Pride is a problem, but I’m not talking about the feeling of loving and embracing who you are. Instead, I’m talking about the kind of pride that keeps us from being honest with ourselves and others because we don’t want to admit defeat. We don’t want people to see us as weak or incapable, but our vulnerability is exactly the thing that could help us build connections and stronger relationships. Here are just some of the ways that our pride is hurting our relationship in potentially irreparable ways.
- We don’t want to admit when we’re wrong. This just shows the other person just how immature we are and how little respect we have for them. While it prevents you from feeling bad, it ultimately just makes you look bad, and can really alienate people from you. We all make mistakes — the important thing is to learn from them. If you can’t even admit you’ve messed up to begin with, you’re missing out on some serious growth opportunities.
- We don’t want to admit when we’ve failed. Admitting we’ve failed, especially to our significant other, is hard because we’re afraid it’ll make us look weak in their eyes. Fortunately, if your partner really loves you, failing won’t make them think any less of you. Everyone experiences failure at some point in their lives, and it’s what helps you evolve as a person. It just becomes a problem when you refuse to admit it.
- We don’t want to listen to others. Getting caught up in our own ideas can keep us from listening to everyone else’s, which then means we can’t see things from other people’s perspectives. We can end up lacking empathy and understanding, which is a real shame. Acting as though your thoughts and feelings are the only ones that matter will only alienate you and make you look too egocentric.
- We don’t want to tell the truth. Pride may cause us to lie, hide, or cover up the facts, and this ends up hurting our relationships. Eventually, the truth comes out, as well as your motivations for not telling it to begin with, but at that point, it might be too late. Honesty is always the best policy — you’ll only look worse if you lie.
- We don’t want to ask for help. For some people, asking for help shows weakness and vulnerability. We want to be able to do everything on our own, and when we can’t, we feel like we’re just not strong enough. But every successful person in life had help at some point, and not asking for it when you need it can make you look foolish because you’re trying to tackle too much at once. Ultimately, you may even fail because of it, and your friends and family would wonder why you couldn’t just ask them for a hand.
- We don’t do what would be good for us out of spite. Similar to not wanting to listen to others or ask for help, we sometimes avoid doing something that we know would be beneficial for us solely because it came from someone else. We want to think we know everything, and we don’t want to acknowledge when someone else has a better idea, even if it would help us in the end.
- We don’t want to admit when our relationship has failed. This makes it easy for us to be in denial and to keep pursuing something we already know won’t work. If you were too proud to admit your relationship was failing, you’d end up being with someone who could never make you happy. Years could go by before you finally left him, and at that point, you just wasted half your life. It’s scary to leave a relationship you’ve invested a ton of time in, but think about how much more time you’re wasting if you refuse to acknowledge when it’s over and just take the plunge into singledom.
