Why People Often Hurt Those They Love the Most!
Has it ever happened that you've hurt someone who means a lot to you? Then you are familiar with the guilty conscience that follows and the anxious question of why. Or have you been hurt, betrayed or abandoned by a loved one? Then you also know the question of why. Why can love hurt so much? Why can people who love each other hurt each other so much? In this article, you'll learn 7 reasons why it happens so often that we tend to hurt people we love or get hurt ourselves.
1. Lack of role models from childhood on how a loving relationship works
Throughout your life, your personal attachments will be formed depending on how you grew up. If you had a loving and stable family with a strong support, your ability to bond will also be good and strong. You have grown up in a stable environment and have experienced values that have become ingrained in you. Security and the feeling of being able to rely on the people in your life have shaped this time and so, according to the attachment theory of the British psychiatrist John Bowlby and the American psychologist Mary Ainsworth, you can form strong and good bonds in which you feel safe and secure. If, on the other hand, you experienced an insecure childhood, are a child of divorced parents or your parents fought often, you will associate love and affection with quarrels and separation. Love will seem like something dangerous, a risk for you, because that is what you experienced in your crucial formative period. But it is possible to balance these feelings of deficiency and heal the wounds that make you believe that love means only pain. At any age, you can still learn to recognize and accept these triggers and let them go when it comes to love. Then you will be able to build real bonds and no longer have to run away from love.
2. Desire for independence
Were you strictly controlled by your parents as a child? Did you have the feeling of being restrained, of not being allowed to make your own decisions? And even as an adult you were still treated like a child? Then you probably are familiar with reacting rebelliously against these very people and often choosing hurtful words. The same can happen in a romantic relationship if your closeness-distance basis is exceeded. This is because everyone has a different need for closeness and distance, and when this is not met, you may find that you demand your own independence by speaking hurtful words. Here, the key to change is open communication and recognizing where the causes of one's own behavior lie.
3. Feeling not worthy of love yourself
If you have a deep belief in yourself that you are not worthy of love because you have not experienced the love you would have liked, you will end up hurting everyone over time to prove it to yourself. It is a form of self-sabotage, an unconscious program running inside of you. You firmly believe that you do not deserve love, that you are not worthy of it, and therefore you punish yourself when you hurt people who love you. Because then they will eventually leave, and you will have received confirmation of your own inadequacy once again. This is likely to happen not only in relationships but will also be an issue in other areas of life. Therefore, ask yourself what you need to heal this trauma within you. Why are there people who are still with you no matter how you treat them? Maybe you are a much more lovable person than you think.
4. High expectations due to the idealization of a perfect relationship
Expectations automatically lead to disappointment, and this represents the end of delusion. If you expect certain behavior patterns from a person and they do not fulfill them, you feel sad and unloved. But the other person probably cannot fulfill this expectation at all, because it only corresponds to the image in your own head, and this cannot hold up to reality. If you drop your idealized image and look at who this person really is and what they give you, you will most likely find that there is so much more love than you could see before. And often the supposed hurts have nothing to do with you but are an expression of your loved one's despair at not being able to live up to your expectations. Don't take it personally, try to see your loved one with a new perspective. This will bring the necessary healing.
5. Testing your own limits
People need boundaries, because only with them is it possible to maintain your own and not to cross those of other people. Now, if a person repeatedly crosses your boundaries, the resulting injury often happens unintentionally, because they don't know where your boundaries are and how far they can go. Make yourself familiar with your boundaries and set them clearly and distinctly, because there must always be a balance between the desire for closeness and the need to protect yourself a bit in order to avoid drowning emotionally.
6. Desire to be truly yourself
Often, hurt happens out of a desire to be completely honest with your loved one. You just want to be yourself and not lie to your partner, girlfriend or family. But for this very reason, things are often said that can be deeply hurtful and cause exactly the opposite of what you intended. Therefore, good communication and setting of boundaries are also important here, in order not to get hurt yourself and to know what could go wrong with your loved one.
7. Need for Control
Does the fear of losing control strike you as soon as you realize that you have deep feelings for a person? This is not unusual, because when you open up, allow your feelings and connect emotionally with a person, you become vulnerable. That's why it often happens that you'd rather hurt the other person than let yourself get hurt. Because if you start first, you presumably have control over the situation and your loved one can only react. This behavior also originates from the feeling of not deserving love. And out of fear of being abandoned, you are then the person who ends a relationship. This way you can satisfy your need for control and not get hurt. But with this behavior you are only deeply harming yourself, which is why it is important to find out what you think you need to protect yourself from. When you learn to take yourself and your needs seriously and recognize the reasons for your behavior patterns, you can heal them and the game of "getting hurt" and "hurting yourself" will end. Then you will be able to have healthy and loving relationships based on love and trust. In summary, it is important to take yourself and your needs seriously. Learn not to take things personally, but to see the other person's part in it. This way, arguments can be avoided, and a real eye-to-eye relationship will be possible and viable. Treat those around you as you would like to be treated.