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Jun 22

Please Like Me, Because I Don’t

By Jay Slupesky
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Marriage Dynamics

Water Ripple I often see low self-esteem in one person having a negative impact on a relationship. More often than not, it’s the woman who has the self-esteem issue. She may think that she’s not attractive, not valuable, not loveable, not as good or as smart as others, etc. Therefore, she fears that her husband/boyfriend doesn’t find her attractive, valuable, or loveable, and this causes her anxiety.

The relationship problem results because the woman has a tendency to intrepret things that her husband/boyfriend says or does in a negative way, even when the man doesn’t mean to be saying something negative. For example, the man makes a comment on his wife’s appearance which may not be 100% positive (maybe it’s only 80% positive). Unfortunately, the wife, due to a systematic bias in her thinking, interprets the man’s comment as something like “I’m fat” or “I’m ugly.”

This upsets the wife greatly because her husband’s good opinion is very important to her due to the fact that she doesn’t have an especially good opinion of herself. At this point she may reply to her husband in anger or in some way “picking a fight” and an argument ensues.

So the woman’s self-esteem issue is causing a problem in the relationship. If follows that a person can improve his or her relationship by working on his or her own self-esteem!

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This entry was posted on Sunday, June 22nd, 2008 at 11:44 am and is filed under Marriage Dynamics.

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