- Frank, E., & Brandstätter, V. (2002). Approach versus avoidance: Different types of commitment in intimate relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82(2), 208–221. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.82.2.208
- Kimble, M., Boxwala, M., Bean, W., Maletsky, K., Halper, J., Spollen, K., & Fleming, K. (2014). The impact of hypervigilance: evidence for a forward feedback loop. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 28(2), 241–245. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2013.12.006
You finally find someone worth keeping. Then something strange happens: Things start to fall apart anyway.
Not because they turned out to be a bad partner, misaligned, or incompatible. It’s worse than that. Relationships can begin to fall apart when things start to feel right.
Right is terrifying, because right is real.
When someone actually has potential, the stakes go up. When they’re solid, it can start feeling like the areas where you’re shaky are more noticeable. Your insecurities and doubts become the focus. It’s uncomfortable. The result is that your nervous system starts looking for an exit.
So, you start to ruin things. But not in any obvious way. In fact, you may have done this several times in the past without realizing the underlying issue.
Have you had relationships that start full of promise, but quickly fizzle out? Or a relationship that was going really well, right up until the point where you (or they) were ready to fully commit?
Obviously there are lots of reasons for these patterns to emerge, but it’s worth considering how you may have been engaging in subtle forms of self (and relationship) sabotage.
It’s easy to miss micro-sabotage patterns because they all masquerade as reasonable behavior.
What’s the catch?
Some of it is just a mentality of “waiting for the other shoe to drop.” Your relationship is good, like suspiciously good. Maybe you’ve never had a partner quite like this, or a dynamic this strong. It can feel unsettling and unfamiliar. You can’t help but feel like something feels off. Nothing can be this good, so where is the heartbreak going to sneak up on you from? Now, instead of enjoying a normal Tuesday with your partner, you’re scanning for a problem. Psychologists call this hypervigilance (Kimble et al., 2014), and it’s exhausting to live in. It’s also exhausting to be on the receiving end of. This mentality leaves you with one foot out the door.
This is going to be a problem.
Of course, if you’re certain something’s wrong, you’ll find it. It doesn’t have to be anything big because you can take something small and blow it out of proportion. They use a certain emoji too often, don’t text well, breathe too loud, or simply said something slightly awkward on date two. Now you can’t unsee it. They’re flawed and you focus on it so much that you miss the big picture (i.e., no one’s perfect). You justify it all by calling it discernment. Really, it’s a defense mechanism.
The “flaw” gives you an offramp so you don’t have to address something much scarier: This relationship might actually be working.
If you really knew me…
Maybe you tell yourself that you want the relationship to work, but you want to be sure your partner is worthy. To test them, you create a pass/fail situation, they plan date night, but get it wrong. ”If they really cared and knew me as well as he should, they’d know I wanted the Italian place, even though I said I didn’t care.” Of course, they didn’t know they were taking a test. They didn’t (couldn’t) study. They fail. You now have evidence that justifies pulling back. You also dodge any responsibility because it was your partner who failed. Not you…you deserve better. They didn’t step up.
“Unspoken expectations are premeditated resentments”~Neil Strauss
Work’s just insane right now.
Sometimes the best offense is a good defense. Instead of looking for problems or setting your partner up for failure, you remove yourself from the relationship. Not by breaking up, but by being too busy to connect. This one is rarely overtly intentional. It’s just that work and other areas of life start demanding your time and intruding on your schedule. It feels justifiable (being busy is a real thing) and unavoidable (“But I have to for work.”) All of a sudden, your schedule never has a free date night, every plan conflicts with some other obligation. All of it keeps you unavailable physically, but also emotionally.
If you never have time to be with someone,
you never have to be truly vulnerable with them either.
Just in case…
The last one isn’t something you do. It’s what you keep in reserve. These are the ex you’re still “just friends” with, the person at work who you know is interested, or the dating app you haven’t deleted because you’re “just curious.” The emotional insurance feels smart and responsible. However, because you have a backup plan, you’re not fully in. Because of that, your partner isn’t either. A part of you senses this, which makes you feel more justified in having a back burner partner.
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Relationships are complicated because they’re rarely clearly great or clearly awful. Instead, they’re an ambiguous and often frustrating mix.
Your feelings about the relationship are also similarly mixed. It’s rare to be “all in” or “all out.” Instead, part of you wants love deeply, while another part is genuinely afraid of vulnerable connection. Not afraid of your partner, but afraid of what it would mean to actually let someone in, to need them, to have something real to lose. In psychology, there’s a concept called the approach-avoidance conflict that also applies to relationships (Frank & Brandstätter, 2002). You simultaneously want to have something desirable, while avoiding potential pain.
When those two forces compete, it creates a lot of internal conflict and uncertainty. Because it’s ambiguous, people don’t usually make big moves like dramatically pushing someone away. Instead, they get tentative. They start playing it safe. They dial down the intimacy to a level their nervous system can tolerate. They keep things slightly below the threshold of real connection. Not low enough to kill the relationship, but only high enough to keep it barely alive.
You can’t have true connection from a place of complete emotional safety.
The problem is that real connection requires more. Connection requires vulnerability. Distancing won’t accomplish that. What does happen is that you end up in relationships that are “good enough,” relationships that almost worked, relationships that had potential but never quite became anything, relationships that are almost what you want, but not quite.
Because you’re continually missing out and falling short, your brain files all of this as evidence that good partners don’t exist. Worse, you could start convincing yourself that relationships aren’t for you or “I’m not good at this.”
Of course, none of that is true, you just need to get better at recognizing and short-circuiting bad patterns.
Don’t worry. The solution isn’t going to be that you need to start ignoring red flags, lowering your standards, or talking yourself into everything. Instead, the key is to better discern the difference between a real concern and a nervous system flare-up.
First, when a critical thought shows up about someone you’re dating, ask yourself: Is this about them, or is this about how much I actually like them? Pause and really give yourself a chance to see if this issue is just a subtle form of avoidance, designed to create distance. (Read more about hidden signs of attachment)
Self-sabotage’s signature is to show up right after something good.
Notice when you have these moments. The timing isn’t random. A great date, a moment of real connection, a conversation that felt unusually honest. Typically, those are invitations to lean-in to the relationship. But, if you notice yourself pulling back or finding new problems immediately after something went well, that’s the pattern worth paying attention to. Name the fear. Recognize it. Sit with it.
Ask yourself, what you’re actually afraid of? That they’ll leave? That they’ll stay and really see you? That you’ll want this and lose it? That you’re not good at relationships? Those are the real questions.
Finally, remove the off-ramps. Ditch the back-up plans and “burn the boats.” When you have fallback options, part of your emotional energy lives there. You don’t try as hard, you don’t fully invest in making it work, or you bail when there’s friction. The ex, the app, the “just in case” partner who’s been hanging around. None of those are helpful for finding what you really want, something real. Something long-term, fulfilling, and committed.
The scary part isn’t finding someone worth keeping. It’s what happens the moment you do, when your nervous system reads “this is good” as “this is dangerous” and starts building an exit.
You can catch it now. The doubt that arrives right after a great date. The flaw that you conjure up out of nowhere. Your suddenly busy schedule.
You don’t pull back because the relationship is wrong. You pull back because it might be right, and right is the thing you’ve wanted the whole time. Stop guarding against it. You deserve to find out what happens when you let something good become something real.
Hope this helps,
Dr. L
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References
Frank, E., & Brandstätter, V. (2002). Approach versus avoidance: Different types of commitment in intimate relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82(2), 208–221. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.82.2.208
Kimble, M., Boxwala, M., Bean, W., Maletsky, K., Halper, J., Spollen, K., & Fleming, K. (2014). The impact of hypervigilance: evidence for a forward feedback loop. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 28(2), 241–245. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2013.12.006
Photo by Chris F
Note: Please forgive any typos or errors. Non-AI writing has its imperfections. Consider it the patina of a personal touch.
