How being successful is ruining your relationship choices

Hands up if you consider yourself an ‘achiever’?

You know, someone who loves to learn new things and develop themselves. Someone who is conscientious in their studies and at work. Someone who thrives off chasing and achieving that next goal.

Before we get started, let’s clear one thing up - this isn’t a blog about how being successful means you work all the time and neglect your relationship.

This is a blog written by one achiever (me) to another (you) about how the things that have led you to crave success, may also be leading you to make misguided relationship decisions.

Hoorah to the achiever!

Let’s take a moment to give your inner achiever some recognition (yippeee! praise for the achiever).

There’s so much right with being someone who enjoys achieving things.

My guess is that your inner achiever has driven you to much of the success in your life. Grades at school, getting jobs, getting promotions, succeeding at work, getting qualifications.

So inner achiever, I mean no harm by what I’m about to say. You have created many wonderful things.

But like many of our best qualities, if they’re left to run wild and free and not brought into balance, they can also be the source of our troubles.

So let’s unearth those troubles…

Where achievement becomes a problem

Sometimes we get so caught up in needing to achieve achieve achieve, we lose sight of why we’re even doing it and why we even care!? This applies to both work, and relationships.

We start achieving for achieving sake. Then we’re like.. “why?!’

This is compounded by that fact we live in a culture where ‘success’ is measured by our ability to achieve a certain goal.

At school it’s doing well in exams, at university it’s much of the same. Our work is measured in grades or numbers. We reach a goal. We are ‘finished’ with that, and move on to our next achievement.

What starts as an interest in achieving, or a default we’re used to, becomes the frame in which we view success.

Why this is a problem for your relationship

Achieving becomes your self worth.

Think about this question honestly. If all of your achievements were stripped away from you, would you feel worthy?

(Yes this question makes me shake in my boots.)

When you’ve spent your life attaching your self worth to what you can achieve, you don’t truly believe yourself to be a worthy person.

(Side note before you freak out: this is very common - explained in my earlier point about how our culture frames success).

If you don’t truly feel worthy. Worthy of love, recognition and appreciation just for being you, you end up pinning your worthiness on another ‘achievement’ - your relationship.

Whether it’s getting a commitment out of them, or wanting to achieve the idea of a perfect relationship, or just to be loved by another person. The goal becomes ‘how can I find worthiness in a relationship?’ rather than ‘I want a relationship that adds to my life, where we can share in our own worthiness together’.

That ‘goal’ then shapes the kinds of relationships we look for, and stay in, and who we think we need to ‘be’ to achieve this goal of worthiness. This isn’t a good thing for us.

Achieving is an intellectual pursuit, relationships are not.

Achieving good grades or that dream job is usually an intellectual pursuit with a general formula for success. You learn X and achieve Y. You practise A and achieve B. You do P and achieve Q.

Relationships are waaaay more complicated than this.

And also they involve feelings.

Eeeeee yes those icky things called feelings.

In our quest to achieve and tick off the next part of life to be a ‘success’, we place the thinking brain as the absolute authority on everything we ‘should’ do. We don’t feel our way to success, we think ourselves there.

And here in lies the problem.

Yes, the logical, rational thinking brain absolutely has a role in your relationship choices.

If you fall completely head over heels in love with someone who turns out to be manipulative and abusive, I’m not gonna tell you to follow your heart - you’ll need the thinking logic of your head to break you out of the dopamine love rush.

However, where we go wrong is thinking that the brain is the only source of knowledge about our relationship.

You can tell yourself your partner is good for you for 23 different reasons, but if you don’t FEEL like you want to be with them.. well you need to pay some attention to what those feelings are telling you.

If you don’t you’ll make relationship decisions that are disconnected from what’s really true for you. You’ll tell yourself that it’s fine and right and okay, until one day it isn’t and you’ve no idea how you got there.

So I’m going to ask you to do one thing

Pay attention.

Choose one of the two above (achieving becomes your self worth / achieving is an intellectual pursuit, relationships are not) whichever resonates most.

Then pay attention over the next week to the moments where you think back to this article.

When you’re having a conversation with your partner, when you’re trying to make a choice in your relationship, when you achieve that next personal development win, when you worry you’re not enough.

How is your need for success and achievement impacting you in those moments?

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