Hi beautiful human, Adele here.

Some frictions in relationships are easy to spot—arguments, misunderstandings, differences of opinion. But others hide in plain sight. They show up in the way we cope, communicate, or protect ourselves. At first, these patterns don’t look harmful at all. They sound like, “I’m just being honest,” “I’m protecting myself,” or “I have high standards.”

Here’s the problem: habits that feel small in the moment can quietly chip away at trust and emotional safety. Left unchecked, they create distance until you don’t even know how you got so far apart.

Most of these habits aren’t about bad intentions. They’re about unhealed wounds and defense mechanisms that once helped us survive—but don’t serve us anymore. I call them harmful relationship habits: subtle behaviors that weaken love, trust, and intimacy without us even realizing it.

If you’ve ever wondered why your relationship feels tense, fragile, or stuck, it’s worth asking yourself: What habits am I excusing? And how are they shaping the space between us?

Here are five common ones to watch for.

1. Blaming Everything on Your Triggers

Your history matters. Your trauma matters. But when “this is just how I am” becomes the excuse for shutting down, lashing out, or trying to control the situation, your relationship pays the price.

Triggers deserve compassion—but they’re an invitation to self-awareness, not permission to wound the person you love. If every disagreement becomes about your pain instead of the shared problem, your partner starts to feel like the villain in your story. Over time, that erodes trust and emotional safety.

2. Making Your Partner Responsible for Your Moods

We all have bad days, and in healthy relationships, our partners support us through them. But there’s a difference between sharing your feelings and making your partner manage them for you.

If your partner is constantly tiptoeing around to avoid “setting you off,” that’s not love—that’s fear. Emotional safety means both people can show up authentically without worrying that one misstep will cause an explosion or withdrawal.

When your moods feel unmanageable without constant reassurance, it’s worth exploring healthier ways to self-soothe.

3. Withholding Affection or Validation

Love and validation aren’t meant to be rewards for “good behavior.” They’re meant to be expressions of care.

When affection is given only after your partner does things “right,” it stops being about connection and starts being about control. Over time, this teaches them they have to perform to be loved—and that breeds anxiety, not intimacy.

Ask yourself: Am I pulling away to punish? Or am I staying open even when I’m hurt? The latter builds trust. The former builds walls.

4. Keeping Score

Accountability is healthy. Weaponizing the past isn’t.

When every mistake your partner has ever made gets dragged into a new argument, you send a clear message: you’ll never be allowed to grow.

True repair means addressing the hurt, working through it, and then letting it go. Not pretending it didn’t happen, but not reliving it forever either. Without this, resentment piles up, and connection gets buried underneath it.

5. Threatening to Leave During Conflict

Saying “Maybe we should just break up” in the middle of every fight might feel like honesty, but it’s actually emotional blackmail.

Those words land like a grenade. Instead of resolving the issue, both of you switch into survival mode—protecting the relationship from collapse rather than addressing the conflict itself. If it happens often, your partner begins to feel unsafe, like your love is conditional.

Safety in a relationship comes from knowing you can disagree without fearing abandonment.

Why This Matters More Than You Think

If any of these habits sound familiar, please hear me: it doesn’t make you a bad partner. Many of us have done these things without realizing the impact. But left unchecked, they chip away at the foundation of emotional safety—and without safety, love cannot deepen.

And this isn’t just about us. The way we argue, repair, and respond to each other becomes the blueprint our children carry into their own relationships one day. That can feel heavy, but it’s also empowering—because every time we choose connection over control, listening over defensiveness, or understanding over blame, we’re teaching the next generation a healthier way to love.

You don’t have to keep repeating the patterns you grew up with. You can create something better—for you, your partner, and the love you’re building.

The Takeaway

If you’ve been justifying harmful relationship habits with phrases like, “That’s just who I am,” or “They know I love them,” I want to invite you to consider something different. You deserve a relationship where love feels safe, connection feels steady, and both people can grow without fear.

And if you’re ready to let go of habits that damage connection and replace them with healthier ones, I’ve got tools to help you get there:

👉 Fighting for Us: The 28-Day Conflict Reset Challenge — a simple, daily practice to regulate emotions, de-escalate fights, and finally repair together.
👉 The Couples Communication Handbook — practical strategies to build trust, emotional safety, and better communication.

Start turning awareness into action. Your relationship can grow stronger. And the love you’re building will be worth it.

With love,
Adele