When Your Relationship Is a Battleground for Your Ego

Afshan Fatima

11.1k Reads

Updated: 21 Jan, 2023

Ego can hurt closeness when it drives constant boasting or lack of apology, but choosing humility and honest listening helps couples feel seen and supported again.
Difference in opinion can deepen understanding when you set ego aside, listen fully, and learn about your partner’s perspective to grow together.
Communication with care and compassion turns conflict into connection, inviting apologies, forgiveness, and shared solutions that strengthen the bond you both want to nurture.

Ego is known to play a major role in ruining countless relationships both romantic and non-romantic. If you look back, in retrospect, you are bound to have at least one friendship or a relationship that is strained. Whether it was the reason of the falling out or for not getting back, ego is always there. Lurking through dark corners, leaping in, keeping you from getting back with a person that once meant the world to you.

If there’s a situation in which you and your partner are to make a decision, while it is normal to think the other one would also have the same decision, in reality, it doesn’t work that way. The difference in opinion is where the ego usually starts to go the wrong way.

If tackled well by keeping the ego aside, a difference in opinion can lead to a more healthy relationship with better understanding and a reality check.

And this reality check doesn’t have to be a bad one. It can be a new learning opportunity, you will learn something new about your partner.

While you can have a discount on things, you can’t have it on emotions and feelings. That’s exactly why communication in a relationship is very essential

The term ‘Ego’ is often used with a lot of other emotions, feelings, and behaviors interchangeably. For example, the ego is often confused with arrogance, confidence and so on. While arrogance is a part of the boastful ego, it is not the same thing.

It is a mere consequence of it and confidence again is a healthy aspect.

A faulty ego feeds on a lot of self-built negativity around oneself- these feelings, thoughts, and emotions range from fear, jealousy, hatred, anger to judgment, lack of forgiveness, expectations, and limitation.

So it is essential that we always have our egos in check because, in the long run, it is just going to be counterproductive.

The biggest mistake we often do is keep our egos ahead of the person we love and sometimes even ourselves and our happiness.

We let the ego feed on self-doubt and ruin something wonderful. People just fail to understand that being confident is one thing and being egoistic and boastful is plain self-destructive.

What effect does this self-destructiveness have in our relationships?

I’ll list out different ways ego affects your relationships and in turn your life. Thanks to ego-

1. You will end up pushing people away

Yes, this is bound to happen. If you are always going to walk around being boastful about yourself, not apologizing, not even being humane to others, these actions are ought to push the right people away.

In general, people like having those people around them who lift them up, keep aside putting them on a pedestal.

If someone is constantly putting the other down, criticising or even constantly telling them you are better than them. It’s not a good news and definitely not in romantic relationships.

You will end up pushing people away

2. You will be irrational and critical about everything

When you have a heightened sense of self, you are always trying to prove your point, come what may even if you are in the wrong, could be denial, could be ignorance.

In the process of doing so, you’ll start being highly irrational and there just won’t be any common ground or a midway for you and your partner.

How long can a relationship go on in favor of one partner? Then comes criticism, ‘I don’t like how you do this’…. ‘You are not how you used to be’… ‘You’ve changed’ and all the statements on those lines. And being critical about everything isn’t a sign of a healthy and a long-lasting relationship.

3. You are no longer compassionate

Do you remember the reason your partner fell in love with you? Do you still have that quality?

Always assuming the worst of your partner and being defensive about yourself and your actions in every conversation forget arguments and fights is not a good sign.

What happened to looking at the big picture? What happened to being compassionate? And when did the fight become you vs your partner? Isn’t it both of you vs the problem?

4. You have more stress in your life

On a daily basis, you deal with a lot of stress, heaps and bounds of it. Whether it’s work-related or paying bills or sometimes even making ends meet.

If you add ego defended actions that just target your self-worth to the mix, you are bound to have a lot of stressful moments and sleepless nights. Are you prepared for that?

Is ego entirely bad?

Anything in extreme measures is bad. While ego is generally used in a highly negative sense if in control can lead to a healthy life and relationships.

Basically, ego has a purpose in life and that is to serve our perceptions about ourselves and when it has a faulty self-image it turns to external forces for the lift.

If you see in the positive sense, ego is something that will lead to self-discovery. Yes, there are times when you really want to prove a point to your partner, you are convinced that you are right or perhaps there’s something gone terribly wrong but in those situations, it’s vital that you resist the urge to prove yourself or even defend yourself.

A simple I’m sorry goes a long way in such cases. And by all means, don’t let the ego ruin the love you have for each other.

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