After a decade of sitting across from couples in various stages of crisis and repair, certain patterns become impossible to ignore. The habits that damage relationships are rarely dramatic betrayals. They're small, repeated behaviors that erode trust one conversation at a time, often without either partner realizing what's happening until the distance feels permanent.
What follows are the nine habits I see most often in my practice, the ones that quietly convince a partner to stop leaning in and start pulling away.
1. Stonewalling during conflict
1. Stonewalling during conflict (Image Credits: Pexels)
Stonewalling happens when one partner shuts down completely during an argument, going silent, physically leaving the room, or simply refusing to engage. It feels like self-protection in the moment, but to the other person it reads as abandonment. Research from the Gottman Institute has long identified stonewalling as one of the strongest predictors of relationship breakdown, particularly when it becomes a habitual response rather than an occasional reaction to feeling overwhelmed.
What makes this habit so corrosive is the unresolved tension it leaves behind. The issue never gets addressed, so it resurfaces again and again, and the partner doing the stonewalling often doesn’t realize how much fear and rejection it creates on the other side. Couples who break this pattern usually do it by naming the need for a pause out loud instead of disappearing without explanation.
2. Keeping score
2. Keeping score (Image Credits: Pexels)
Score keeping shows up as mental tallies: who did the dishes last, who initiated the last apology, who spent more on the last vacation. It sounds harmless, almost logical, but it turns a partnership into a transaction. Once someone starts treating the relationship like a ledger, generosity disappears because every gesture starts to feel like it needs to be repaid.
Couples who keep score often don’t see the pattern until a therapist points it out, because each individual complaint feels justified. The deeper problem is that keeping score signals a lack of trust that the relationship is fair over time. Partners who stop counting tend to report more satisfaction, largely because they’ve replaced resentment with a longer view of give and take.
3. Criticizing character instead of behavior
3. Criticizing character instead of behavior (Image Credits: Unsplash)
There’s a meaningful difference between saying “you forgot to call me back” and saying “you never think about anyone but yourself.” The first addresses a specific action. The second attacks identity, and it’s the kind of comment that lingers long after the argument ends.
This habit is especially damaging because it teaches a partner to expect judgment rather than feedback. Over time, people stop bringing up problems altogether, not because the problems disappeared, but because raising them feels too risky. Couples who shift from character attacks to specific, behavior-based complaints tend to see conflicts resolve faster and with far less collateral damage to self-esteem.
4. Chronic phone distraction
4. Chronic phone distraction (Image Credits: Unsplash)
Phone use during shared time has become one of the most common complaints I hear in sessions, and it’s only grown more pronounced since 2020. A partner glancing at notifications during dinner or scrolling in bed instead of talking sends a quiet but persistent message: this moment matters less than whatever is on the screen.
Surveys on relationship satisfaction consistently link frequent phone interruptions during couple time to lower feelings of closeness and higher irritability between partners. The fix isn’t necessarily banning phones outright, but naming specific windows, meals, mornings, the hour before bed, where devices are set aside. Couples who do this report feeling more noticed, which sounds small but tends to compound over months.
5. Withholding affection as punishment
5. Withholding affection as punishment (Image Credits: Pexels)
Some partners respond to hurt feelings by pulling back physical or verbal affection, not out of exhaustion but as a deliberate consequence. It might look like refusing a hug, going cold after a disagreement, or simply withdrawing warmth until the other person apologizes sufficiently.
This habit turns affection into a bargaining chip rather than an expression of care, and partners on the receiving end usually sense the manipulation even if they can’t name it right away. Over time, it teaches people to be cautious rather than open, which is the opposite of what closeness requires. Healthier couples separate their feelings about a conflict from their baseline affection, even when they’re upset.
6. Comparing the relationship to others
6. Comparing the relationship to others (Image Credits: Pexels)
Comments like “my friend’s husband always plans date nights” or “her boyfriend never forgets anniversaries” seem like offhand observations, but they function as criticism dressed up as casual conversation. The partner on the receiving end hears a comparison they can’t win, since they’re being measured against someone else’s highlight reel rather than a shared reality.
This habit is particularly common in the age of social media, where curated posts create unrealistic benchmarks for everyday relationships. Comparing a partner unfavorably to others chips away at confidence and often triggers defensiveness instead of the change the comparing partner actually wanted. Couples fare better when they express specific desires directly, without using someone else’s relationship as the measuring stick.
7. Dismissing a partner's emotions
7. Dismissing a partner's emotions (Image Credits: Pexels)
Phrases like “you’re overreacting” or “it’s not a big deal” might be meant to calm someone down, but they usually land as dismissal. When a partner’s emotional experience gets minimized repeatedly, they learn to stop sharing it, which quietly cuts off one of the main channels of intimacy.
Emotional dismissal is different from disagreement. It’s possible to see a situation differently while still validating that a partner’s feelings are real and worth acknowledging. Couples who practice this distinction, acknowledging the emotion first and discussing the facts second, tend to argue less because the initial defensiveness never gets triggered.
8. Avoiding difficult conversations altogether
8. Avoiding difficult conversations altogether (Image Credits: Pixabay)
Conflict avoidance often gets mistaken for a peaceful relationship, but silence about real issues usually means those issues are simply building underground. Couples who avoid hard topics, finances, family boundaries, unmet needs, often describe their relationship as calm right up until it isn’t.
The habit tends to come from a fear that raising a concern will lead to a bigger fight or hurt feelings, so avoidance feels like the safer choice in the short term. In practice, unspoken resentment tends to surface eventually, often in an unrelated argument that seems disproportionate to whatever triggered it. Couples who learn to raise smaller concerns early, before they compound, generally avoid the larger blowups that avoidance was meant to prevent.
9. Making unilateral decisions on shared matters
9. Making unilateral decisions on shared matters (Image Credits: Pexels)
Big purchases, moving plans, decisions about children, these carry weight precisely because they affect both partners. When one person makes these calls alone and simply informs the other afterward, it sends a message that the partnership is more symbolic than functional.
This habit often isn’t about malice. It’s frequently rooted in impatience or a belief that discussion will slow things down unnecessarily. Still, the partner left out of the decision usually experiences it as a loss of voice, and repeated instances erode the sense that the relationship is truly a partnership rather than one person steering while the other rides along.
None of these habits are unusual, and most people recognize at least one or two of their own patterns somewhere in this list. What matters more than perfection is awareness, since couples who notice these habits early and name them out loud tend to have far more room to change course than those who let them run unchecked for years.