5 Ways You Are Contributing to Your Relationship Problems
These relationship-interfering behaviours include submission, avoidance, entitlement, over-functioning and pursuing.

5 Ways You Are Contributing to Your Relationship Problems
Some relationship-interfering behaviours are more obvious but still uncomfortable to admit – for example, any anger, from frustration to rage, being critical and mean to your partner or being passive-aggressive.
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It is possible to bring positive change to your relationship through self-focus, reflection and behavior change.
First though, you must recognize your own unhelpful behaviors – what I call “relationship-interfering behaviours.”
Submission or compliance
If you find yourself surrendering your needs and submitting to what your partner wants all the time, you’re in a submission and compliance dynamic.
You may feel you’re making the relationship run smoother because you are avoiding feelings of guilt or potential conflict.
However, this behavior is contributing to a negative relationship cycle. Relying on submission and compliance to defuse conflict or avoid guilt means you are not being authentic.
Your genuine needs, wants and interests are not shared and not prioritized. This can lead to resentment within you and an imbalance in the relationship.
Entitlement
It’s not just people with narcissistic personality disorder who are entitled. Each individual is at the center of their universe and, therefore, capable of entitlement.
Often people are blind to it. Entitlement might be as simple as feeling you deserve something and getting fiery when you don’t receive it.
When present, this relationship-interfering behavior means you are not willing to put yourself in an empathetic position to understand your partner’s needs.
Instead, you pursue your own needs with little compassion for them. Reflecting and identifying entitlement requires deep commitment.
Pursuing
Pursuing behaviors refers to behaviors that are intense, insistent and persistent. This could be repeatedly bringing up an issue in the relationship that needs resolving, insisting on an immediate behavior change from your partner, or passionately expressing opinions or desires.
5 Ways You Are Contributing to Your Relationship Problems
Pursuing behaviors are commonly driven by feelings of anxiety, overwhelm and insecurity, making people feel required to address issues in the relationship.
Such behaviors, however, can come across as controlling and bossy. Unsurprisingly, these pursuing behaviors can lead partners to feel controlled and pestered, resulting in avoidance and distancing.
Avoidance
If you dodge the difficult conversations and issues, you are engaging in avoidant behaviours. Avoidance leads to communication procrastination and white lies.
Internally, the behavior is driven by the desire to avoid conflict or friction, and so feels rational or justifiable.
However, when you avoid a problem or issue in the relationship, it inevitably surfaces and you end up dealing with the problem at hand plus the fallout from the avoidance.
This means double the problem and double the stress. These subtle relationship-interfering behaviors are not initially in our awareness. But by reflecting on them you are able to learn and grow from them.
Blind spots are normal, allowing you to adopt a position that makes you feel more comfortable. This is a very human response.
Over-functioning
Many partners feel like a parent in their relationship, dealing with under-functioning partners who constantly let them down.
Labelling their over-functioning as a problem seems unfair, because they’re picking up all the slack and doing all the heavy lifting in the relationship.
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Continuing to over-function enables their under-functioning and causes you a lot of pain and stress because the dynamic does not change.