Feeling butterflies while falling for someone is a beautiful thing, but it is rightly called a ‘spark’ as it is ephemeral, and cannot last forever. Very often, we tend to idolize our partners in a relationship and put them on a pedestal. While it is fine to compromise on some things from time to time, it is important to understand when it is the right time to draw a boundary and do a reality-check of where your relationship stands. Here are some pointers that will help you know the pattern of your relationship.
Bread crumbing: As the name suggests, this refers to sporadic, irregular patterns of pursuing someone, which leaves the other person confused regarding their true intentions about them. The pursuer invests little effort and then disappears.
Kelly Campbell, Ph.D., an associate professor of psychology and human development at California State University, San Bernardino, told Brides.com that this behavioural pattern does not guarantee stability in the relationship, and one should not tolerate poor treatment like this in a relationship.
Stashing: Just as people don’t want the world to know about their stashed money, stashing in a relationship happens when your partner neither talks about you on social media nor introduces you to his/her friends and family. People like these want to keep their options open and can leave their partner anytime.
Biological anthropologist, Dr. Helen Fisher, Senior Research Fellow at The Kinsey Institute, the author of Anatomy Of Love: A Natural History of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray, and the Chief Scientific Advisor for Match.com explains why stashing happens. The stasher might be embarrassed by either his/her family or by you, or they might have past insecurities. Trust your gut and take a call to stay or leave.
Gaslighting: This happens with people with narcissist tendencies and superiority complexes. They always make their partner feel that they are responsible for every problem in the relationship, whereas they never realize they are the ones to create problems.
Naomi Torres-Mackie, a psychologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City said that gaslighting is a devastating psychological tactic combining elements of manipulation, control and exploitation of trust, and that, those things are the building blocks of gaslighting.
