive, to attacks on one’s family of origin, to threats of harm to self or children, to a promise of financial or reputation ruin. You know when you are emotionally abused it’s when you have to chose your words carefully so as not upset your spouse for fear of what will be said to you or to or in front of children.

Sexual abuse can and does occur within relationships. Forcing sex when one partner does not want it is rape. Forcing sexual behaviors which are personally unacceptable such as swapping is abusive.

Cheating: Affairs are rationalized in many ways. They destroy trust and respect. It takes a long time to rebuild those feelings. See all the articles on affairs.

Selfishness: If you are in a relationship with a selfish person you have to love a small package. Its all about them. They are not very good spouses or parents. Sometimes they can appear to be a good parent, even adored by their children, because the narcissistic child in them makes for a good playmate for a while. As kids get older the lies and broken promises add up and they figure out the parent is selfish.