One of the primary learning mechanisms many primates (including human beings) use is imitation: From an early age, we imitate what other people do around us without even thinking about it in order to learn different skills and integrate ourselves in our social and cultural environment.
Choosing to be part of a relationship falls in this category: We don’t even think about why we would want to be in a romantic relationship, we think it’s an obvious thing to do since that’s what everyone is doing, so we just jump in for the ride, imitate this behavior, and don’t bother about asking questions.
However, getting clear on why you want to be involved in an intimate relationship is of crucial importance: you might be in it for the wrong reasons, and if that’s the case, it will have a negative impact on your well being and end up in a disaster, which is something we want to avoid.
So what are some good and wrong reasons for being in a relationship?
Let’s start with the wrong ones.
5 Toxic Reasons To Get Into A Romantic Relationship
1 – You Want To Fit In
It’s somewhat a cultural norm in our globalized society that people are expected to get involved in a relationship, marry, and form a family at some point.
People have been doing that for ages, and many are doing it just because of the existing social pressure, whether in a direct (when someone’s family and/or friends directly pushes that person to actively look for someone) or indirect form (when by looking around you, you see that everyone is in a relationship and that society expects you to conform to this norm, you feel at odds with everyone and pressured to conform).
So you figure, let’s just follow along, it must be “the right thing to do”.
But there ain’t anything right all the time, for everyone, and in all circumstances.
Just because everyone around you is doing it doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do for you at this time and at this place.
It could be the wrong thing to do for you with this person A, at this time, and the right thing to do with the same person in 7 years. It could always be the wrong thing for you to do because of a personal choice. Again, it all depends on your personal reasons for choosing (or not) to engage in a relationship.
And the fact that your culture expects you to be in a relationship is not a reason for being in a relationship, far from it.
Fitting in is not enough
Being with someone just out of a need to fit in in your society and not because of a genuine desire born from legitimate reasons to engage in a relationship is doomed to failure: You won’t have enough intrinsic positive motivation that is crucial to push you through the hard times and the lows in your relationship and keeps your head cold, and you will be tempted to drop the ball at the first sight of a problem with your partner, because you lack the motivation to make efforts, a motivation that comes from having a rationale for being in the relationship in the first place.
So don’t follow along blindly, and above all don’t let your longing for fitting in compromise your opportunity at experiencing what it really means to be in a true and healthy relationship that you value with someone you love.
2- You Want To Be Happy
This is a classic, overrated, and you’ve guessed it, toxic reason for engaging in an intimate relationship based on an unhealthy Disney like fairy tale romance: Wanting your partner to make you happy, and live happily ever after.
Relying on your relationship to be the main source of your happiness is a bad idea for 3 reasons:
- You put your happiness completely in the hands of someone’s else, your emotional state and behavior become heavily controlled by something outside of your control (your partner), and you end up not owning your life.
Relying purely on something outside of our reach to make us feel content and fulfilled turn us into puppets and slaves to that something. We start to cling and become completely dependent on it. We are no longer in control of how we feel, because how we feel is completely dependent on the relationship, and therefore we are no longer in control of our actions, because our actions are highly determined by how feel. Therefore, we end up loosing ourselves.
- Making our intimate relationship the only source of meaning and happiness in our lives paradoxically drives our partner away from us: Expecting our partner to be our main happiness provider puts on him/her a pressure to deliver that becomes insurmountable at some point, because no one and nothing can make you happy all the time 24/7, and expecting so is an illusion.
- If things don’t work out between you and your partner, you will loose the only source of meaning and happiness in your life, which is likely to put you in a state of severe depression that is not easy to recover from if you don’t have a high degree of psychological resilience.
So what should we do instead?
Be Happy on Your Own
Instead of deriving meaning and happiness from your intimate relationship, you should already be living a meaningful life and be fulfilled on your own, and bring the joy you have in your heart and those positive vibes to the relationship to share with your partner.
All romantic relationships generate happiness and love, but these good feelings should be considered as a bonus and a blessing, not as the main generative source of meaning ad joy in one’s life.
In other words, don’t get involved in a relationship for the purpose of receiving happiness, but be happy on your own first, and engage in a relationship for the purpose of sharing that happiness with another person that you love.
3- You Don’t Want To Be Alone
Settling with someone because of the fact that you do not want to be or end up alone is a very bad idea because it leads to the following consequences:
- Your relationship with your partner is by definition not genuine and unauthentic: You wouldn’t be with your partner out of pure appreciation for their company and love for who they are, but you would be with them because you are not comfortable with being alone.
Even if you genuinely love your partner and value your relationship with them, the fact that one of the reasons you are with them is that you don’t want to be alone means that you are with them partly because of something negative you want to avoid, and that’s a toxic reason for being with someone that overwrites all your other genuine motivations.
Therefore, if you would like to have an authentic relationship and eliminate any chances that you are with your partner for the wrong reasons, you have to learn to be comfortable in Solitude and to appreciate your own company if you are to truly appreciate the company of others.
Healthy relationships take place when we act from a place of abundance, when we are already whole and comfortable on our own, when our drive towards others comes from a desire to seek the positive, and not as a result of a need to avoid something negative in our lives.
- You will overlook red flags in your relationships because you are scared of ending up alone. Your partner’s behaviors is toxic and unacceptable for you, but somehow you rationalize it because of your root fear and accept the unacceptable.
- You might settle for whatever relationship you end up having, even if there is no real love, and not much chemistry and/or compatibility. You settle for something way less than you deserve. Relationships are supposed to empower us to live our best lives, but you settle for something that’s merely an “okay”, just for the sake of not ending up alone.
4 – You Want To Escape Your Problems
You have tons of problems in your life, and instead of working hard towards overcoming these challenges, you get together with someone and use your romantic relationship as the escape route from all your issues.
Your romantic relationship might look to you like the ideal getaway from your life sorrows, a secret heaven you have finally found where coconuts and love are served round the clock and where you can relax and ignore everything else.
But again, this is a bad idea for 3 reasons:
- Ignoring your problems is never a good idea: Turning to alcohol, drugs, entertainment, social media & relationships to escape your reality only gives you a temporary relief, but in the long run, your problems are not going to disappear by themselves, quiet the contrary, the monsters you avoided facing will grow bigger and bigger, the tiny problem you could have resolved 5 years ago now have become an insurmountable issue, and you will find yourself with more significant problems on your plate, and plunge into even more distraction in an infinite cycle to avoid thinking about these.
- Say you don’t care about point 1 above, and you still want to use an escape strategy from your current life issues.
Using a relationship for this purpose will backfire: The real world problems you tried so hard to avoid will come back at you and inevitably and start having a negative impact on the relationship itself.
Your relationship does not exist in another dimension on another planet, that you can go visit to escape your current life issues. It’s entangled with everything else in your life including your problems.
Therefore, it’s not immune from your issues, and using it as an escape strategy is not viable on the long run and will not last, which is why it doesn’t make sense to use a relationship to flee from your life.
So stop looking for a relationship to save you from your life problems, because no one and nothing can save you. Save yourself first, and the rest will unfold.
5 – You Want To Boost Your Self Esteem & Feel Good About Yourself
Some people just get involved in a relationship because they need constant reassurance & validation from another person that they are interesting, attractive, and in general, good people.
Their self-worth is entirely determined by what other people think of them, and therefore, having a partner who thinks highly of them is the perfect workaround to maintain their self esteem in place.
However, engaging in a relationship just to feel good about yourself is a mistake for 2 reasons:
- First of all, caring too much about the opinion of other people means that you are deriving your self-worth (How much you believe you are valuable and worthy) from something outside your control (the opinion of other people, including your partner). It means that you are allowing something external to determine your value as a person and control your every mood and emotional state, and that’s the recipe for a passive and wasted life.
Taking back control and living an active & fulfilling life means that you base your self-worth on what you think about yourself instead of what others think about you.
- It’s emotionally draining & unattractive for the other person: Feeling that they constantly need to feed you with compliments to boost your ego is draining on your partner, they will start to doubt whether they are in a mature relationship or just taking care of a grown up baby with no sense of inner stability.
This means that the relationship itself will probably not last long if you are using it to boost your self-esteem.
Instead, you should build up your self-worth by focusing on personally valuable aspects and other goals within your control and come to the relationship as a mature and content human being with a clear and solid sense of self.
Healthy and successful intimate relationships are one of the hardest things in the world to build and maintain. In fact, more than 50% of all married couples in the US end up divorced.
It’s easier for some to build a rocket and travel to the moon than to face their relationships problems and solve them.
Intimate relationships touch our deepest fears and emotions, our past traumas, our psyche. Root problems long forgotten in our unconscious emerge in the context of romantic relationships, and most people flee from that.
However, being with someone can also present the perfect opportunity for us to grow, to heal, to learn to love and be loved in healthy ways.
And that starts with getting involved in a relationship for the right reasons.
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