Love is truly the most powerful weapon. It can make you feel like you are in seventh heaven but it also has the power to destroy you. Everyone says that love is the most beautiful feeling in the world.
Well, there is nothing beautiful about pain and I’m sure we have all been hurt by someone we loved – or we have unintentionally hurt someone we loved.
If love is so beautiful, why does it hurt so much sometimes? Have you actually ever wondered why we hurt the ones we love?
The fact is that love can’t exist without emotional hurt.
Sometimes, we get hurt by the people we love the most, and sometimes, we hurt our loved ones unintentionally, even though they are actually the ones we want to protect the most.
It is scientifically proven that people most hurt their family members or the ones they share intimate relationships with.
This is because we know that, because they love us, they’ll forgive us in no time and we’ll be able to move on without looking back.
If you want to know why we hurt people we love the most, I’ve listed some of the most common reasons below.
Emotional baggage
Every time you end a relationship, you have to take some time for yourself. You have to take some alone time and think about your own feelings.
You need to forgive your exes for all of their broken promises, for all the times they let you down, and for the heartbreak they’ve caused you.
Before you decide to start dating again, you have to leave your past behind.
You should never enter a new relationship if you have any unresolved matters from the past. Trust me, starting a new relationship when you aren’t ready never ends well.
Also, it’s not fair to the other person. It’s not their fault that your ex betrayed and hurt you. Your new partner shouldn’t pay for someone else’s mistakes.
If you don’t move on properly, you’ll only hurt your next partner. You won’t be able to trust them. You won’t be able to relax and enjoy your new relationship.
Sure your emotional baggage can teach you some things but don’t take it too seriously.
Don’t let your childhood experiences shape your opinion about love. Every love story is unique. The love story of your parents isn’t how yours should or will be like.
If you let those experiences control your love life, it’ll only restrain you. It can confuse you or cause you even more pain than the heartbreak itself.
That’s why it’s important for you to take time.
You should take as much time as you need to heal properly, to think about everything that has happened to you, and then to move on without holding any grudges and bitterness.
You aren’t sure if they’re “the one”
You are in a relationship and you honestly love your significant other. However, you can’t get rid of the feeling that something is missing.
You can’t imagine your future together and soon you start doubting whether you even want to spend the rest of your life with them.
You start growing apart from your partner because you want to think about your relationship.
Maybe you want to think about it so you don’t waste any more of their or your own precious time on a relationship that doesn’t have any future.
The mistake that most of us make is that we don’t sit and talk honestly with our partners. They deserve to know what’s happening.
You hurt your significant other, even though, sometimes you aren’t aware of it. They spend a lot of time looking for a reason why you’ve become so cold all of a sudden.
It also affects their self-esteem and self-worth. They start thinking they are the problem, that maybe they aren’t good enough for you.
That’s why you need to think about your relationship and decide whether you want to break up or continue dating that person. Right after you’ve made the decision, you have to tell your partner.
Fear of commitment
This is the most common reason for hurting the ones you love. It’s a feeling that’s not so easy to control.
Many people (especially guys) have a fear of commitment once they see that their relationship is getting serious.
Most are avoiding relationships in general or they only date short term. They don’t want to be tied down yet and they want to keep enjoying their freedom.
Things get difficult when they fall in love. They can’t leave a person they love, but they also don’t want to take the next step.
They get confused. Their mixed feelings don’t allow them to think clearly. It causes them to suffer from anxiety.
It seems like they can’t explain to their partner that they don’t want to break up, but they also don’t want to commit to something more serious.
They start avoiding talks about the future of their relationship.
Their partner is also confused because they don’t know what to think about the relationship – whether it’s doomed to fail or if they should give the other person some space.
Fear of intimacy
If you’ve been dating someone for a while but still don’t feel comfortable around them, or you still can’t show them the real you, it means that you’re afraid of intimacy.
The fear of sharing a close emotional connection with another person can be caused by experiences from the past.
The most common reasons are childhood experiences or bad experiences from your last relationship.
You always hurt the one you love because you’re afraid to indulge completely in a relationship. Your partner feels it and it seems to them that no matter what they do, they just can’t gain your trust.
Eventually, they’ll stop trying. They’ll get tired and the only option for them will be to break up with you.
That’s why you’ll never be able to achieve a real and deep connection with someone until you overcome your fear of intimacy.
Fortunately, it is possible and it’s not difficult at all. The most important thing is that you always have to be honest with your partner about your past.
Also, tell them how you feel and what you expect from them.
Self-esteem issues
The relationship you have with yourself is the foundation for every other relationship in your life, which means that it affects all the other relationships in your life.
If you have a good and healthy relationship with yourself, that will be significantly reflected in all your other relationships.
Unfortunately, many people today have self-esteem issues and that creates negative expectations about a relationship.
If you don’t have self-confidence, you’ll always feel like your partner isn’t being honest with you and that they’ll eventually hurt you.
That’s why you’ll also be afraid of showing your vulnerability in the relationship.
You’ll hurt your partner by not trusting them or not being able to form a deeper connection with them, even after a while.
If you are suffering from low self-esteem and you don’t work on yourself, you’ll be open to many negative feelings.
You’ll have trust issues, you’ll feel depressed, jealous, and anxious all the time.
Jealousy
Too much of everything isn’t healthy. It’s the same with jealousy. It’s never a good thing when you let jealousy blind you.
The way you behave when you feel jealous is never predictable. It’s also one of those feelings that are hard to control.
Jealousy is a negative feeling. It makes you miserable and it makes you hurt the person you love. It almost always ruins your relationship.
If you are acting jealous over something in your relationship, you have to talk it through with your partner. However, you should pay attention to how you talk with them.
You mustn’t express anger or any other negative feelings. You have to calmly explain to your partner what is making you feel jealous and how you can find a solution to fix it.
If your partner has betrayed your trust, then your jealousy is justified. But when you get jealous over little things, then you’re not showing love; you’re only revealing your own insecurities.
You’re hurting the other person because of your own insecurities, not because they did something wrong. You’re making them pay for something they didn’t even do.
If you have been hurt and betrayed by a person you loved in the past, it’s perfectly normal that those bad experiences have left you with trust issues.
However, you should never let it affect your new relationship.
If you get jealous over something stupid or without any reason, you’re just making yourself and your loved one unhappy. It is a complete waste of time.
Lack of communication skills
Effective communication is the most important part of every healthy relationship.
If you learn to solve your problems and fights in a healthy way, then you will never be hurt nor will you ever hurt your partner.
If you and your partner fight over something (and you will because fights are also a part of every healthy relationship), you have to be able to control your words and feelings.
If you say something in the heat of the moment, something that might hurt your loved one, you may regret it later but it will be too late because you’ll have already hurt your partner.
Spoken words can’t be taken back and they’ll always be remembered.
Words are also powerful and that’s why you have to choose them carefully. They can crush someone’s heart.
No matter how many times you apologize and even if they decide to forgive you, your partner will always remember those put-downs.
If you see that your partner isn’t communicating with you like they used to, the first thing you have to identify is “why”.
After you find out the reason, you have to sit down with your partner and work things through.
You also have to learn to be a good listener. You have to make sure your partner knows that you are listening to them and what they have to say.
When there is a lack of communication, it makes you focus more on yourself than on your partner and vice versa.
You only think about your problems and the things that you don’t like – you don’t think about all the things that are bothering your significant other.
To test their feelings
This might sound strange or funny, but it’s true. We want to make sure that our partner loves us as much as they say they do or as much as we love them, so we put their feelings to the test.
We think if they honestly love us, then they will also be afraid of losing us. Consequently, they’ll be able to forgive us if we hurt them.
In a way, that’s how we want them to prove their love to us. There are so many ways you can test your partner’s feelings and this is probably the worst one.
If you have doubts about your partner’s feelings, you should be sincere with them and admit to them that you may have to be reassured at times.
The next time you think about testing your loved one’s feelings by doing something that could hurt them, just imagine how you would feel if they did the same thing to you.
Unrealistic expectations
Having expectations is great because it shows that you have some standards and you appreciate yourself. But, there’s a huge difference between knowing your self-worth and being overly demanding.
Having high expectations is a killer for every relationship. First, it hurts you, then it makes you want to hurt your partner for not being able to fulfill your expectations.
You can’t expect your partner to behave the way you want them to all the time. They also have their own standards and there are some things that they won’t do, no matter how much they love you.
Of course, you should never lower your standards and allow someone to treat you badly.
Although, for the sake of your own emotional well-being, you should stop setting such high expectations.
You should set some basic and important boundaries that you mustn’t let anyone cross. For everything else, you can talk and compromise with your partner.
When you realize that your partner is not able to fulfill all your expectations, you feel disappointed and hurt and you start thinking that they don’t even love you.
You get mad and your intention becomes to hurt them. Can you see it? In the end, It’s only your fault you’re hurt and disappointed.
Before you set those expectations for your partner, you should know that unrealistic expectations always lead to great disappointment.
You look for a way out of a relationship
Ending a relationship is never easy, but the only right way to do it is to tell your partner in person.
If you hurt them so as to manipulate them into leaving you, it only means that you’re a coward for not being brave enough to tell them to their face.
Maybe you’re hurting them because you can’t admit even to yourself that your relationship has come to an end.
Maybe you’re doing it unintentionally.
However, that’s not an excuse. If you’re not sure how you feel about them anymore, you can always ask them for some space to be alone with your thoughts.
After that, the only right thing you can do is to find the courage to tell them what you have decided.
Revenge
Your partner has hurt you and you have chosen to forgive him and move on with your relationship. However, you aren’t at peace and you might start thinking that only revenge can make you feel better.
Some people believe in that kind of ‘an eye for an eye’ justice.
They believe without any doubt that if they do something that will make their partner suffer, it will make them feel better and that their emotional pain will lessen.
Wrong. Revenge only brings more negative feelings and you still won’t feel any better. Your pain will still be there.
The most important thing is that when you decide to forgive someone for something they have done to you, you have to honestly mean it.
Trust me, if you’re still holding grudges, even though you’ve said that you’ve forgiven your partner, you’ll only hurt yourself.
There are many reasons why we hurt the ones we love. The most important thing is that we almost always do it unintentionally.
After all, there’s one thing we should all know; we can’t intentionally hurt the person we love without hurting ourselves, because when we truly love someone, we feel their pain as our own.
