How You Might Be Sabotaging Healthy Love Without Even Realising It

“When a child is not embraced by their caregivers, they grow up learning to embrace their fears instead.” - Gabor Maté

We all want to be loved. But sometimes, when love finally arrives steady, kind, and real; we find ourselves pulling away. We overthink, shut down, get defensive, or even end the relationship. And most of the time, we don’t fully understand why.

Craving love but struggling to find it?

If you’ve ever looked back at a relationship and thought, “Why did I do that?” or “They were good to me, but I couldn’t trust it,” you’re not alone. These patterns aren’t random. They’re rooted in something much deeper: the part of us that learnt early on that love isn’t always safe.

As a counselling psychologist, I’ve seen this come up in sessions again and again. People show up confused, feeling like they’re broken or too damaged to be loved. But what’s actually happening is that the child in them, the one who grew up with emotional neglect, criticism, abandonment, or inconsistency, is trying to protect them. That child learned to stay guarded, avoid closeness, and not depend on anyone because trusting love once led to pain.

So now, as adults, when love appears in a healthy form, it can feel unfamiliar and even threatening. Our nervous system is wired to scan for danger, and when love feels different from the chaos or conditional care we’re used to, our brain doesn’t register it as safe. Instead of relaxing into the relationship, we become tightly wound. We start testing them, doubting their words, growing hypervigilant or distant, pushing them away before they get the chance to leave.

This is self-sabotage. But here’s something important to understand: self-sabotage is often just self-protection in disguise. The parts of you that create distance or chaos aren’t trying to ruin things, they’re trying to keep you safe. They’re trying to prevent you from feeling the kind of pain you once felt and promised never to feel again. The problem is, in doing so, they also block the very connection you long for. There’s a beautiful framework in therapy called Internal Family Systems (IFS). It suggests that we’re not just one unified self, we’re made up of many parts.

You know that part of you that wants love and closeness… and another part that panics and pulls away the moment things get real? That’s IFS in action. In this model, the part that sabotages intimacy is often a protector. It shows up as overthinking, shutting down, picking fights, not because it’s trying to ruin your life, but because it’s trying to protect you from pain you've felt before. And underneath that protector is usually a younger part of you, what IFS calls an exile. This is the part that still carries the wounds from past relationships: feeling unloved, abandoned, or not enough.

 The goal in healing isn’t to get rid of these parts, but to approach them with compassion and curiosity. It means learning to listen to them, soothe them, and slowly teach them that love can be safe now. When you start to understand your inner system, you can begin to lead from your Self, the calm, centered, and connected core of who you are.

So, how do you begin to shift this?

First, by bringing awareness to the pattern. By asking yourself:

• What do I believe about love and attachment?

• Do I feel uncomfortable when someone is consistently kind to me?

• Do I fear being “too much” or “not enough”?

• Do I pull away when things get too intimate?

Second, by recognising that these behaviours were once adaptive. They protected you when you were small and powerless. But now, as an adult, you can begin to offer yourself the safety you didn’t have back then, and that starts with self-compassion, not shame.

Therapy is one place where this healing can begin. It’s a space where you can explore your past gently and at your own pace. Where you can start to rewire the belief that love equals danger, and begin to trust that it can be nourishing, reciprocal, and safe.

The journey is not quick or linear. You might fall into old patterns sometimes, that’s okay. Healing doesn’t mean you never get triggered; it means you start responding differently. It means you begin choosing connection, even when it feels scary.

So if you’ve been struggling to understand why your romantic relationships aren’t working, maybe it’s time to ask a different question: What is the child in me still afraid of? And what would it mean to finally let that child feel safe enough to receive love?

Healing starts when we stop seeing our patterns as flaws and start seeing them as protection. With awareness and compassion, we can choose connection, even when it feels scary. That’s how love becomes safe again.

Edited by: Nishta C.

References

Fournier, A. B. (2023, November 7). Are you Self-Sabotaging your relationship? Verywell Mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/are-you-sabotaging-your-relationship-4705235 

Kraft, J. (2023). No Bad Parts: Healing trauma and restoring wholeness with the internal family systems model By R. C.Schwartz, Boulder, CO: Sounds True. 2021. pp. 199. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy. https://doi.org/10.1111/jmft.12680