Relationships: All the Crap That Goes Into Them

Relationships can be awesome. They can make you feel better than eating the perfect slice of ice cream cake, summer rain drizzling on your shoulders, and stretching in the morning after a particularly hard workout, COMBINED. But relationships can also be crappy at times, and when they get too crappy it’s time to take a stand. It’s one thing when your boyfriend or girlfriend snaps at you out of anger every once in awhile, or lets it slip that they don’t like your haircut, but if your partner is constantly doing things that make you feel awful, then you need to address that problem STAT. Here are some red flags you should totally shut down before they swallow you and your relationship whole.

1. Control freakishness

Asking where you are is okay—it usually just means a person cares, and that if something were to happen to you, they would at least know where you were last. Totally understandable. But if your partner is setting time constraints on outings with friends, or not “allowing” you to hang out with certain people, then you need to say something. Or maybe he’s controlling in other forms. Maybe he always wants to pick out the restaurant you go to on Saturday nights. Or perhaps he always insists on choosing the movie you go see. Basically, if you find yourself unable to make half of the decisions, you need to have a strongly-worded chat.

In addition to being difficult to break away from, controlling behavior can sometimes be difficult to spot, especially early in a relationship. Although friends and family might express concern, you may initially mistake the warning signs of controlling behavior as more positive—or even flattering—characteristics of the person you’re with. You may see them as encouraging signs of where your relationship is headed. Controlling people often know how to fly under the radar and how to make themselves look good. They can be skilled in manipulating the people they are dating into thinking that their friends and family must be wrong or jealous or overprotective. Controlling people may try to leave trails of "evidence" that they are good partners, and fool you into thinking that they only have your best interests at heart. And they can be adept at making you doubt and second-guess your instincts when your alarm bells do finally go off.

Following are some of the types of things that many of us look for—and very much want—in our relationships. In fact, they are the surface signs of a relationship that's healthy. But in the case of controlling relationships, they are often mirages—empty facades with no meaning or substance underneath. They form a superficial gloss hiding the more dangerous phenomena below. When this happens, what at first seem like wonderful traits are actually far more sinister. 

Attention -- A new partner's attention is one of the most flattering parts of a young relationship, and may be music to the ears of someone who has felt emotionally neglected by friends, family, or past romantic partners (which is why they can fall into controlling relationships more easily than others). Suddenly, you feel heard; you feel seen; you feel that this person notices important things about you and is making the effort to “get” you. That person wants to hear your stories; they remember your favorite flavor of soup; they can’t wait to see you and so they can’t help but pepper you with texts and calls throughout your day. Your new flame may want to spend every minute with you on weekends, or have more date nights per week than you were expecting, or spend the night at your place much more often. They may notice little things about you, physically or behaviorally, that no one has ever commented upon before. It feels good, and it certainly can be a healthy sign of an interested person. It can also, however, be the Trojan horse that lulls you into a falsely positive view of a partner. Controlling people often study up on their targets: They learn everything there is to know about them and then use it to their advantage, gradually nudging you past your comfort zone and denying the space you need to be an individual. They over-focus early in relationships, zeroing in on you like someone with a microscope. 

Desire for Commitment -- If you’ve been through the wringer of relationships that have gone nowhere despite your desire for them to do so, the idea that your new partner is eager to settle down can feel like a major triumph. “He (or she) wants to be with only me!” you may marvel. “At last, I’ve found someone who wants to get serious, and who doesn’t want to waste time or continue playing the field.” If your attraction to them is strong, it can feel like a match made in heaven—the stuff that 50th anniversary toasts are made of. And perhaps it really is. If that person is controlling, however, it can be something very different. A controlling person may want you all to themselves—and soon. He or she wants to limit your opportunities to compare them to others or to think twice about your decision of how deeply to get involved and how fast. What you may see as, “They like me so much they want to commit,” could be, in reality, “They see their opportunity to close me off to the outside world and my individuality.” They may say “I love you” far earlier than you expected, or initiate plans for vacations and meeting the family or even moving in together, in ways that surprise you. The danger is that you may try to push away your discomfort by convincing yourself that it is great that they are so into you. 

Affection -- It’s heady in new relationships: The knowledge that someone you’re into seems to be just as into you, and wants to show it to the world. Attraction is what motivates us to pursue a relationship with someone in the first place, and when we are attracted and they show their own attraction through affection, we can feel validated—or even like we’re walking on air. From middle-school days when we analyzed every word from our crushes, we’ve learned to be thrilled by affection from someone we’re attracted to. It couldn’t be more natural to feel good about it. It’s a beautiful thing as the dance unfolds in a healthy relationship. But what about in a controlling one? Sometimes, things might feel a little off—too much too soon, or too good to be true. There may be gifts or public displays of hand-holding that feel a bit over the top. There may be subtle pressure to be physically intimate more often or in ways that are beyond your comfort zone. Perhaps there's an invasion of physical space or forced attempts to kiss in front of others, or grandiose public displays. These things, when done by a controlling person, can seek to show "ownership" and warn others to back off.  

Passion -- How awesome to feel like someone cares deeply for you—so deeply that perhaps they get jealous when you talk to someone else. It might feel cute at first, or evoke legendary dalliances (Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, anyone?). But jealous behavior is a spectrum, and while one end might seem endearing—a partner getting flustered when an attractive person is blatantly hitting on you—the other end can be downright frightening, like when a partner wants you to cut off even the most harmless contact with coworkers or friends, or constantly asks you to account for your whereabouts. Early on, it may seem like your partner just cares so deeply about you that you should be flattered that he or she sometimes explodes when you don't seem to be doing the "right" thing, or when you devote attention to others. It may seem to be a function of how passionate they are about you. You might even think it's sexy that they get a bit upset that a bartender was clearly interested in you. But in controlling people, early explosions of anger or jealousy can spell serious trouble later on, as they're not only showing their inability to maintain a clear head and discuss things calmly, but are using their outbursts to shape you into who they want you to be—through intimidation and fear. 

Nourishment -- To feel truly taken care of is perhaps the deepest desire of most of us who want to settle into a monogamous relationship with someone. To have someone take off work to be with you when you're sick, to handle your bills if you are not the paperwork type, to make you a home-cooked dinner or fix for your leaky faucet or to be your late-night ride to the airport. Being nurtured in this way can be a great comfort in a serious relationship. But sometimes controlling people adopt a seemingly nurturing personality so they can get to the point where they are the only one allowed to take care of you. They might lull you into relying on them for everything, to the point that you feel you couldn't live without them if you were to ever leave. An early and extreme interest in being the only one you should rely on, to the extent that they seem to want you to shut out others—from friends to family to the landlord—can be a warning sign of a person who does not have your best interests at heart after all.

2. Unreasonable jealousy

Is he or she always worried you’re going to cheat on them, even if all you’re doing is going to Target to pick up some nail polish remover? That extreme kind of jealousy stems from major insecurities. We all get insecure sometimes, but it’s not normal if it becomes stifling.

Whether you are the jealous partner or whether your spouse is the jealous one, irrational jealousy can eventually destroy your marriage. Here are answers to frequent questions about jealousy and things you can do to overcome jealousy in your marriage.

What is Jealousy?

A. "Jealousy is a reaction to a perceived threat -- real or imagined -- to a valued relationship or to its quality.

A nationwide survey of marriage counselors indicates that jealousy is a problem in one-third of all couples coming for marital therapy."  A.M. Pines, C.F. Bowes, "Romantic Jealousy: How to Recognize Where Jealousy Comes From and How to Cope With It" on Psychology Today, (1992).

"A little jealousy is reassuring and may even be programmed into us. It’s very common. A lot of jealousy is scary and has driven people to some very dangerous behavior. There’s no reason to believe that jealousy will improve with time or marriage ... Because jealousy goes right to the core of the self and its roots are deep, it is not something that can be banished by wishful thinking." Hara Estroff Marano, "Advice: A Jealous Fiance" on Psychology Today, (2004).

Is Jealousy Natural?

A. "In relationships where feelings of jealousy are mild and occasional, it reminds the couple not to take each other for granted. It can encourage couples to appreciate each other and make a conscious effort to make sure the other person feels valued ...

Jealousy heightens emotions, making love feel stronger and sex more passionate. In small, manageable doses, jealousy can be a positive force in a relationship. But when it's intense or irrational, the story is very different ... Occasional jealousy is natural and can keep a relationship alive, but when it becomes intense or irrational it can seriously damage a relationship." Paula Hall, "Understanding Jealousy" on BBC.co.uk

What Do Jealous People Feel?

A. Jealous individuals experience a multitude of feelings including fear, anger, humiliation, sense of failure, feeling suspicious, threatened, rage, grief, worry, envy, sadness, doubt, pain, and self-pity.

"Jealousy keeps us under a sense of discouraging frustration and disappointment. It makes us gloomy. It is such a depressing feeling that we cannot tell about it to even our best friends nor can we contain it within ourselves. Consequently, it leaves us with an inconvenience of a peculiar misery and if allowed to grow unchecked beyond a limit, it works like a slow poison to our healthy nature." Gyan Rajhans.

Why are People Jealous?

A. Jealousy can be caused by many factors.

• Unrealistic expectations about marriage in general.
• Unrealistic expectations about your relationship with your spouse.
• A misguided sense of ownership of your spouse.
• Hurtful experience of abandonment in the past.
• Poor self-image.
• Insecurity.
• Fear of being abandoned or betrayed.
• Fear of losing someone or something important to them.
• Intense possessiveness.
• A desire to control.

What are the Consequences of Irrational Jealousy in Marriage?

A. "For those who experience abnormal jealousy, the emotion sets up a self-fulfilling prophecy.

As their associates try to avoid them, their worst fears of losing love and respect are realized." Robert L. Barker, in the book Green Eyed Marriage.

Some of the underlying or reactive feelings of jealousy may also be: 

• Resentment.
• Increased lack of trust.
• Anger.
• Defensiveness.
• More arguments.
• Need for continual reassurance.
• Depression.
• Desire for revenge.
• Constant questioning.
• Physical reactions such as trembling, feeling dizzy, change in sleep patterns, and a change in eating habits.
• End of your marriage.

"People who feel secure and like themselves tend to be less jealous of others and less possessive of their partners, while those who have experienced abandonment or betrayal in their lives can become overwhelmed with jealousy ...

If you feel jealous, or if your partner does, it doesn’t matter. Eventually, jealousy will erode your relationship and destroy your marriage ... Jealousy is a way to exert control in a relationship ... Getting control of your jealousy does not mean getting control of your partner, it means getting a handle on your own emotions." Dr. Gail Saltz, "Jealousy: Is It The Same for Men and Women?" on MSNBC.msn.com (2006).

How Can a Couple Handle Jealousy?

A. "Can jealousy be overcome? The answer is yes, but with great effort. Like most other difficult emotional experiences, jealousy, if treated correctly, can be a trigger for growth. It can become the first step in increased self-awareness and greater understanding both of your mate and of the relationship." A.M. Pines, C.F. Bowes in "Romantic Jealousy: How to recognize where jealousy comes from and how to cope with it" on Psychology Today (1992)

• Admit your jealous behavior and accept that your jealousy is hurting your marriage.
• Discuss the roots of your or your spouse's jealous feelings.
• Don't spy on your spouse.
• As a jealous spouse, make a decision to change your behavior. You may need to get individual counseling.
• Realize you can't control someone else.
• Together, set fair ground rules that you can both live with.
• If you are the non-jealous partner, don't lie or try to hide where you are or what you are doing.
• Seek professional help as a couple if necessary

3. Expecting you to change who you are

When you settle down with a person and become involved in a committed, intimate relationship, for the most part, you accept that person for who they are. You accept their bad habits, their diets, their hair, their hobbies, their friends; you accept everything, and you don’t force them to change (unless it’s something life-threatening and dangerous, obviously).

Two self-assessment questions to start:

1.    Are you generally impatient toward the person you want to see changed?

2.    Are you easily frustrated, critical, unforgiving, bitter, or fearful toward the person that you would like to see changed?

There are more questions I could ask, but these attitudes are enough to help you assess your heart toward those you care about and want to serve. If any of these things reflect a consistent pattern in your life toward others, the first thing you need to do to better position yourself to help them is to change yourself. Being redemptive in the lives of other people starts in your heart toward God, not theirs.

4. Unhealthy fighting

There’s healthy fighting, and then there’s unhealthy fighting. You know the kind I’m talking about: the kind you hear through your paper-thin walls in your apartment. That couple that’s screaming at each other for hours, yelling mean you-can’t-take-that-back things. Don’t be those people, and don’t ever let anyone verbally abuse you.

5. Constant, stupid bickering

Bickering totally happens. When you’re with someone all the time (or most of it, anyway), they’ll piss you off. Maybe they’re driving too fast in your car, or you didn’t like the sarcastic tone in their text message. Totally normal. However if this is your relationship all the time, pause for a sec. Is your partner being mean for no reason at all? Making fun of you? Starting a war just because? Not okay.

6. Completely unbalanced house chores (i.e., you’re the maid)

If you’re cleaning the floors, the bathrooms, doing all the laundry, dishes, vacuuming, and your partner’s just like, “Oh yeah, I’ll do nothing,” you need to speak up.

The problem isn’t the task itself; it’s keeping it in mind. If she doesn’t remind me ahead of time, I’ll only notice at the last minute and get in her way, squeezing by her to grab the silverware while she plates the food.

French comic artist Emma describes and addresses this problem in “The Gender Wars of Household Chores”: Among straight couples, even when men do equal work carrying out household chores, women still disproportionally bear the “mental load” of keeping track of those chores. This creates a kind of continuous partial attention that takes up energy and raises stress. It also creates an invisible hierarchy where men feel like employees running afoul of the boss.

Men often fail to appreciate or share this invisible management job. If you can help carry the load, you can relieve your partner’s stress and feel less like an underling. 

Anticipate needs -- Part of the solution is simply raising your awareness. Don’t just “do the laundry”—monitor the hamper and take the initiative to run a load. Examine when your tasks usually need to be done, and plan ahead for them.

I’m learning to set the table an hour ahead of time. And my kind and patient wife is learning that if she says, “Don’t worry, you have plenty of time,” she’s just enabling me to avoid that mental load.

7. Lying

Whether it’s about something huge, like where he was last night until 3 a.m. or something smallish, like spending some money out of your joint savings account to buy new shoes, lying is never acceptable. In fact, lying is one of the easiest ways to totally doom your relationship.

What makes somebody lie sometimes and tell the truth other times?

When people face this question about why people lie sometimes and don't lie other times, the common answer has to do with something about the internal state about the person. The person is hungry, is tired, is exhausted and there is some truth to that. There is some changes that happen to us internally that make us cheat more or less. In particular, one of the things we find is being mentally exhausted gets people to cheat more, and here is the finding: There is something called depletion. Depletion is the idea that when we exercise self control, when we try to resist temptation, we try to resist a cake and a cookie and Facebook and Youtube and saying something nasty to someone and so on. As we try and resist temptation more and more and more our ability to resist temptation diminishes until eventually we kind of collapse and give in.

Dishonesty is one of those things. As we get tired by resisting temptation in all kinds of aspects of our lives we end up falling to temptation to a higher degree and cheat and lie to a higher degree. So, going back to the question about why people lie sometimes and not other times, there are clearly changes that happen within a person over time, but what we find is that an even bigger effect has to do with the environmental circumstances that are around us. So, often we think about people as agent, so we decide and we act, and we act on our preferences and we are kind of executing our own internal state, but the reality is that the decisions people often make are best described by the environment in which they are placed. When we place people in some environments they are able to cheat to a higher degree and when they are placed in a different environment, that same person with the same mindset ends up cheating to a much lower degree.

8. Not supporting your dreams

I'm currently in school. Trying to better my career by getting my degree. My boyfriend goes out of his way to remind me how proud he is of me that I'm working towards a better future for myself and for our future family. He rewards me for finishing my homework by taking me for ice cream (one of my favorite treats). He adds little reminders to go off randomly in my phone calendar to send me happy messages and remind me how important to him I am.  But if he didn’t do any of those things, or if he made me feel badly about being glued to my laptop for classes, I don’t know how our relationship would even function. If you’re really into traveling, or art, or cooking, and he’s just not into what you love at all, then it’ll make you feel resentful.

9. Asking you to put his or her needs before yours—all the time

You both have needs. You can’t live for another person’s needs, end of story.

10. Past-life shaming

Look, we’ve all done stupid things when we were younger. We’ve been with the wrong partners, done things we may now regret, and we may have even worn platform Sketchers in the ‘90s. So, there’s no need for anyone to be judgmental or hold an unnecessary grudge. It matters what happens while you're together. Take note of actions and words that your partner does and how often they repeat. Typically, humans are creatures of habit. If they do it once, they're likely to do it again. 

11. Pressure to get married if that’s not something you’re ready for

Hey, if that’s not something you want right now, then don’t allow your partner to corner you into anything. If things are good as they are, why rush? Weddings, from what I hear, are expensive, time-consuming, and oh yeah, they’re hard to get out of. You both should be on the same page if marriage is on the table.

12. Deep uncoolness to your friends

Like the Spice Girls once wisely said, “If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends.” Sometimes life isn’t always butterflies and roses. We wish it would be, right? You finally meet the perfect mate and everything is going well. There aren’t any red flags. Things are easy and it all seems right. After a while you decide it’s time for your friends to meet your significant other. That’s when life gets in the way of your picture perfect story and BOOM, your friends and your partner don’t get along.

What are you to do in this tricky scenario? Of course, you want your lover and your best friends to get along swimmingly. But what happens when they just don't mesh well? Your friends are a big part of your life and so is your partner. You want your two worlds to become one. And when that doesn’t seem to be going in that direction, which way do you turn?

We’ve all been in sticky situations before, but this one is a doozy. It’s a hard and complicated road to navigate. So put your seatbelt on, it’s bound to be a bumpy and uncomfortable ride. 

What Is The Reason Behind It? In order to figure out the solution to this problem you need to know the whole problem entirely. What is it about your friends that your partner doesn't enjoy? Does he not like them because of how much time you spend with them? Does he not like their personalities? It is their influence on you that your partner doesn’t prefer? In order to fix this puzzle, you are going to need to know where all the pieces lie.

Jealousy? One thing to think about if your significant other doesn’t like your friends is jealousy. If your partner is jealous of the time you spend with your friends, you have got two things on your hand. Either you have gotten yourself in a relationship with a possessive person, or you are literally spending more time with your friends than your lover. If it’s the latter, you know how to fix that. But if it’s the first option, this is a serious red flag. I suggest putting down that flag quickly and making a run for it.

What Do You Say About Your Friends? You know when you come back from a girls’ night out and you go on and on about your friends? Well maybe you got caught up not saying the nicest things. It’s possible that after your mate constantly hears these stories about your friends, he or she has formed quite the judgement. If you only discuss how Lacy keeps cheating on her girlfriend and how Laura can never be happy for you, then it makes sense your partner isn’t going to have the highest opinion of them. Words are powerful, remember that.

13. Giving you attitude about sex

Just because you’re in a long-term relationship, that doesn’t mean you have to have sex when you don’t want to. If you’re not in the mood, then you’re not in the mood. If you’re too full, or too sad, or too tired, you don’t have to pretend to be into it. Just say no, and if the person you’re with doesn’t respect that, or acts pissed off, then tell them how you feel. It’s normal for your partner to feel hurt or rejected (and there are nice ways of letting them down), but they need to understand that it’s your body, and your decision. Sex isn’t a one-person act.

14. Apathy

You know when you first started going out on dates and you two couldn’t shut up? You had so much to talk about, and you would notice the other couples sitting around you and not saying a word, and you would note to yourself that you would never be like that. Well, three years have gone by, and you guys have become THAT COUPLE. He doesn’t care what’s going on in your life. He doesn’t ask you how your day is going. When you’re upset, he doesn’t even try to comfort you. You deserve more than that. You don’t have to call it quits, but you don’t have to let a relationship turn into something that makes you feel insignificant.