The next time something similar happens, you start to doubt yourself, not the relationship. You wonder what you’re doing wrong, and the next thing you know you’re crying into your pillow and believing you’re not good enough. STOP the madness!
The game of Life and Love is waaaay too short to spend time on someone that doesn’t value you. You should think twice before teaming up in ANY kind of relationship that has a mix of these 3 ingredients:
1. Blame.
Words CAN hurt you as much as the proverbial stick and stone, especially if these words are frequent and yet unpredictable. People point the finger to get the upper hand, much like they’d keep a poker face in a card game.
Blaming and projection may be largely subconscious, but that makes them even more dangerous to a relationship.
Blamers lack self-esteem, yet they don’t want to admit it, so they need to find fault with you instead of looking at themselves.
Chronic words of blame start a game that will only produce two losers, even though the person blaming the other thinks they’ll come out the victor.
2. Shame.
A close, more subtle cousin of blaming, shaming is on the rise these days, especially on social media. However, shaming in a relationship can become toxic. People can shame you without any action on your part.
They can call you and insinuate you’re even breathing wrong.
Shamers are often co-dependent. They want to tear you down to build themselves up, and they shame you to manipulate you because they’re afraid to lose you if you discover that you’re better than them at something.
3. Fame.
Often the people who blame and shame us are quite successful because their own self-blame results in perfectionist tendencies. Their external glitter is what attracts us in the first place.
Blamers and shamers don’t want to fail, and their self-esteem is often so low that they can’t admit it.
They may lie, make excuses, and throw their problems at others—all so they can keep these festering feelings of inadequacy a big secret.
They feel like impostors up there on their starlit stage, and they will do anything not to fall off the pedestal we—and probably many others—put them on.
