“Why Am I Doing This to Myself?”: The Pain of Self-Sabotage

“I’ve had it,” Joaquin said at a men’s group meeting, his pronouncement lighting up his Zoom screen along with his image. “I’ve had it with myself. I know I want to be with someone, really be with her for the long run, but every single time it gets really good, I do these things to wreck it. Like I can see myself self-sabotaging, but I’m powerless to stop.”

At 38, Joaquin has clocked many years in the dating game. He was married once, very briefly — “We were just kids, 20 and 21, not even out of college yet. It didn’t last more than a year” — but with the exception of that, he said he hasn’t been in an exclusive, committed relationship for more than six months at a time.

“It’s not that I haven’t found anyone I’ve wanted to be with. Not at all. My best friend from college told me I shouldn’t be so picky, should just settle down already. He makes it sound so simple.”

Joaquin discussed the successes in his life, his career in home-building and being an uncle to his twin nephews. He enjoys his work — “even when it’s stressful” — and he deeply values his relationship with the eight-year-old boys, who adore their “Uncle Keen.” 

“And yet,” he says, “I’m lonely. I don’t want this, this being alone at the end of every day. I want to share my life with someone.” 

Deciphering Patterns of Self-Sabotage

Is there a pattern?, the group wanted to know. A point where Joaquin sees himself as lowering the boom on his own happiness? 

He thought about that for a while. And then sighed. “Actually, yes. It seems to happen when we have the let’s-be-exclusive talk. After that, it’s just a matter of time till I proverbially punch myself in the face.”

With his last girlfriend, that self-sabotage came in the form of criticizing her: how much she ate, how infrequently she worked out, how she talked to her mother too often and was too old to be asking her mother for so much advice. The relationship before that, he seemed to develop a strange kind of willful amnesia, forgetting plans they’d made, forgetting where he left his phone and therefore missing her texts/calls, forgetting her birthday and other dates she’d said were important to her.

And in the relationship prior to that one, he started using “way too much” cannabis, which maybe wouldn’t have been a deal-breaker for some, but his girlfriend was in AA and said it was important to her not to be around people actively using substances while they were using. (“And I don’t even like weed all that much,” Joaquin recalled, “so me smoking so much of it was weird.”) 

In all three cases, he reflected, his uncharacteristic behaviors started after they’d become a couple. “After we agreed to take our dating app profiles down,” he added wryly.  

Self-sabotage or misguided wanting?

The conflict between what we want and what we have to do to get it can leave us feeling powerless/immobile, or, in some cases, mobile enough to act in ways that defeat our very purpose. And sometimes it’s helpful to rewind even further and reflect upon what we want: sometimes, unbeknownst to us at a conscious level, there may be a gap between what we think we want and what we truly want. 

It can be useful to determine whether our behavior is “speaking” a deeper truth when it is at odds with our stated intentions. It might be that we believe we should want something based upon the messages we’ve received from family, friends and the culture in which we live, yet deep down it’s not what we want at all. 

In this case, Joaquin was clear and unwavering about his desire for the most important facet of his life. He wanted a long-term, committed relationship. And yet something was getting in the way of what he wanted. He needed to plumb the depths of his mind to better understand what was getting in his way.

Self-sabotaging behavior as a form of self-protection

Although self-sabotage sounds like a lose-lose endeavor to the psyche, it may be a misguided attempt (unconsciously) at self-protection. Even behaviors that appear quite destructive on the surface can be a way of protecting oneself from deeply feared outcomes. 

In my therapy work with self-sabotaging behaviors, the goal becomes exploring the unconscious dynamics and underlying fears that might be driving one to act in ways that are damaging. 

Let’s get back to Joaquin to better understand these dynamics.

Joaquin’s parents split up when he was 9. Their divorce was a very contentious one, so fraught that his parents wouldn’t speak to each other for years after that, and would use him as go-between, messages replete with insults, accusations, and foul language. 

“I remember my mom sitting with me at the kitchen table while I tried to do my homework,” he said. “She’d cry and ask what she ever did to deserve a pig like my dad and told me that school would only get me so far. If they didn’t teach me how to be a good man, to be different than the rest, what good was it?” 

In light of that, then, is it any wonder that when a relationship gets serious and when long-term commitment is on the table, Joaquin upends the table itself? Not to oversimplify anything relating to the highly complex mind that we all possess, but you can see how Joaquin’s behavior at this point in the relationship would be a means of protecting him from ending up like his father (or at least like his mother saw his father). 

“I felt sorry for them both,” Joaquin said, “my mom and my dad. Of course I’d never tell my mother that I felt bad for my father, I knew even at that age that was something I should never say. But I did feel sorry for him too, all by himself and made the villain of every discussion at my mother’s house.” 

The journey toward understanding self-defeating behavior

Could it be that unconsciously Joaquin fears he may end up like his father, alone and maligned, cut off from the family he once had, and therefore he’d choose serial, fleeting, superficial relationships to avoid that fate? 

Could it also be that within that repertoire of unconscious protections, when he starts to feel for a partner at a deep level and crosses the threshold from initial dating to rewarding but challenging intimacy, he unconsciously fears that he will become a toxic male who will ultimately devastate his partner? Does he therefore push potential partners away in order to protect them, before they have the chance to be hurt by him the way his mother was hurt by his father? 

These are the questions that Joaquin has begun to explore in therapy…questions that he will need to wrestle with as he works to change the self-sabotaging behaviors that have been robbing him of the fulfilling and meaningful relationship he so deeply desires.

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As a psychologist in private practice for twenty-five years, Dr. Nicastro has extensive experience working with clients who struggle with self-sabotaging, self-defeating behaviors. He offers online therapy to individuals and couples living in:

Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Washington DC, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Virginia

He can be reached at Rich@RichardNicastro.com or (512) 931-9128