The 4 Sneaky Ways You're Destroying Your Relationships Without Realizing It

This week Jojo gets MESy with the 4 relationship ruiners you don't see coming. Learn how these patterns sabotage your connections and how to break the cycles through radical ownership and inner work. Stop destroying relationships and start building them.

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Transcript

Jojo (00:07.544)

Welcome to the inSide out podcast. I'm your host Jojo and this is where we will navigate the mess together. That is mental, emotional and spiritual. Let's get messy.

Jojo (00:26.136)
friends, welcome back to Inside Out. Happy Wednesday. How are we doing? Really? How are you doing? I'm asking you this because today we're going to be talking about something that I think a lot of us don't really want to look at, but we desperately need to. And today that topic is relationship ruiners. And I'm not talking about the obvious ones like cheating or lying. I'm talking about the sneaky ones. I'm talking about the ones that slowly poison the connection.

without us even realizing it.

These are the patterns that show up in romantic relationships, friendships, even family dynamics, work relationships, kind of all of it. And I want to talk about four specifically. And those four are blame, reliance, projection, and expectation. Now, okay, just pause for a second because before you start thinking, no, no, I don't do that.

seriously pause. Because I do it too. I've done it. And I think if we're all being honest, we all have done it or we all do it still. But these patterns are like so ingrained in how we relate to people that most of us don't even realize that it's happening. But here's the thing. Once you see them, you can't unsee them.

And the awareness of them is actually where the real work begins. So let's start with blame. Blame is when we make someone else responsible for our feelings, our reactions, our choices. It's like the, the you made me feel this way mentality. And it's pointing the finger outward.

Jojo (02:24.278)
instead of looking inward. Now, inside out, we wanna go inside before we go outward. So this is when we do the exact opposite. So, well, let me just give you a personal example. I was in a relationship a few years ago where every time I felt hurt or triggered, my immediate response was to blame him. Like, you didn't text me back or you were ignoring me and that made me anxious or you didn't show up a certain way that...

I wanted you two, so therefore I'm upset. And instead of looking at myself, it was always his fault that I felt a certain way. And I did that, but here's what I didn't realize, at the time at least. He wasn't responsible for managing my nervous system.

He wasn't responsible for my attachment wounds. He wasn't responsible for the fact that I had been abandoned before and I was projecting that onto him. But blame keeps us in that victimhood cycle. And it keeps us powerless. Because if someone else is always the reason why we feel a certain way, honestly, we can never heal. We're just constantly at the mercy of other people's Raise your hand if you've ever felt that way.

I honestly think it wasn't until like the past couple years that I started fully taking responsibility for this aspect of my life, which is kind of embarrassing to admit, but that's the reality. But basically, relationships can't survive blame. They just can't. When you keep blaming someone, you're essentially saying, you're broken and you need to fix yourself so I can feel better. But you guys, that's not love.

So that's the sneaky form of control. So where in your life are you blaming someone for how you feel? Where are you making them responsible for your healing?

Jojo (04:35.928)
So that's blame.

Now, there's reliance. And I don't mean the healthy interdependence. I'm talking about the kind of reliance where you need someone else to make you feel whole, to validate you, to complete you. We've all heard that Jerry Maguire line, you complete me. Like, okay, it sounds romantic, right? But it's actually one of the most toxic ideas we've been sold about love.

Look, no one completes you. You are already whole. And when you rely on someone else to fill the gaps in yourself, you put this unbearable weight on that relationship. And again, I've been guilty of this too. I've looked to partners to make me feel worthy, to make me feel loved, to make me feel safe. And gosh, every single time it backfired. Because as I mentioned in previous episode, Roots Prefer Romance,

It was all being grown from lack, lack and neediness for them to fill a void that I wasn't able to fill in myself. No one can be your everything. Reliance looks like needing constant reassurance. Again, I've been there. Sometimes I'm still there. Sometimes I still need that validation, still that like reassurance of like, I'm not going anywhere or like, I want you here, whatever it is, but that

constant reassurance and relying on that to be okay, that's where the issues start. And that's where it starts to feel like falling apart when someone doesn't respond basically the way that you want them to. And it looks like making someone else responsible for your happiness. But here's the thing. When you rely on someone for your emotional stability, you're already not showing up whole in that relationship.

Jojo (06:37.504)
You're showing up as a half and you're expecting them to be another half. But two halves don't make a healthy relationship.

Two whole people make a healthy relationship. So again, ask yourself, where are you relying on someone else to do the inner work that's yours to do? Where are you outsourcing your sense of worth, your sense of peace, your sense of joy, your sense of happiness, your sense of everything?

and you're needing it from someone else to be okay. All right, projection. Oof. This one's a messy one. All right, projection. Projection is when you take your unhealed wounds, your fears, your insecurities, and you basically put them on someone else. You see them through this filter or this lens of your past instead of seeing them for who they actually are.

Anyone guilty? I'm raising my hand. I've talked about this in a previous episode. I was in a relationship where no matter what I did, he was going to see me as his ex. He was going to always see me as someone who was going to hurt him, someone he couldn't trust. And I spent years trying to prove that I wasn't her, but it obviously didn't matter because he wasn't gonna see that the way it was. And he was seeing his trauma and...

He was seeing his projection.

Jojo (08:15.512)
But on the flip side, I've also done this. I've projected past partners onto current partners. I've projected past betrayals onto new people that couldn't have been further from my past. I've walked into relationships with walls up so high, just assuming that everyone's gonna leave and everyone's gonna disappoint me in some way or another.

Jojo (08:43.662)
But you know what happens when you do that? You actually create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

You push people away with the fear that they're going to leave anyway. You know when you're always like, I didn't want that to happen. I was trying to do everything to avoid that happening anyway. It's like when you're driving a car down the road. If you're looking off to the side of the road, that's where your car's gonna go. So stop focusing on the thing that you don't want to happen because you are literally projecting that into your current reality.

because that is the filter of, don't want this to happen, but all the universe hears is the plus, is the positives. You're literally manifesting that to happen. And we've all done it. I was with someone, I've never talked about this. I was with someone about a decade ago, and I was very young at the time. And I had a lot of insecurity around what he did for work.

for whatever reason, and I would always be like, I just don't want you to cheat on me with someone.

And of course, that's exactly what happened. He cheated on me with someone from work because that's all I was looking at it through, the lens of not wanting that, but I ended up manifesting that, projecting that. And therefore it became my reality. However, projection does keep you stuck in the past. It keeps you from being present. It keeps you from actually knowing.

Jojo (10:24.406)
the person in front of you, and it keeps our walls up so high that we don't necessarily let anyone in. And they might be the right person, but we're too busy looking through the wrong filter and the wrong lens, and we get in our own way that we can't even see it. So where in your life are you projecting? Where are you seeing someone through the filter of someone else? And where are you making them pay for wounds that they didn't cause?

Now the final one is expectation. And I think expectation is the silent relationship killer.

Expectations are these unspoken agreements that you make in your head that no one else has signed up for. It's expecting someone to basically love you the way that you love them. It's expecting them to show up the way that you show up for them. It's expecting them to read your mind and just know what you need. Expecting them to give you a gift that you gave them a gift. And it's expecting them to just be something that they literally can't be because they're not in your head. I also used to this all the time.

I'd expect my partner to know exactly what I was thinking. When I said that I'm fine, that I actually meant I'm not fine and I need you to ask me what's wrong. And I'd expect him to show up a certain way and then if he didn't show up a certain way, that when I said I was fine and pushed him away, that he would actually walk away because he was listening to me. But then on the flip side of that, I would then get even more upset. And that was just, again, a downward spiral. I'd also expect him to prioritize the same things I prioritize. I'd expect him...

to literally be in my head being a carbon copy of exactly what I needed him to be. How unfair is that? And the worst part is when those expectations weren't met, I'd be furious. I'd be mad, I'd be disappointed, resentful. But the thing is, expectations are honestly just premeditated resentment. And when you have an expectation that you don't communicate,

Jojo (12:27.79)
You're ultimately just setting that person up to fail. And you're setting yourself up to be let down. Healthy relationships aren't built on expectations. They're built on clear communications, boundaries, agreements. I had a partner ask me, how do you expect this to go? Or what are your expectations with this? And I stopped him dead in his tracks and I was like, well, first of all, take away the word expectation.

Exictation is going to ruin everything.

It's partnership, it's communication, it's figuring out something together rather than writing a script and expecting it to be followed. It's a dance. Any relationship is a dance. But if you're in constant expectation of like, I want it to go this way and I want to see you this amount of time, it's like, well, hang on, there's life here that we're talking about. And I immediately shot that word out of the air and I was like,

that has no room in this relationship. Because that'll be the fastest way for this relationship to get buried. So where are you holding on in your life to unspoken expectations? Where are you expecting someone to just know instead of actually telling them? So here's what I've realized. These four patterns, right? They don't just ruin relationships.

They ruin your ability to be in relationship with yourself.

Jojo (14:08.738)
Because when you're blaming, relying, projecting, expecting, you're not actually taking responsibility for your own healing. You're not doing your work. You're making everyone and their mother responsible for your peace. So the shift, the shift is radical ownership. It's saying, this is my wound to heal.

This is saying, this is my pattern to break. It's saying, I'm responsible for how I show up. Now listen, another personal anecdote.

Lately, if something triggers me or something comes up, instead of those projection sunglasses that I would put on and see everything through, I've started to say, that's on me. This is coming from my past. And I verbalize that out loud. And it's not fun to admit that, to be like, wow, I'm literally seeing you through my past. And that is wildly unfair to you.

But any time that I've done that, yeah, there's a little bit of a vulnerability, well, it's a lot of bit of vulnerability and a little bit of an ego hit, you know, cause no one wants to be like, I fucked up, but we mess up. We're human. Anytime that I actually do that and take responsibility for that projection, for that expectation, for the reliance, for the blame.

The way that that shift ripples throughout the relationship, and even though way the other person shows up, has been nothing I've ever experienced. But it takes two people willing to do their work.

Jojo (16:07.436)
So this work literally is choosing presence over blame, wholeness over reliance. It's choosing clarity over projection, and it's choosing communication over expectation. And when you do that, when you take responsibility,

What I've noticed is I've stopped destroying relationships and I've started to actually build them. So let's get messy with this mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Mentally, which of these four patterns do you recognize in yourself? Maybe it's all of them. Again, the patterns are blame, reliance, projection, and expectation.

And don't lie to yourself. Let's get honest. Where is this showing up? Is it in your romantic relationships? Is it in your friendships, your family dynamics, work?

Jojo (17:18.985)
Get real. Emotionally. What would you feel if you stopped doing this pattern? What would you feel if you stopped blaming?

Would you have to feel the anger you've been avoiding?

If you stopped rejecting, would you have to grieve the past?

And what if you stopped expecting? Would you have to communicate what you actually need?

To what emotions are you avoiding by staying in these patterns? Really ask yourself.

Jojo (17:56.438)
and spiritually. Spiritually, what if the right people don't need convincing? What if the right relationships don't require you to perform or prove yourself or be the perfect version of yourself? What if you trusted that when you show up, whole, clear, responsible, that the people who are meant for you are going to meet you there? And that the people who can't meet you there, they'll fall away.

And that's okay too. So I'm giving you homework. I want you to pick one of these patterns, blame, reliance, projection or expectation and track it this week. I'm going to do it too. And I'll tell you what mine is. I'm going to pick projection or expectation. I actually haven't decided yet. I'll let you know next week what I've decided and what I did and we'll touch base. And I want you to notice

where it shows up. Notice how it feels in your body. And also notice what you've been avoiding emotionally by staying in it. And then I want you to share it with me. Comment on Substack, DM me on Instagram at underscore inside out podcast. I want to have a conversation about this because this is tough work. It's messy, but we're doing it together. All right, you guys.

You know where to find me at underscore inside out podcast on Instagram. You can find me on sub stack. All of these links are in the show notes. If this episode really hit hard for you, I want you to share it with three people who need to hear it because I guarantee that there is someone in your life that is stuck in one of these patterns and doesn't even realize it. All right, friends have a beautiful week until next time. Bye.