What is negativity in the relationship? Extract this explanation from Getting the Love you Want by Harville Hendrix. I highly recommend reading it.

Negativity is any thought or deed that tells your partner: You’re not okay when you think what you think or act the way that you did.” In essence, you are rejecting your partners’ otherness” We sometimes feel the need to negate when they do or say something that makes us uncomfortable. Usually, they are themselves. But from our point of view, they are threatening an image that we have on them, or they are failing to meet an unspoken need of our own.

All of this happens after the honeymoon period (or when familiarity kicks in) of the relationship started. Once, the high of being in-Love starts to settle in. We start to see our partners as who they are, not as what we expected in our heads. 

How negativity shows up on the relationship

Negativity makes its first appearance in a love relationship as denial: “I can’t believe you did that! The fact that your partner is a separate individual with wishes and needs different from yours. It’s dawn on you, and you feel threatened. Your denial desperate ploy to hold on to your illusion partner.

When your partner continues departing from your projected image, the tendency is to bring out the big guns. Your ARSENAL INCLUDES BLAMES, CRITICISM, INVASIVENESS, AVOIDNESS and finally blanket of condemnation. A more subtle ploy is to invest your partner’s psyche and act as if you had x-ray vision. 

Results of your action

It is no wonder that our partner feels depressed. And do whatever it takes to stay away from us. They experience being chopped up into small pieces, dissected and rejected. It is an emotional annihilation. At the base level, it expresses contempt. No one can be healed or grow in such a toxic environment. To get the Love we want, we need to eliminate negativity in all forms.

Reason to stop the negativity.

The negativity we express towards our partner comes back like a boomerang and affects us as well. That is because the brain does not know whether the negativity is being directed outward or inward. 

The study found that a habit of prolonged negative thinking diminishes your brain’s ability to think, reason, and form memories.

Until next time, be true to yourself. 

REFERENCE 

BOOKS: Getting the Love you want.

Researchers from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King’s College.