What If the Biggest Threat to Your Relationship Is You?
By: Stacey Herrera
Tags: Self-awareness, Self, Relationships, Love, Couples

You might disagree with what I’m about to say, but that doesn’t make it less real. Most relationships don’t end up in ruins for the reasons you think. The culprit is typically not bad spending habits, sexlessness, or cheating. The biggest threat to your relationship is you.

Before you scroll to the comment section to share your scathing opinion, hear me out.

Relationships bring up your shit.

You have been surrounded by relationships your entire life. You learned how to interact and engage by watching others. The ideas and beliefs that govern how you show up to your connections were formed long before you could string words into a sentence. But your relationship reality is deeper than that.

The relationship you imagine is mostly fictionalized. Pixelated images pulled from movies, television, and YouTube. You visualize the kind of relationship that has a solid storyline, plot points, and happily ever after. *cue credits*

That’s not how things work in real life.

On this side of reality, relationships look different. Problems are not solved in 120-minutes or less. There are no speed-through-the-rough-patch montages. Fairy godmothers and pumpkins are sold separately.

In your actual life, your partner often grates on your last nerve. They have terrible habits, unruly behavior, and trouble listening. They push your buttons and know all the shortcuts to your triggers.

Your partner will not always respond the way you want them to. They may not always share your interests or your enthusiasm. And yes, they get tired of your bullshit because they’ve got plenty of their own.

But they’ve also seen you looking a hot mess and acting like a complete ass, and they’ve stuck around. At least for as long as they could. Your partner loves your dirty knickers, which scares the bejeezus out of you, which might explain why you have gone out of your way to fuck things up, accidentally on purpose time and time again.

This relationship trips all your wires. Your fear of abandonment. Mommy issues. Daddy issues. Fear of rejection. Unworthiness. Imposter syndrome. Problems trusting. Resistance to intimacy. Sexual anxiety. Not-enoughness.

And while your partner might precipitate your uncomfortable feelings, they did not create them.

Own your triggers

Your partner is not responsible for how you respond to the things that trigger you, which doesn’t give them the tight to push your buttons intentionally. But you are the only person who can control your response.

I understand that your partner’s behavior, or lack thereof, may upset you. But that doesn’t make you a victim of circumstance. You are solely accountable for your triggers, and you are also responsible for healing them.

Triggers are survival responses.

The human brain is like a file cabinet, where the painful files are stored at the front. So whenever something hurts you, your brain connects the pain to whatever is happening at that moment. Then it saves the pain and the incident in the file labeled trigger(s).

Recognizing your triggers is essential. But just because you know what sets you off, doesn’t give a pass to cock your loaded trigger and aim it at others. Once you know something, you become responsible for what you know. Triggers are no exception.

Self-compassion is medicine.

This might sound simple, but the people who are the least responsive to triggers are those who are kind to themselves. Conversely, those who tend to talk down to others are usually just as mean (if not more) to themselves.

But for most of us, self-compassion takes practice. You weren’t born being unkind to yourself; it’s a habit you developed over time, which is how you will relearn self-kindness.

Self-compassion grants you access to the tools to disengage the trigger. It allows you to advocate for yourself. The feelings of helplessness that bubble to the surface when your trigger is engaged will begin to dissipate when you’re kind to you. In turn, you will become less prone to lashing out and misbehaving with your partner and others.

Self-awareness makes for better relationships.

The guy I mentioned at the start of this post was not aware of himself. Self-awareness would have stopped him from making up a story. He would have recognized that his idle thoughts set off his insecurity trigger. And rather than trolling through her things, he might have opted to have a conversation instead.

Recognizing and dissolving your triggers is a part of self-awareness. The more self-aware you are, the better you’ll be at relationship-ing. And with practice, your triggers will no longer create a negative response. But instead, they’ll create space for deeper intimacy with yourself and others.

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Stacey Herrera is a relationship-ing practitioner, jalapeño junkie, and chronic library fine payer. She’s also an Intimacy + REALationship coach residing in the Port of Los Angeles. Sign-up to her newsletter for updates.

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