By relationships, I mean both platonic and romantic. I’m just doing a bit of soul searching and reflecting on things I’ve done in the past.
For example, I used to get a weird sense of satisfaction by rejecting girls that showed interest in dating me, even though deep down I wanted a relationship and wanted to give them a chance. Not in a cruel way, just in a “sorry I’m not looking for a relationship right now” kind of way.
I also used to sabotage friendships that were forming before I got too close to the person. Sometimes I ghosted people, acted cold around them, or just didn’t go out socially with them. The result was exactly what you’d expect - people just stopped speaking to me and didn’t make an effort anymore, just as I hadn’t with them.
I’ve hurt people that cared about me and can’t figure out whether it’s fear of getting close, fear of showing my vulnerabilities, or something else entirely.
Could it be that you just want to be chased? Enjoy being hard to get? Feeling valued. Get satisfaction from being contacted and approached but then once it all disappears it feels like you lost?
I’m only thinking this because you wrote you get a weird satisfaction from rejecting.
Fear of rejection can manifest in this way. We can’t be rejected if we sabotage the relationship before the person finds out who we really are. It’s a sign of low self esteem and depression.
You could look into “attachment style”, and perhaps you are “avoidant” or something similar.
Discussing this with a therapist, or advisor or life coach could probably help you zero in on what’s going and what to do about it.
Came looking for this comment. It’s absolutely critical to know thyself, and understanding one’s attachment style is one of the easier bits of self-knowledge.
One of the most accessible books on the topic is “Attached” by Levine and Heller. For me, that book was such an eye-opener. I read it as my second marriage was imploding, and I was grabbing at everything to try to save it. The example conversations for my and my ex’s attachment styles were uncanny. I kept getting the feeling of “were y’all in the room with us for that argument?”
Reasons for patterns like this are most often to be found in childhood. You probably were rejected emotionally in your childhood by someone you yearned to be connected with (parent?!), and now you are repeating or replaying that shit in a vain attempt to get over it. This sounds weird but it makes sense when you see it as “taking the stronger role” to not be the weak and suffering part of the relationship - it’s a form of self protection.
Good therapy (there’s bad therapy as well unfortunately) can help.
I’ll echo the “see a therapist if it’s feasible” recommendations. Here’s another possibility:
We all have a worldview, and that includes our own understanding of who we are. One of the possible reasons for self-sabotage is when we believe ourselves to be a certain way (or that we do/don’t deserve something), we tend to self correct for any anomalies, whether good or bad. That is, if I was treated poorly as a child, or otherwise lacked the love and support that children need, I might believe myself to be unlovable and “correct” anything that contradicts that understanding (such as someone showing interest in me).
It could be that, or any number of other things. I’ll echo another recommendation: take note of your emotions when you’re in those situations (you might even be able to feel them when you imagine a situation like you described). What do you feel?
