You might be failing in your relationships for a variety of reasons. But as long as you are not aware of what the true reason is, you will not know what you need to change. Consequently you will keep failing in your relationships. Becoming aware of what stands in your way is therefore vital to your ability to change what needs change and become able to develop a successful intimacy.

It is likely that when your relationships fail you either don’t know what has caused the failure, blame your partner, or resort to one thousand and one excuses to justify it to yourself (and to others).

But, as often happens, your relationships might fail due to factors which derive from the person that you are. If you pay attention to them and are willing to honestly look inwards and take responsibility for your failures, you can then overcome whichever stands in your way and move forward to developing a satisfying relationship.

Here are some possibilities for factors which might stand in your way:

1. You might be controlled by fears (such as: fear of commitment; fear of losing your independence; fear of being hurt again; fear of being alone which drives you to jump in with anybody who shows any interest in you, even if this person might not be an adequate partner). Any one of these fears – or a combination of some – might inhibit you from developing a sincere relationship.

2. You might hole on to a belief-system that “freedom” (whatever your definition of the term is) is most important than anything else. Unless you become aware of what drives you to believe in your “freedom”, you can’t change your belief, start a relationship and stay in it.

3. You might be too needy. This probably drives you to behave with your partners in ways that drive them away from you.

Whatever your personal situation is (which might include any one of the above or other factors), as long as you don’t take the necessary steps to understand what controls you and stands in your way you can’t overcome it and move forward to establishing a successful intimacy.

Why does it take courage to admit how you sabotage your relationships?

It isn’t easy for any of us to admit that we might be wrong. That we might not know how we shoot ourselves in the foot. That we need to take responsibility for our failures. That WE might be the ones harming our relationships – and not our partner or other “outside” factors.

But as long as we don’t get up the courage to closely and honestly look inwards, get a grip about how we stand in our own way, we will certainly fail time and again.

Therefore – it is only when you get up the courage and are wholeheartedly interested to know and understand, once and for all, how you stand in your way from having a successful intimacy, that you can recognize what steps you need to take in order to do just that.

Author's Bio: 

Doron Gil, Ph.D., is a Self-Awareness and Relationships Expert, with 30 year experience as a university teacher, workshop leader, counsellor and consultant. Dr. Gil has taught classes to thousands of students, has written numerous articles on the subject and is the author of: “The Self-Awareness Guide to a Successful Intimate Relationship”. http://amzn.to/eAmMmH