Does the Bible give us any hints about relationships? Proverbs 16:18 says, “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” That verse was written well over 2,000 years ago but it still applies to life today. And it applies to dating as well. Here is how pride ruins a relationship. The Daily Hope web site says that pride destroys relationships while humility builds them.

Pride destroys relationships. It shows up in a lot of different ways, like criticism, competition, stubbornness, and superficiality.

The problem with pride is it’s self-deceiving. Everybody else can see it in us but us. When you have a problem with pride, you don’t see it in your life.

Pride destroys relationships, but humility is the antidote to pride. Humility builds relationships.

Communication leads to lasting relationships but if you cannot see that you are being prideful you cannot talk about it with your partner and cannot deal with it.

Dealing with Too Much Pride

If you work hard at something and succeed you deserve to be proud. In fact people who don’t let themselves be proud of their accomplishments end up being very unhappy. The problem is not pride but excessive pride. How do you deal with pride before it ruins your relationship? It starts by realizing that excessive pride is a result of not liking yourself, judging yourself too harshly or believing that you need to be better than everyone else in order to be adequate. The Poured Out His Love web site says that pride travels with friends.

Pride does not travel alone. With pride comes guilt, competition, and judging. It is hard to stay feeling self-sufficient because one soon realizes that they never measure up to their own expectations.

They feel guilty for their own inadequacies because they are so bent on fixing themselves in their own strength and soon realize this is an impossible task. One may also become competitive as they realize they can’t be perfect. So as long as they are better than the guy next to them they are doing OK, which would also lead to the judging aspect. Pride has a way of comparing oneself with others, in a futile attempt to feel adequate.

The way out of this trap is to tell yourself time and time again that you are a good and worthwhile person and that you do not need to perform to some standard to be so. Excessive pride is the evil twin of subservience in a relationship. Some people end up in abusive relationships because they don’t like themselves. Prideful people don’t like themselves either and need to constantly fluff up their ego in order to feel adequate. And we just wrote about how ego can ruin a relationship!

The Journey Away from Excessive Pride

The route away from excessive pride leads to personal acceptance, love and trust. This can be obtained via a religious or spiritual route or with counseling. But in the end you need to be with people who like you for who you are and not for who you pretend to be. Then your new feelings of self-worth get reinforced and you don’t need to constantly re-inflate your ego to survive. And then happy and enduring relationships are possible.