Are Limiting Beliefs Harming Your Relationships?

Relationships, both platonic and romantic, are fertile ground for limiting beliefs. Interpersonal relationships are difficult for everyone, and they’re fraught with so many emotions, hopes, dreams, and entanglements that it’s a wonder more people don’t have limiting beliefs around them. If you have limiting beliefs around relationships, you must overcome them if you want to have healthy, fulfilling relationships.

These are just a few of the most common limiting beliefs about relationships and how they cause harm.

Fear of Rejection

No one wants to be rejected. All kinds of rejections hurt -professional (the school or job turns you down), hobbies (the softball team cuts you), and personal (friends, family, or romantic partners break up with you). The latter is by far the most painful. The fear of rejection is the most common limiting belief in the world, and of the three types, the fear of rejection by those we care about is the most common and debilitating.

If you’ve got a fear of rejection around relationships, you most likely do one of two things: avoid entanglements of the sort you’re concerned about altogether, or form relationships only to break them off yourself to avoid the pain of the other party rejecting you. Either reaction will leave you lonely.

Inability to Trust

This is another common limiting belief around relationships. It usually forms when you’ve undergone a lot of pain or broken trust in childhood or young adulthood. Relationships are built around trust, and you can’t have a healthy relationship without it. The inability to trust leads to jealousy, constant worry, and often controlling behavior - all of which will have you spending many nights alone if you don’t correct the issue.

Thinking you don’t deserve love

Many people hold this limiting belief. It forms in childhood, like all others. Sometimes the trigger is abuse or neglect, but not always. Sometimes the cause can’t be identified. If you believe you don’t deserve love, you either won’t look for it at all, or you will, and then do everything you can (unconsciously, of course) to sabotage your relationships and get the other person to reject you, which will confirm your belief that you’re unworthy. This is as common in friendships as it is in romantic relationships.

If any of these examples sound familiar, you have limiting beliefs that are harming your relationships. Start working to overcome these beliefs today and a lifetime of happy and healthy relationships will await.