Don't worry, this post is not as ominous as it sounds… I was talking to a friend last week who's a relationship therapist. And to their surprise, they know exactly what they will do to destroy it. This exercise is meant to be revealing about ourselves. We know what our fears are, and many of us also know how they tend to manifest in relationships. You may say hurtful things to your partner. You may hide things. You may react too quickly and too often.

One of the first requests he'll make of his coupled clients is: "I want each of you to list all the ways in which you will destroy your relationship with each other." After the clients exchange shocked looks and grumbled protests like "things might be tough sometimes, but we love each other…why would we destroy our relationship??", they begrudgingly start to make their lists. You may not show vulnerability. You may judge. I will not let my fears destroy my marriage.

These fears can be very destructive, and take various forms of attack (though we may not look at what we do or say as "attacking"). Whatever the case, we don't want to own the fact that we have the potential to destroy our own relationships through our less-than-perfect behavior. We don't want to think that something we worked to build could be undermined by…us. For me, it seems all of this destructive behavior comes down to one thing: fear.

This is a scary idea for a number of reasons: We want to be the perfect partner We'd rather blame than take a close look at what we're doing wrong We're scared to reveal ourselves We're scared of our emotions We're scared of the relationship actually ending because of our behavior I'm sure there are a lot more, but that's a good list to start. While I've carried fear with me through my life, I'm learning to let go (see my recent blog post about this).