Navigating the challenges life puts on our relationships and maintaining a close loving bond with our romantic partner can be sometimes so hard. Many things impact on how we relate to our partner and they relate to us. The more you understand, for example, how your upbringing, early attachment and family dynamics affect the way you relate to and communicate with your partner, the easier it is for you to change behaviour patterns that are not supporting you the growth of your relationship. It is also important that you understand your own needs in a relationship and how you wish to be loved, what makes you feel loved.

Recently, I was honoured to be a member of an expert panel and comment on the most important relationship killers. When I thought about it, the first thing that came to my mind was fear of rejection and how it makes us behave in a way that can be detrimental to our relationship. We all have a need to be loved and we can fear rejection. I also wrote a blog post about it here. Fear of rejection may be deep rooted and be linked to early experiences: the kind of attachment you had with your primary care giver. Fear of rejection may stop you from starting a relationship or you may end up self-sabotaging your relationship so that your it never has a chance to flourish. Even in a long-term relationship, if you start to feel uncertain about your partner’s love for you, you may destroy the relationship or end it without knowing about real their real feelings.

See the full listing of different relationship killers here as listed by 62 relationship experts.

If you are having difficulties in your relationship and you would like to talk about it either on your own or have couples therapy, please get in touch. Email now info@drmarikovanen.co.uk