How to close the door on bad relationships for good
My Liberation Notes
This piece is part of a series for paid subscribers to share my experiences and learning that have contributed to Hacking Narcissism’s educational content and my worldview about the human condition and culture. Our stories, when read in good faith, can help us feel seen, less alone, more connected, restore empathy and humanity.
Interpersonal relationships challenge everyone. From your family, colleagues, friends and intimate partners, it’s likely you had relationships that turned sour, ended badly and left your reeling, needing to recover. There are some relationships that you might never get over.
Some examples of relationships that begin well and go downhill are:
Narcissistic relationships: These relationships are marked by a power differential, abuse of power and power struggles. One person in the relationship controls how the relationship proceeds most of the time while the other person is compelled to assimilate to meet the needs of the dominant person. These relationships are high conflict, can involve the gradual reduction of a person’s freedom and connection to trusting relationships. It can also feature reactive abuse, making it unclear who the perpetrator really is. Intimate partner violence, bullying and spiritual abuse in a cult are some examples of narcissistic relationships.
Adversarial relationships: Any relationship plagued with conflict and poor communication making it difficult to repair ruptures, resolve conflicts and behave differently to align with the relationship ideal and purpose. These can include relationships between doctors or therapists and patients, boss and employee, friends within a larger friend group and the way people can behave in toxic workplaces.
Stagnant relationships. You can see this in superficial relationships by the absence of conflict, disagreement and passion. It can feel like a relationship of convenience where neither party grows or shows genuine interest in each other’s lives. It ends because the two people drift apart or one person decides to shake things up out of boredom to disrupt the dynamic, heralding the demise of the relationship.
There are additional scenarios of relationships that seemed great until they weren’t here.
Whether these occur in intimate, friend, family, professional. and other types of relationships, these relationships have lasting effects on those who felt hurt by the other person. As much as you want to never repeat this dynamic, you’re more likely to if you never work out why and how these relationships were forged in the first place.
One of the things I do professionally is relational practice. This is another way of saying the deliberate construction, co-creation and monitoring of purpose-driven relationships that feature mutual respect, trust, reciprocity, feedback and accountability. Despite knowing how to do this for years, and training people how to apply these principles in their work with others, I would still end up in bad relationships.
It finally dawned on me that there was another program running in the background, unconsciously driving decisions and actions.