3 Things I Did That Destroyed My Relationships (And Didn't Even Know It)

There are three things I used to do in relationships that I now recognize as genuinely destructive. And what makes them so hard to catch is that none of them felt wrong at the time. They felt completely normal, because they were what I grew up watching. And if I am being honest, they are what a lot of us grew up watching.

I see these behaviors constantly in my work with clients. They are doing real damage to real relationships every single day, often without anyone even realizing it.

If you would rather hear me talk through this and share more of my personal experience, you can watch the video below.

If you prefer to read, I break everything down for you below.

1. Name-Calling And Flying Off The Handle

My ex-husband and I had only been together about a year when we had our first real fight after moving in together. I unleashed. I called him every name I could think of. And I still remember the look on his face, this complete shock, and he just said, "Stop. We don't talk to family like that."

I felt several things all at once. Surprise at his reaction. Shame at my own behavior. And honestly, a strange kind of curiosity, because something clicked in that moment. There was a different way to handle conflict. I just had never seen it modeled.

And that is the thing about these patterns. We do not choose them. We inherit them. We do not know what we do not know, but once we see it, we cannot unsee it.

I hear from clients regularly whose partners are calling them names, cussing them out, completely unraveling during disagreements. And what breaks my heart is how often the person on the receiving end has started to normalize it, the same way I once normalized doing it myself.

2. The Silent Treatment

I want to make a distinction here because stonewalling and the silent treatment are not the same thing, and that difference actually matters. What I am talking about is the silent treatment specifically, and it is one of the most common and most damaging patterns I see, both in my own history and in the work I do with clients.

It feels like control. It feels like self-protection. But what it actually does is leave the other person in a kind of emotional freefall. And that is not an accident. That is the point of it, even when we do not consciously realize it.

The moment I really understood what I was doing was on a vacation with an ex. He said something that hurt my feelings. Instead of telling him that, I just shut down for the entire evening. Ignored him. Watched him try to reach me and fail.

The next morning over coffee, it hit me like a freight train. The shame of what I had done, and the awareness of how much I had hurt him, just broke me open. I started crying almost immediately and apologized right there. We processed the whole thing together over that cup of coffee. And something shifted in me that I have never gone back on. I made a promise to myself that I would never do that to him or to anyone else again. And I never have.

The painful irony is that same partner later used the silent treatment on me. And here is what I want you to understand about that. I had experienced the silent treatment many times in my life, from family, from friends. It was not new to me. But I had never had a romantic partner do it to me. And that was completely different. That was the first time it truly crushed my soul. It ultimately ended the relationship.

What surprised me most was how deep that wound went. I had lived with the silent treatment my whole life and somehow tolerated it everywhere else, but in a romantic relationship it became an absolute dealbreaker in a way I had never experienced before. That told me how much that wound was still running the show.

3. Not Apologizing When It Actually Mattered

Now, as someone who spent years people pleasing, I was not short on apologies. I apologized for everything, for taking up space, for having needs, for existing. But when there was real conflict and genuine repair was needed? I had learned to sweep it under the rug. Pretend it never happened. Move on without ever closing the loop.

I see this all the time with clients too. The fight happens, nobody repairs it, and both people just walk around carrying the weight of it until the next one.

The Cycle

Put all three together and the pattern looks like this:

1. Name-calling or blowup

2. Silent treatment

3. No apology

4. Act like everything is fine

5. Repeat

   
   

And then we wonder why relationships feel so hard. We wonder why we keep ending up in the same place with different people.

These patterns are not character flaws. They are learned behaviors. They got passed down to us, and somewhere along the way they became the only tools we had. The good news is that learned behaviors can be unlearned. And just becoming aware of the cycle is already the beginning of breaking it.

If you want to know what your attachment style is, check out my free quiz.

If you are ready to heal your attachment patterns and move forward, schedule a free consultation.

My I Am Enough sleep meditation is now on YouTube. [Listen here.]