Becoming your own worst enemy in a relationship

BENGALURU: Do you believe in the old saying, ‘you are your worst enemy, and you are your best friend?’. Whether or not you think it is true for your life in general, it certainly holds true for relationships.
We are not talking as much about the early days of a relationship as we are about what happens to a relationship in the steady stage – when you have known each other for long enough to really know each other, there are hardly any more secrets left and very little new discoveries to be made. Or so it seems.
In that steady state, as things chug along quite nicely, a strange new demon tends to rise. This phenomenon is again so succinctly captured in the other old saying: Familiarity breeds contempt. The very nature of long-term familiarity means that we see each other fully, warts and all.

What seems cute and charming in the early days, if left as is, tends to age over time into objects of derision and contempt, rather than what they used to be. Sometimes, they are warts in the literal sense – that cute button of a wart on someone’s nose can over time morph in one’s perception to an ugly witch’s nose. That wide smile gape into a bottomless, meaningless pit. That twinkling laugh into a cheese grater on which every nerve of yours shatters each time the laugh comes up in the umpteenth time you both watch Friends. Even Janice sounds better!

If you don’t recognize it early enough and let that tide turn truly, then the little things that have begun to annoy you become more and more of a grievance, get communicated in little ways at first – through silences and rolls of eyes, and become sharper and harder over time, coming out in hurtful jibes, brutal comments and harsh neglect. You could become truly contemptuous of not just aspects of the person you used to love, but the person themselves.

When that happens, you have well and truly become the worst enemy of your own love and your relationship. You might still fool yourself saying that the magic has worn off, or that the other person has become boring and a drag, but in reality, it is quite likely you.

Your lover may be exactly what they have always been – you on the other hand, have given contempt the upper hand. You have, well and truly, become your love’s worst enemy, and you don’t even know it. Like cancer, there are stages. In the early stages, you are merely annoyed or irritated at what used to be nice. If you catch it then, you can undo the harm and actually get better. If it is much later, in stage three or four, where it has taken root and spread into other areas of your interactions, your contempt is really hard to uproot, and even when you do, scars will likely remain and take years of being your own best friend to overcome and get back on track.