In relationships, self-sabotage is when you’re actively trying to ruin your own relationship or make it fall apart, whether consciously or subconsciously. Stirring up relationship drama can also be a way to keep your partner interested, Dancel tells mbg: “Individuals may not feel that they can get better, so they settle for any attention, affection, and connection, negative or positive.” On the other side of the spectrum, some individuals might fear commitment due to what the relationship will mean for their independence, leading them to self-sabotage the relationship in order to keep their distance and maintain a sense of freedom. “Much of the reasoning behind someone self-sabotaging a relationship has to do with an individual’s attachment style,” Madeline Cooper, a psychotherapist and clinical social worker specializing in sexuality and relationships, tells mbg. Your attachment style is the way you deal with relationships, which is learned from our earliest childhood relationships with caregivers. Individuals with anxious attachment styles often desire intimacy and fear rejection because of experiences of abandonment in childhood, which can lead them to project these negative outcomes of the relationship onto their partner. Individuals with avoidant attachment styles often avoid closeness and intimacy because their childhood taught them to be self-sufficient, which may lead them to delay commitment or demonstrate a dismissive nature. Because the desire to self-sabotage is so linked to our attachment style, people can often self-sabotage relationships subconsciously by repeating the relational patterns that we learned as children. “We repeat behaviors over and over again because the negative cycle is familiar,” Dancel says. RELATED: The 5 Stages Of A Relationship Every Couple Goes Through “Knowing your and your partner’s attachment style will help each person understand why they act in a certain way within the relationship and can help reframe the action from sabotaging to a pattern created based on a relationship and family history,” said Cooper. “By becoming more self-aware of these patterns, people can start to intentionally work to create new patterns by confronting and being honest about their feelings surrounding intimacy, developing direct communication skills with their partner, and working to let go of any fears surrounding relationships and commitment.” RELATED: 9 Signs It’s Time To End Your Relationship, From A Therapist
