Psy. Cagla APAYDIN

You’ve been seeing someone new for a while. Your communication is great, you have a great time, you are also very compatible sexually. You are starting to spend more and more time.

But at the same time, a disturbing voice inside of you is constantly telling you, “It will go wrong soon and everything will go wrong”, you focus on the negative sides of the relationship and you start to move away from your partner. Perhaps you are reducing your conversations with your partner, avoiding sharing feelings or talking about taking the relationship to the next level. As a result, your partner gets upset, angry, disappointed, and the happiness, excitement and joy at the beginning of the relationship disappears in an instant. That’s how your relationships usually end and it doesn’t last very long.

Does this scenario sound familiar to you? If so, you may be sabotaging your relationship. To sabotage romantic relationships means to harm or end your relationship with your conscious or unconscious behavior. So, how and why do you sabotage your relationships?

How Do You Know If You’ve Sabotaged Romantic Relationships?

There are many signs that you may be prone to sabotaging romantic relationships. Some of those;

Constantly or temporarily putting emotional or physical distance between you and your partner, not sharing your feelings, seeming insensitive and unapproachable, reducing conversations, making you feel that it is unimportant to make efforts for the relationship.

Acting defensively. Interpreting any criticism from your partner as blame

Lying about your feelings and thoughts or the state of the relationship. When your partner wants to talk about these issues, using sentences such as “There is no problem”, “Everything is fine”.

In order to feel strong in the relationship, to protect yourself, to blame and criticize your partner in everything, to look for the “perfect” partner even though you know it is not possible.

Moving away when your partner has an emotional need, showing closeness when you notice your partner is moving away

Staying away from behaviors that show commitment (like living with your partner, meeting their parents)

Changing partners frequently, breaking up with your partner for minor disagreements, and repeating this cycle

Having sexual or emotional relationships with other people other than your partner, even though you do not have an agreement regarding polygamy

Feeling excessive insecurity and jealousy towards your partner and therefore arguing frequently

Choosing partners who do not have similar relationship expectations as you

Since all these behaviors prevent you from establishing a sincere intimacy, they can make it easier for you to end this relationship whenever you want, it can drive your partner away from you and cause them to leave you. Well, why do we spend so much effort to end a union that can be good for us and make us happy?

Why Do We Sabotage Romantic Relationships?

Every person has different reasons for sabotaging their romantic relationships. We know that many variables such as childhood and adolescence, relationships with parents, past relationship experiences affect our behavior in relationships. So much so that our behavior can change in relationships with different people at different times. But if we look at the main reasons for sabotaging romantic relationships, the most important one is trying to protect oneself in non-functional ways for fear of being hurt emotionally. This has its origins in the insecure attachment patterns established with caregivers in childhood.

Insecure Attachment/ Anxious and Avoidant Attachment

We know that the way our caregivers treated us as children influences our perception of ourselves and others and shapes our future relationships. If the caregiver sometimes treats the baby warm and interested, sometimes cold and distant, or if he is completely indifferent and does not respond to his needs, this may cause insecure attachment in the child.

To summarize briefly, there are two types of insecure attachment patterns. Anxiously attached people feel that they are unloved and worthless because of their past relational patterns experienced with their caregivers, and they believe that they do not receive enough value from their partners in a romantic relationship, and they may find their partners’ attention and love insufficient. This results in them being more controlling in the relationship, often seeking confirmation that they are loved, demanding and jealous, as well as causing them to experience fear of rejection and abandonment. In short, they seek intimacy, but they live with the fear that they may lose this intimacy at any moment. Exactly because of these behaviors, it is not possible for them to establish intimacy in their relationships and they can sabotage the relationships in which they can find the love and attention they are looking for.

Since the 1980s, the widespread use of technology and internet all over the world has caused some life practices to change and transform. Accessing many services over the internet has enabled us not only to be limited to the facilities where we live, but also to not waste time. Since the beginning of 2020, every service that can be used over the internet has started to be of vital importance due to the pandemic experienced all over the world. So, when we think about it in this context, how can we evaluate the online therapy service? Why do we need online psychotherapy services? What are the advantages and disadvantages of online psychotherapy and can we benefit as much as face-to-face psychotherapy?

What is Online Therapy?

Online therapy is the provision of psychotherapy services over the internet in cases where the therapist and client cannot conduct face-to-face meetings for different reasons. The forum named “Dear Uncle Ezra”, which was established at Cornell University in 1986, can be considered the first example of online therapy. People could post their problems and questions on this forum, and their questions were answered by anonymous mental health professionals. With the development of internet technology, long-term meetings such as traditional therapy with video calls began to be planned beyond just answering questions. With the effect of the pandemic period, we started to see that online therapy is more preferred and applied.

What are the Advantages of Online Therapy?

Online therapy is more accessible and practical as we do not need to plan and spare time to go to the therapist’s office in online therapy. We can hold sessions in any place where we can express ourselves comfortably and feel safe.

In rural areas, we may have difficulties in reaching competent psychotherapists. For this reason, we may have to travel to larger cities in order to receive psychotherapy services, and we may have difficulty attending sessions on a regular basis. This can prevent us from getting enough benefit from psychotherapy. In such a case, online therapy is more sustainable both financially and in terms of time.

We may not be able to get out of where we are due to our physical ailments, and for this very reason, we may need psychological support. Through online therapy, psychotherapy service can reach a wider population.

Due to the quarantine experienced during the pandemic period, many people’s working system and relations with their social environment had to change. Adding to this the concerns about the COVID-19 virus and the problems in getting used to the new order, we have become more disadvantaged in terms of psychological disorders. In such a period, we can reach psychotherapy services in order to increase our psychological resilience without risking our physical health with online therapy.

What are the Disadvantages of Online Therapy?

The therapeutic relationship is a unique relationship that is based on mutual trust between the therapist and the client, where the goals and course of therapy are agreed together and increases the benefit in therapy. Establishing this relationship may take time and it may be more difficult to establish a therapeutic relationship, especially since face-to-face communication cannot be established in online therapy.

Since face-to-face communication cannot be established in online therapy, the therapist may have difficulty observing clues that can provide information about the client’s mood and thoughts, such as body language, gestures and facial expressions.

Online therapy may not be suitable for every client (such as suicidal thoughts, psychosis, etc.). For this reason, it would be appropriate to see online therapy primarily as an evaluation session and to continue in line with the guidance of the therapist.

During online therapy, technological problems such as freezing of the image, inability to reach the sound, and dropping the call may disrupt the flow of the conversation.

Is Online Therapy as Effective as Face-to-face Therapy?

When we consider the advantages and disadvantages of online therapy, we may question whether online therapy is as effective as a traditional therapy interview. Research in this area shows that online therapy is as effective as traditional therapy in the treatment of many mental health problems. In 2014, Nordgren et al. observed that online cognitive behavioral therapy had a positive effect in the treatment of anxiety disorder. At the same time, the development of the clients who received this treatment maintained its continuity. In a 2018 study conducted by Andrews et al., online cognitive behavioral therapy was found to be as effective as face-to-face therapy in the treatment of major depression and anxiety disorders.

Although online therapy was applied before the pandemic period, it has become a more important option during the pandemic period. In this process, the client and the therapist who continue to meet with the traditional method.

Each of us has from time to time asked ourselves questions such as why do such people always find me, why do I have similar problems in my relationships, will it always continue like this. In fact, we repeat similar patterns in our relationships, even if it makes us uneasy or challenging. In relationships, we somehow find ourselves in the same roles or put ourselves in situations where we feel similar emotions. So, why do we prefer to maintain these relationships instead of ending relationships that are not good for us? Freud explains this situation with the concept of repetition obsession (repetition compulsion). According to Freud, this is due to the traumatic forms of attachment we have established in the past and our desire to return to these ways of relating again and again. Our unconscious desire to repeat these relationship patterns serves to suppress traumatic experiences and prevents us from remembering.

What Is Repetition Obsession In My Relationships?

To illustrate, let’s imagine that as a child, our relationship with our opposite-sex parent was rejecting and involved emotional neglect. In order to cope with this as a child, we ignore current reality and our emotions and focus more on what we can do to get the love and acceptance we expect from rejecting parents. But this means that we must suppress our true feelings and thoughts in order to have a loving relationship. And unless the expected love is received, we begin to develop certain behaviors to deal with this disappointment. This will show itself in our future relationships. For example, we may find ourselves in a relationship where we are not loved and accepted, believing that we can change the outcome this time. Unconsciously, we think that if I continue the relationship, the situation can change and I can get the love and attention I need. But when we set up and play the same scene, the result does not change and we get hurt emotionally over and over again. At the same time, these relationships, in which we feel worthless and unloved, become a familiar area for us. So much so that we don’t even think about any other form of relationship. Since we also know how to deal with this familiarity, we may tend to continue the relationship.

Coping With Repetition Obsession

The opposite is also possible. Sometimes we reverse roles, we can be the rejecters in the relationship, and we try to deal with these feelings by making our partner feel worthless and unloved. The fact that children exposed to emotional, physical or sexual abuse show these types of violence to others in the future can also be explained by the obsession with repetition. The child who is victimized in his relationship with the parent may similarly repeat his past trauma by choosing the victimizing role in his future relationships. Even if the roles change (victim/victimized, caregiver/caregiver, etc.), a vicious circle is experienced and a new relationship experience cannot be possible.

Similar Relationships

In summary, if you constantly find yourself in similar relational situations, similar behaviors and emotional states, although this situation is challenging you emotionally, if you continue the relationship by thinking that you can get different results this time instead of ending the relationship, we can say that it is a repetition obsession. So much so that regardless of time and people, you can always feel like you are playing the same or the opposite role in the same relational scene.

How to Break the Similar Relationship Cycle?

So how to break this cycle? Specialized psychodynamic psychotherapy is a process that will be beneficial both in terms of recognizing your relational patterns, understanding what they serve, and seeing how a new relational experience is possible. Undoubtedly, a similar relationship will be repeated in the psychotherapy relationship, and thanks to these awarenesses, a new way of experience will be opened as the therapy relationship is studied. Thus, it is possible to establish relationships where there are more spontaneous, more diverse and rich ways of relating, and where your need for attention and love will be met without suppressing your own feelings and thoughts.

By Psk. Çağla APAYDIN