6 Relationship-Ending Dating Behaviors
August 23, 2009 
13 Comments
It’s Sunday and it’s family day for me . . . well it’s family day with Sonja’s family today. I’m meeting her family today, and it’s going to be a great test of remembering names for me. Wish me luck, because as you all know I’m terrible with names!
When you’re dating somebody, what are the boundaries? Are there certain relationship boundaries which, if crossed, cause irreparable damage and the ultimate end of most relationships? While I am not usually a fan of hard and fast “rules” for relationships, there are certain dating behaviors which will almost without exception will end a relationship.
What all of these behaviors have in common is that they are violations of another person’s trust. Once one person in a relationship no longer trusts their partner, the relationship will almost certainly end. So to help you ensure that this doesn’t happen in your relationship, here are 6 relationship-ending dating behaviors that should always be avoided: Keep in mind that I am not mentioning the most obvious one which is cheating.
1. Everyone Is Entitled To Their Privacy. What constitutes a violation of someone’s privacy? When, if ever, are you justified in violating your partner’s privacy? If you have an “intuition” about something, does that give you the right to start reading through your partner’s email? To start listening to their voicemail messages? To hack into their other Internet accounts? The answer to all of these is no! To violate someone’s privacy is to violate their trust. You should NEVER dig through someone’s personal emails, or listen to someone’s voicemail messages. By listening to your partner’s voicemail messages or reading their emails, you are violating not only their trust, but also the trust your partner has with anyone who left those voicemail messages and emails.
2. There’s No Such Thing As “A Lie For The Greater Good.” Of course lying is never good in a relationship, although we’ve probably all been guilty of doing it. Certain kinds of lies, though, are far more damaging to a relationship than others. Some people will lie to their partner in certain situations in an effort to avoid hurting them or to avoid having to have a conversation that will be hurtful to them. So although we lie believing we are doing so to “protect” our partner, when that lie is exposed (which it almost always inevitably is) we end up digging a deeper hole for ourselves. When you do get caught in this situation, not only do you end up hurting your partner anyway, but you also end up hurting yourself even more. In life, what you fear will actually manifest – but it will manifest even more severely than you feared. So whatever you were trying to protect your partner from by lying to them will seem worse because of your lie than it would ever have had been if you just were open and honest about it from the get-go. On top of that, you have violated your partner’s trust by lying to them. These kind of lies are almost always relationship-enders.
3. You Are Not James Bond, So Never Spy On Your Partner You are not a spy, so you should never be spying on your partner. You should never snoop in your partner’s private things. That means that you must never look through your partner’s drawers, their wallet, their filing cabinet, or their private records (like their bank or credit card statements). Further, there is nothing that justifies snooping. No matter what you have a “hunch” about, snooping through your partner’s things is never the way to confirm or deny your hunch. It is an absolute violation of your partner’s trust. Your partner’s private business and personal records should be kept private unless they give you permission to look at them. Spying on your partner behind their back James Bond style is one of the most deliberate and blatant violations of your partner’s trust, and will achieve nothing except to have your partner never trust you to be alone near their things ever again.
4. Beware Of Designating Yourself “Magnum P.I.” Another wrong way some people try to verify suspected bad behavior by their partner is to take on the role of private investigator by attempting to “catch their partner in the act” of doing something. Whether this takes the form of searching for your partner’s car by driving by their house, work or gym, or it takes the form of following your partner in your car, this is something you should never do. Even if you believe you have a true “hunch” or “intuition” that your partner is doing something wrong or is hiding something from you, designating yourself as your own private investigator is not only the wrong way to address that, but also frankly smacks of stalker-like behavior. If your partner finds out you’ve been “tailing them” in your car, they will no longer trust you and will likely end your relationship right there and then.
5. Don’t Send Others To Do Your Dirty Work. Don’t ever send a friend or anyone else to gather information for you about your partner or to spy on your partner for you. That means, don’t send a friend to go hang out where you know or suspect your partner will be. Don’t have your friend try to eavesdrop on your partner’s conversations in places they go. Don’t ask your friends to use their cell phone to snap covert pictures of your partner. All of these not only violate your partner’s trust, but also reveal your total lack of trust in your partner. This behavior, if discovered by your partner, will most certainly result in them ending your relationship.
6. Avoid Paranoid And Obsessive Behavior. One of the biggest ways to reveal that you don’t trust your partner at all, is to manifest that distrust with paranoid and obsessive behavior. While calling your partner regularly is quite normal, calling them incessantly to “check up on them” comes off as paranoid and obsessive, and will virtually always drive your partner away. If for example your partner leaves their phone somewhere, and by the time they realize they left it and pick it up two hours later you have called them 50 times, you are not only coming off as being paranoid and obsessive, but you are clearly communicating to your partner that you don’t trust them at all. If you panic every time ten minutes go by without a reply from your partner to a phone call or an email, it sends the exact same message to them. This behavior will not only drive your partner away from you, but the fact that you clearly don’t trust them at all will most likely lead your partner to end your relationship.
So even if you have some type of “intuition” that your partner is doing something wrong, it is better to confront them openly about it and “slug it out” with them than to violate their privacy and their trust by searching for answers behind their back. Even if your partner doesn’t respond to your attempts to talk about it the first, second or third time, chances are that you will get to talk about it – and the outcome of confronting your suspicions openly with your partner will always be better than if your partner discovers you have engaged in any of the behaviors I talk about here.
Finding a great person with whom you want to be in a relationship can be really hard. Once we find somebody, though, we need to understand that our partner’s privacy and trust are boundary lines which must not be breached. Violations of trust like the ones discussed here are some of the quickest ways to kill any relationship.
No matter how much emotion and love exist in a relationship, a relationship cannot survive without trust. Think long and hard before you engage in any of these behaviors. Violating someone’s trust will never take a relationship to a better place. In fact, by doing so you may very well be single-handedly orchestrating the end of what could have been a fantastic relationship.
wow that is so true yay first post
Great entry today Dave. I like how your advice puts a premium on trust, dignity, respect, and maturity. I always appreciate the advice posted by you and your team. Have a great night!
Hi David. You know I read this blog and thought to myself ‘I wish I read this when I was younger’ but I probably would’ve acted that way anyway. I’m glad to say I learned it the hard way though. This goes back to the blog you had the other day about trusting yourself. People who engage in this type of behavior have insecurity issues, well at least I did maybe not everyone. Thx David. What happened to the blog you had earlier by the way, you didn’t like it?
Good luck meeting the family, David.
Great blog on how not to be creepy. I’d never do any of these myself, but you hear of people who do.
Just to complicate this issue, I would say it would be acceptable to break most of these if you genuinely think it would keep your partner out of harm’s way. For example not mentioning, or lying, to someone that their son has died while they are driving; I see as acceptable and appropriate.
What do you all think?
The persons who do this have major issues of insecurity .They spend time ,money and energy looking for some one .. And when they find it they don’t know how to keep the relationship going . Most of the so call dating gurus talk about how to meet and open up women.. By the way how do you open them up do you use a chain saw or a can opener lol and it’s crazy how this people want to control their partner but can’t control there emotions and there insecurityS. What happens whe you try to help a love one with an addiction when your on their back all the time? What happens is that the more you care and try to help them the
ore you push them away .. In relationships is the same thing the more you want to know where they are all the time and to Who they are talking too. I know what some of you say. I’m doing it becouse I love you and care for you or I worried about you. Come on people you aren’t dating a little kid that is going to get lost or get kidnap ..And about lying in some cases they make you lie to them. The minute you tell them the truth they go off on you asking you more quetions .. For exemple if my girlfriend calls me and I happen to be in acombersation with some . She the minute I call her back she asks why I didn’t answer her call. If I tell her that I dint hear the phone ring it will be the end of the discution, and If I tell her the truth she ask who was it is the person is more important than Her. So let’s apresiate all of those people around us who tell us the truth even if we don’t like it.
You know, I’m *never* been in a relationship where I was even tempted to snoop or play detective. I do think, though, that it must be more tempting when you’ve gotten yourself intimate with someone you don’t know all that well in the first place.
David nice blog thanks for all the tips but what happens when you want the girls who’s playing sex questions with you on facebook to move it on to phone and then eventually meet her?
Good advice.
Very interesting to read it
This is stupid advice. My wife was a flight attendant, about 5 years into our marriage started taking pilots (yes married too) with her on her layovers. I was killing myself to make her happy, but nothing ever did. For $40 I bought a keystroke recorder and finally found out the truth, which she was too weak to tell me. She was a skilled cheater, and I never would have caught her without it. Best $40 I ever spent.
Take it from me – information is a good thing. I would still be married to that whore otherwise, slaving away to buy her crap in a vain attempt to make her happy. You have to be discreet (she still doesn’t know how I found out), but you will never know a person’s character without checking. Be prepared to read things you won’t like.
I disagree strongly with 1,3 and 4. If our intuition and their actions are telling us something is “off”, it needs to be checked out. In two relationships I have had, when things quit adding up and I knew something wasn’t right, I looked at emails. Man, did I ever find out things I wish I had known from the start – if I had known I never would have even entertained the idea of a relationship with these guys! Both were liars and one was also a cheater! They both hid it quite well for about 3 years! And yes, they lied; otherwise I never would have had to go to those lengths to find out.
However, I am not talking about someone you have just begun dating. That would be creepy. The first relationship that this happened to me was with someone I had met on an online dating site; the second time it happened was with someone I had known for 15 years before we ever started dating, and I thought he was the most wonderful guy on the planet before I found out he was leading a dual life.
Cheaters always want to maintain their “privacy.” I knew my ex wife’s passwords into her email and Facebook accounts. Then one day she changed them. She started guarding her cell phone…
You never want to start out snooping on someone. But when the evidence starts piling up, you have to check into things to protect yourself.
How are you supposed to find out? When you catch the STD from her new lover that he lied to HER about? This happens in the real world…
ooohhh that is the good advice to all…