Sick and tired of hearing how important relationships are?

On Valentine’s Day it’s timely to remember those who don’t want to enjoy good relationships.

Follow these [lighthearted!] tips and you need never again concern yourself with having good (or any) relationships – whether with romantic partners, family or friends.

1. Be Right. Always.

Acknowledging mistakes and extreme behavior such as saying sorry is for wimps.

A better strategy is to insist you’re right, no matter what.

If your pigheadedness is met with logical arguments or convincing persuasion, resort to personal attacks (you smell), distractions (have you gained weight?) or all-purpose retorts (you are!).

2. Let Yourself Go

If someone really loves you, it shouldn’t matter that you make no effort to look after yourself.

People who want good relationships try to remain appealing to their loved ones – looking good, being interesting, maintaining personal pride.

Abandoning such pretentions means never having to say ‘pass the remote’.

3. Expect them to know what you want

It takes a certain amount of self awareness and thought to work out what disappoints you and to ask for something different from your loved ones.

Don’t waste your time and brain cells on this; let them work it out. Really, you’ve got better things to do – isn’t Jerry Springer on?

4. Sulk

Expressing your feelings and negotiating for what you want is a fast train to good-relationsville. Get off now!

Instead, sulk. It keeps the other person clueless so that deeper bonding is forestalled. Plus, it’s really unattractive and annoying, helping erode any lingering loving feelings your loved one may harbor.

5. Be needy

Over-reliance on your loved one is a great way to turn them off.

Develop a pathological need for reassurance, insecurity and inability to do anything yourself. Before you know it, Bob’s your uncle. And your loved one’s your mother. Sweet.

6. Be irrational

This is a toughie, because flashes of rationality can creep up on even the most hardened anti-relationshiper. Instead, commit to drama, histrionics, hysteria.

Excellent strategies include bringing up irrelevant points, throwing things and bursting into tears. Also, make taking extreme offense your default setting; if you can take offense, do take it, no matter how much you suspect your loved one didn’t mean it that way.

Seeing them as human, like you, only leaves the door open to rational understanding. Slam it shut!

7. Be aggressive

Develop a persona of easily yelling, shouting, screaming, hurling abuse – all are good.

The more anxious the other person feels about raising issues with you, the more likely they’ll keep things to themselves. This saves you from hearing about their pesky concerns while increasing their frustration till they’re so fed up they give up. It’s win-win!

8. Never move on

Harbor all past resentments. Letting go leaves you bereft when you need ammunition during completely unrelated arguments.

Buy a notebook (might I suggest a very large one) and keep it – and your heart – filled with bitterness. In no time your relationships will need more than cortical stimulators to resuscitate them.

9. Assume the worst

About the biggest mistake you can make is to assume your loved ones love you, and to see them and their behavior through this filter.

It will put you in the disconcerting position of thinking they have good reasons for things, hearing them out, and in alarming situations, realizing you misjudged them.

Instead, assume they hate you, are out to get you, and wish to see you perish in a steaming cauldron of rank gym socks. After all, isn’t that more likely?

10. Complain constantly

I’ve saved this gem till last because even robust relationships that can survive a lot will struggle in the face of non-stop negativity.

People have their own concerns, worries and insecurities, so continually assaulting them with a barrage of ceaseless complaint will eventually wear down the best of them. Add a whiny tone, unrelenting personal criticism and deep, slow sighs and you’ll be howling ‘I am a rock, I am an island’ in no time flat (and if you sing flat, that’s a bonus).

Don’t suffer the torment of love, friendship and companionship one minute longer.

Put these tips into practice with your friends and loved ones and you’ll – Hey! Where’d everyone go?

Image by James Jordan

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Related posts:

1. How to be Organized in 2009: Day 10 – Relationships
2. Valentine’s Day Edition: Relationships Round-Up
3. Enjoy Good Relationships [Mission #23]