Many people thrive in romantic relationships where everything is calm, gentle, and loving. They have few arguments with their loved ones, and they spend their weekends doing things like going to the zoo, visiting extended family, or working on pleasant projects together.
Others, however, only seem to be happy when dealing with tons of relationship stress and drama, and are suspicious or uncomfortable when things are going too well. If you fall into that latter category, these past experiences may be why:
1. You grew up in a family where there was constant stress and conflict.
People who were raised in tense, stressful households, where parents barely got on, and everyone walked on eggshells, tend to get suspicious when relationships seem healthy and supportive. If this is how you grew up, then you likely only saw people being good to one another to keep the peace, or as a precursor to a major blowout. Such formative experiences can have a huge impact in later life.
As such, behaviors like kindness, support, generosity, and open communication may seem aimed at making you lower your guard to make you vulnerable in preparation for a doom strike. Personally speaking, it took both my partner and me a long time to learn that the care and love we received from one another was sincere and safe, rather than info-seeking or a manipulation tactic.
2. You’ve learned that things that seem too good to be true usually are.
Maybe you were bullied in your youth and were repeatedly tricked into thinking others were sincerely being kind and loving towards you before they hurt you severely. Or your parents would tell you that you’re going to get ice cream together, only to take you to the dentist instead.
Over and over again, you were taught that anything in your life that seemed to be good initially would inevitably unfold into something painful or disappointing. With everything you’ve been through, you generally wait for the inevitable shoe to drop when things are going well, including relationships. If you’re getting on well with someone, the two of you seem to be falling in love, and everything is falling into place beautifully, you feel certain that the universe is going to drop-kick you into hell in short order.
3. Someone in your past betrayed you badly.
Are you familiar with the expression “once bitten, twice shy”? Well, if you were ever in a relationship with someone who ended up betraying or hurting you badly, you likely put up some intense walls to protect yourself from ever getting mistreated like that again.
Now, any time a person says or does anything that reminds you of the person who committed that past betrayal, even a little bit, your defenses leap up and put you on hyper-alert. Speaking from experience, my partner and I took quite a while to truly open up and trust one another because we both occasionally said and did things that reminded each other of our respective exes. It took quite a while for us to realize that smoke doesn’t always indicate fire. Sometimes it’s just a s’more.
4. You’ve never experienced a healthy relationship before and can’t relate.
For people who spend their entire lives in war zones, peace can feel terribly unfamiliar. Similarly, if you’ve never experienced a healthy relationship before, then you may not even be able to recognize what one looks like, let alone know how to negotiate it.
Let’s say that you grew up in an environment where your parents were at each other’s throats, your extended family hated one another, your siblings were nightmares, and everyone you dated treated you terribly. That was your baseline standard of “normalcy”. As a result, if you do eventually find yourself in a relationship that’s loving, supportive, and healthy, you can’t help but feel like something’s wrong. You’re a fish out of water, and you don’t know how to handle it.
5. You spent a great deal of time with someone who was unstable.
When you spend a lot of time with someone who is a walking rollercoaster of instability, you never get the opportunity to walk on solid ground. You’re constantly on high alert, and you know that if they’re in a good mood right now, that could change in a heartbeat. Then they’ll be screaming, breaking things, being verbally abusive, and potentially threatening violence towards you and/or themselves at any given moment.
This likely made you hypervigilant to the tiniest change in someone’s personality, even when there’s nothing more to it. Furthermore, if the person you’re dating seems pretty stable and positive, you can’t help but be suspicious, and brace yourself for them to get incendiary once their mask finally slips. It seems inconceivable that their pleasant nature is sincere, rather than contrived.
6. Someone you loved dearly abandoned you.
If you were abandoned by someone you loved dearly, whether a family member or a partner, then you may have extreme anxiety about being abandoned again. As such, any time you find yourself in a relationship with someone you truly care about — romantically or platonically — part of you is always suspicious that they’ll disappear from your life at any moment.
Ironically, when things are going poorly in a relationship, and you’re arguing a lot, you’re more comfortable. Part of you always has one foot out the door, and you don’t really care if this relationship falls apart or not. If the relationship is healthy, loving, and supportive, however, then the fear is really tangible.
7. You’ve been used or exploited by those closest to you.
There are few things as personally damaging as realizing that you’ve been used or exploited by the people closest to you. This goes beyond betrayal, as you realize that this individual purposely spent time getting close to you and getting you to lower your guard, just so they could use you for their own purpose. Or, even worse, one of your own family members chose to see you as a tool that they could use for personal gain and advantage, rather than a person.
When others have used and exploited you in the past, you may see every relationship — platonic or otherwise — as a potential threat. If someone wants to get to know you, then you want to know why. What’s the catch? How does a friendship with you benefit them? Even if it seems benign, and that this person may not have any ill intent towards you, you’ll still keep your guard up and be ready to bail at the first sign of manipulation.
8. You believe that healthy, happy relationships are insincere.
Experience has taught you that happy, carefree relationships only happen on TV and in films. If you come across a couple that’s still head over heels in love after years together, you naturally assume that they’re being performative; that their home life is actually horrible, and they’re both putting on a false front for the sake of maintaining the illusion of happiness.
In your mind, the only sincere, real relationships are those that are fraught with drama and difficulty. Fights, lies, breaking up and reconciling repeatedly, and so on, are “normal” in your perspective, whereas patience, love, understanding, and respect are all insincere gestures used to manipulate each other’s behavior.
Final thoughts…
Speaking from experience, I know how difficult it is to let one’s guard down to allow someone “in” after years of being mistreated by those around you. When you’ve grown accustomed to navigating darkness, you can’t help but be suspicious when a light is shining.
While it’s good to be cautious, avoiding that light forever because you’re certain it’ll damage you, can result in you missing out on a lot of goodness in your life. Approach cautiously and take your time, but give that light the benefit of the doubt. It may be the lodestar you’ve been waiting for.
