Challenging behaviour in relationships
All of us experience behaviours we find challenging in others, anything from being overbearing or disinterested, passive or demanding, gushing or critical, self-righteous or untrustworthy, unreliable or inflexible. When we notice feeling affected by someone who passes through our life, we can observe the discomfort and move on. However, what happens when the person becomes part of daily life due to shared connections to people and places? Below are some thoughts on how we can understand and respond to this situation.
Challenges in ourselves
Having negative thoughts about others can result in feelings of guilt and shame, even when the trait we’re responding to is objectively testing. Feeling uncomfortable around someone can also reinforce critical beliefs we have about ourselves, for example “I’m hard to get along with”, which can harm our self-esteem. When our responses to others are instinctive, it’s important to show self-compassion. And if, after consideration, the dislike remains, this doesn’t make us a bad person. It’s reasonable and natural to have personality types that we enjoy and others that feel disagreeable. In these cases, it might help to frame the latter as a case of incompatibility rather than a personal failure. Giving ourselves permission to focus on relationships we value encourages self-confidence and self-worth.
Meeting the challenge
The presence of challenging behaviours within relationships can result in stress. An awareness that we can’t change the behaviour of others can lead to feelings of helplessness. One way to counteract the tension is to adjust our own responses, for example by avoiding, ignoring, or accepting challenging behaviours. However, adjusting our own behaviour in response to others can feel inauthentic or insincere. Setting aside our needs can also send ourselves a message that they’re not important. Instead, we can try to balance the health of our relationships with our own wellbeing, through setting boundaries and practising self-care. For example, “I choose to tolerate the difficult behaviour, but will limit my I exposure myself to it” or “I choose to stay away from this relationship for now, as I already have a lot to cope with”.
Challenging the “should”
Social expectations can affect how we think and feel about challenging behaviours in relationships. They can encourage us to compare our relationships to others and to replicate an idealised standard. This can lead to disappointment and embarrassment, for example “I’m embarrassed that I’m not closer to my parents”. The reality is that all relationships are different and are affected by the personalities, experiences and circumstances involved; there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’. Our lived experiences of relationships can also lead us to believe that relationships are unreliable or unsafe. This can affect our ability to trust others and respond usefully to difference and challenge. At these times it’s essential to remember that change is possible. Our relationship patterns and unhelpful beliefs can be unlearned over time, resulting in new templates for satisfying relationships with others.
Understanding relationship triggers
Observing or being confronted with certain behaviours in others may be meaningful because of our past experiences. They may replicate a characteristic that it’s been difficult or distressing to be around. This is often intensified in childhood relationships where we have limited capacity to influence the situation. Some behaviours may have particular meaning because they mirror traits we see in ourselves but don’t like to acknowledge. It can be helpful to explore what’s activating our emotional responses. Understanding the cause of the discomfort can make it possible to develop tools and strategies to manage difficult thoughts and feelings and to make changes. Depending on the relationship, this might involve attempting to work with the other person to address the point of tension, or finding ways to limit the impact of challenging behaviours on ourselves.
Further information
This NHS guide to on Maintaining Healthy Relationships and Wellbeing provides useful information and tools. And some ideas on how to identify challenging traits in others can be found in this Positove Psychology article The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.
