How People Sabotage Their Love Lives

Are you blaming yourself too much or not enough?

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All too often after a relationship leaves us heartbroken, we tend to blame… well, everyone. Everyone except our own selves, that is.

Fortunately, in 2021 a publication by researchers Raquel Peel & Nerina Caltabiano attempted to understand this relationship sabotage scale by conducting research interviews with psychologists who specialize in relationship issues as well as by analyzing data from volunteers’ experiences of their relationship history.

How Do We Know What We Know?

Research that contributed to the self-sabotage study was based on 1,365 English-speaking participants with varied gender identity, sexual identity, and cultural background.

All participants self-reported a history of some degree of relationship sabotage. Using this data, the Relationship Sabotage Scale (RSS), which consists of 12 questions, was developed. There are three parts of the Relationship Sabotage Scale that contribute to total score: defensiveness, difficulty trusting others, and poor interpersonal relationship skills.

What Is Relationship Self-Sabotage?

Relationship self-sabotage can be defined as creating a handicap, or hardship, for yourself within the context of a romantic relationship that would otherwise not exist—outside of your own mind.

One example of this may be individuals who set requirements for a partner that are too stringent in terms of narrowing the field of potential suitors. For example, when working with female heterosexual patients, I often hear about height requirements for males (i.e. 6 feet tall at minimum). When working with male patients, desired physical attributes of a woman regarding the size of breasts or butt are often stated as well. Across gender and sexuality, the amount of income made by a current or future partner is also emphasized as a necessary trait.

To be clear, relationship self-sabotage doesn't occur when you prefer a short redheaded woman with small breasts and a large income. Self-sabotage occurs when you refuse to date anyone who does not fit these criteria, which limits your pool of potential partners, or when you end a happy relationship with your current partner simply because you have always envisioned yourself married to a wealthy husband.

In other words, having a preference for those you are or are not attracted to is totally fine. Citing this preference not being met in a relationship that leaves you happy and secure is where the self-sabotage comes in.

Quite simply, you have created an issue in this relationship that would not exist. If you did not feel that you had to marry a woman with red hair, or a tall man who makes a lot of money, your relationship is likely to continue at a happy, healthy pace.

Instead, your own personal preferences suddenly steer the relationship into a dead end.

Relationship Sabotage Through the Eyes of a Therapist

People who self-sabotage a romantic relationship often do so to protect themselves from pain, disappointment, or the repetition of a previous romantic love that ended poorly. Often this desire to protect yourself to the point of self-sabotage is found in those with insecure attachment styles.

What does this mean?

Those with insecure attachment often have difficulty trusting others and believing that the love they give is returned by their partner. As a result of their uncertainty with love, these people may be overly-clingy with their partners (out of fear of losing them) or they may pull away from their partner in order to protect themselves from the pain that they believe will inevitably occur when their partner leaves them.

How do you know if your partner is self-sabotaging your relationship? Often this behavior is found in these relationships:

• Criticism.
• Lack of communication.
• Overly clingy.
• Overly defensive.
• Withdrawal.
• A tendency to be controlling.
• Defensiveness about own actions, failure to admit mistakes.
• Issues with trust.

What Did People Who Had Been in Relationships With Self-Sabotage Report?

There were two particularly interesting findings among those surveyed:

• People who had self-sabotaged in one relationship tend to have self-sabotaged in other relationships in their life, as well.
• Defensiveness, issues with trusting their partner, and poor relationship skills tended to be more present in those individuals who had self-sabotaged a relationship or relationships.

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On the upside, there was clearly some self-awareness in those surveyed. However, the repetitiveness of the self-sabotage leaves some question as to whether the awareness of the problem resulted in a desire to change—or furthermore, the ability of one to change their self-sabotaging ways.

The Relationship Self-Sabotage Scale

Peele and Caltabiano's 12-question Relationship Self-Sabotage Scale invites the respondant to answer yes-or-no questions such as:

• I constantly feel criticized by my partner.
• I believe that to keep my partner safe, I need to know where my partner is.
• I will admit to my partner if I know I am wrong about something.

The 12 questions can be divided into three different factors that contribute to self-sabotage: defensiveness, difficulty trusting someone, and poor relationship skills.

In Conclusion

All relationships involve struggle, compromise, and figuring out how to merge two mindsets—and two different lives—into one lived, shared experience. But if you start to think that you are always the bad guy in every situation... maybe it is time to ask yourself whether on some subconscious level, your past relationships are sabotaging your current one.

If you would like to see the full version of the RSS, you can find it here.

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