Posts in category: Dating Tips, Guide and Advice

Dealing with a condescending romantic partner can be painful and confusing. It requires having an honest conversation about the behavior, but it also means protecting your mental health, setting boundaries, getting support, and potentially talking to a couple’s therapist. Leaving the relationship is also a valid and necessary step if your partner’s behavior makes you feel unsafe.

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Steps to Follow

When someone is condescending, they talk down to you and act in a way that implies that they are better than you. It inherently shows a lack of respect, since the person seeks to show you that you are inferior to them. Their tone, words, and mannerisms all focus on making you feel less than them.

If you have been insulted and made to feel as though your thoughts and feelings don’t matter, it can be unnerving to think about confronting the person responsible.

However, staying in an unhealthy relationship is damaging to your mental and emotional health, and there are steps you can take so you can operate from a healthier place.

Confront Your Partner

“The best response to condescension is a direct, even-handed statement about how it makes you feel rather than engaging by being condescending back,” suggests Oona Metz, LICSW, a psychotherapist in Boston, Massachusetts.

Ask Your Partner Why They Are Being Condescending

Acting condescendingly may be natural to some people. Helping them to think about what they are doing and why can be the first step toward changing your relationship dynamic.

“When people act condescendingly towards others, they expect others not to challenge their behavior. By asking someone genuinely why they would make a condescending remark or want to be unkind and hurtful, they may be caught off guard and think about a pattern of behavior that could have become second nature to them,” says Saba Harouni Lurie, LMFT, the owner and founder of Take Root Therapy, and a board-certified art therapist.

Lurie notes that having this conversation could be healthy for the relationship and lead to much-needed boundaries.

Find a Relationship Therapist

A neutral third party who is professionally trained can help you both get to the root of the condescending behavior. If a partner is condescending because they feel threatened, insecure, or have unprocessed trauma, a therapist can help deal with those issues.

A relationship therapist can also provide each person with tools to improve the way you and your partner interact with each other so that you can work towards a healthier bond.

If both parties are willing to listen, work, and learn, attending sessions with a therapist can be a valuable growth experience.

Protect Your Own Mental Health

Although you and your partner may be dealing with their condescending behavior, you still have to take care of yourself. That includes building yourself up and countering the negative impact of harmful words and actions by your partner.

Leave If You Feel Unsafe

Leaving the relationship is also an option. If your partner makes you feel threatened in any way, or there is any risk of physical violence, you need to get help.

Other resources include safe shelter organizations, local safe haven programs, and support groups. Individual therapy can also help you process and leave an abusive situation.

No matter what course of action you decide to take, your health should be the top priority.

How to Tell When Your Partner Is Being Condescending

“Condescending behaviors may include insulting or belittling comments, failure to recognize strengths or accomplishments, a dismissive attitude, or a holier-than-thou demeanor,” Metz explains. Name-calling, making a person feel like they can’t do anything right, and phrasing insults as jokes are also key indicators of this type of behavior.

Here are some examples of condescending behaviors:

• Gaslighting
• Insulting/belittling comments
• Talking down to you
• Name-calling
• Saying something hurtful but disguising it as a “joke”
• Treating you as if you’re unintelligent
• Sarcastic comments
• Interrupting you when you speak
• Mansplaining (i.e., the act of a man explaining something to a woman in an overconfident and demeaning way that implies that she’s not knowledgeable about the topic at hand)
• Questioning your ability to do something

“Gaslighting their partner and making them feel crazy, second-guessing their perspective and experiences, [or] refusing to compromise or even engage with their partner after a conflict,” are also examples of things a condescending partner will do, according to Lurie.

Sarcasm, eye-rolling, and even “playful” behaviors taken too far and at someone else’s expense are also condescending actions.

How Condescending Behaviors Impact Romantic Relationships

“Condescending behaviors in an intimate relationship can cause a pattern of abusive communication, [and] inflict emotional pain for the one who is being talked down to,” says Karina S. Hester, LMFT, a therapist at Grow Therapy.

“If you have a condescending partner, it is vital that you protect your mental health, as being the target of another person’s condescension can negatively impact your self-esteem and the quality of your relationship,” says Metz. “One of the dangers of being with a condescending partner is the propensity to shut down and communicate less in order to protect yourself from your partner’s dismissive comments.”

Why Your Partner Might Be Condescending

Condescending behaviors often come from people who are insecure, controlling, and afraid to be vulnerable.

Research shows that people with narcissistic personality disorder are often condescending towards others.

A condescending person may not even realize that their behavior is problematic and hurtful. However, their actions and words speak very loudly.

Key Takeaways

• Dealing with a condescending partner requires setting boundaries and protecting your mental well-being.
• Start by having a conversation, consider talking to a therapist, and don’t hesitate to leave the relationship if it feels unsafe.
• Condescending behavior in a relationship may include talking down to you, gaslighting, dismissiveness, and subtle put-downs. Such patterns can hurt your self-esteem and damage your relationship over time.

A growing body of research shows that mental and physical health are deeply connected. Studies show that an improvement or decline in one can have a similar effect on the other. This is because factors like stress, sleep, and lifestyle habits affect the mind and body.

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How Mental Health and Physical Health Are Connected

But how exactly does one influence the other? What exactly is happening in the body to allow changes in one to change the other?

To understand why mental and physical health are so closely linked, it’s important to remember that the distinction between the two is less important than we may assume. Our thoughts, moods, and mental state may feel abstract or separate from the physical, but they are all happening as part of our brain activity.

The connections between the brain and different body systems play a role in linking mental and physical health. This includes:

• The nervous system, which communicates information between the brain and body to regulate sensation, movement, and autonomic functions
• The endocrine system, which produces hormones and chemical messengers that can impact both mood and physical functioning
• The immune system, which can be affected by mental health conditions and chronic stress, can potentially increase inflammation and elevate the risk of illness
• The gut-brain axis, which influences communication between the brain and digestive system to affect appetite, mood, and cognitive functioning

How Does Physical Health Affect Mental Health?

One complex interaction between physical changes and mental health involved the interaction of estrogen and dopamine.

• Dopamine, sometimes known as the “happiness hormone,” is associated with motivation and reward, among other brain functions.
• Estrogen downregulates dopamine transmission, mimicking the effects of certain antipsychotic medications.

Postpartum, when estrogen levels dramatically drop, there is an increased vulnerability to psychosis in some individuals. For people with ADHD, this can make symptoms even worse. But for people with bipolar disorder or other conditions involving psychosis, it can make psychosis symptoms better. 

Another example of hormonal changes impacting mental health involves estrogen and serotonin. In some women, the drop in estrogen at the end of their menstrual cycle leads to drops in serotonin in the brain, contributing to emotional symptoms.

Research shows that interaction is a two-way street. Metabolic problems like diabetes, hypertension or even just prolonged periods of poor nutrition can cause stress-induced changes to the brain that lead to mood and neurodevelopmental disorders. Likewise, certain mental health disorders can cause stress that triggers metabolic changes that, over time, can develop into those same metabolic diseases.

How Does Mental Health Affect Physical Health?

A number of studies have found that mental illness may accelerate biological aging, manifesting as increased rates of cardiovascular and other age-related diseases. One psychiatric condition, schizophrenia has been associated with up to 10-20 years shorter life expectancy.

But there’s a lot more involved in aging than just DNA methylation. So it’s more useful to think of your epigenetic clock as a risk factor or predictor, similar to how a person with a genetic predisposition for breast cancer is at higher risk but not guaranteed to get cancer.

What the research shows is that mental illnesses may be linked to premature aging in a few different ways:

• Poor health habits: They can lead to unhealthy behaviors like poor diet, lack of exercise, and substance use that are bad for physical health.
• Sleep disturbances: Many mental health conditions and the stress they cause can disrupt sleep, which can harm physical health over time.
• Increased stress: Stress can cause chronically elevated levels of cortisol, which can disrupt just about every bodily function, including the digestive, immune, cardiovascular, and reproductive systems.

For people with mental illness, this can put them at risk for a range of medical conditions, including:

Tips for Maintaining Mental and Physical Health

There is a silver lining to all the research on the interactions between mental and physical health: it shows that the body and brain are both extremely responsive to change.

That adaptability is partly what can cause a snowball effect of mental and physical health symptoms. But it’s that same adaptability that will allow anything you do to take care of yourself to have the power to trigger a snowball effect of positive changes in your body. Here are a few places you might start.

Make Regular Exercise a Lifelong Habit

The physical and mental health benefits of regular exercise are hard to overstate. It improves muscle mass and function, improves metabolic function, reduces inflammation, strengthens the immune system, improves cardiovascular and respiratory health, and even contributes to better gut microbiome diversity.

All of those physical health benefits will, in turn, improve mental health because they’re interconnected. But exercise also has direct benefits for the brain. Those benefits include:

• Improved cognitive function
• Better executive function, including working memory and impulse control
• Reduced depression and anxiety symptoms
• Reduced stress

Many of these benefits are cumulative, meaning you’ll have to stick with an exercise routine for a while before you notice a difference.

For optimal short and long-term benefits, follow these tips:

• Don’t overdo it. Training that is too intense can end up counteracting the physical and mental benefits of exercise because it causes stress and puts you at risk of injuries.
• Aim for 150-300 minutes of moderate aerobic physical activity per week, including some muscle-strengthening activities at least two days per week.
• Pick activities you actually enjoy. Exercise doesn’t have to be about peak performance or maximizing each workout. It just has to be something that gets your body moving and maybe challenges you a bit when you have the energy to challenge yourself. Hike, swim, dance, play with your dog, go for a walk, whatever gets you moving without dreading the idea of exercising. If you don’t know what you enjoy, try something different every week until you find it.
• Start with ridiculously small goals. To avoid quitting before exercising becomes a habit, set daily goals that seem so easy it would be ridiculous not to do them. Each week, set the goal a little higher.

Eat a Healthy, Balanced Diet

Diet is one of the most important risk factors of illness, but it can also be one of the most confusing lifestyle changes to make. There’s so much conflicting information out there about what you should and shouldn’t eat. Plus, a lot of diet plans ask you to track things like fiber, protein, and micronutrients meticulously. It’s overwhelming.

Instead of trying to follow any optimized diet plan or figure out which trending superfood you should be eating, just follow a few basic principles of good nutrition and then don’t stress about it. Key things you can do include:

• Drink more water. The general recommendation is between 3 and 4 liters per day. Don’t worry about alkalinity or electrolytes. Any safe drinking water will hydrate you.
• Eat more fruits and veggies. The recommended five servings work out to about 1 pound per day. Any fresh produce will be good for you, so don’t overthink it. Make sure there isn’t a lot of added sugar or salt with canned and frozen options.
• Be mindful of processed foods. Even minimally processed and ready-made foods, like bread or soup, can contain a surprising amount of salt and sugar. If you do have these ready-made options, check the label to try to find low-sodium, low-sugar alternatives. 

Make Time for Doing Nothing

A lot of health advice, including the tips above, centers on things you need to do or change. But it’s also important to remember that stress is a major factor in the harmful interactions between mental and physical health.

So, part of your healing process should include finding time not to worry about whether you’re eating the right thing, exercising enough, or being productive enough:

• Remove distractions: Take a few minutes each day to sit down with no TV, phone, or other stimulation.
• Focus on the present moment: Notice where you are and what you’re feeling right now. That’s it. Don’t think about what you have to do after this or what you should be feeling or doing right now.
• Practice regularly: Longer periods (think 45 to 60 minutes) are great, but research has found that even 10 minutes a day can help.

This is often referred to as mindfulness, but don’t let the label pressure you into defining what you should be doing or how to optimize this time. The goal is to check in with yourself and take a break from the noise of life.

Key Takeaways

• Mental and physical health are deeply connected, so when one improves or declines, the other often follows.
• Physical health can influence brain chemistry, including neurotransmitters and hormones like dopamine and serotonin, which are linked to conditions such as depression, ADHD, and bipolar disorder.
• Mental health also impacts physical well-being, contributing to poor health habits, disrupted sleep, and increased stress, while exercise, good nutrition, and mindfulness support both mind and body.

Someone who is self-centered or self-absorbed tends to be overly focused on themselves and may struggle to show genuine consideration for others. While self-care involves meeting needs in a healthy and balanced way, self-centeredness goes beyond that, often showing up as a regular pattern of only putting oneself first, regardless of how it affects others.

Self-centeredness is sometimes easy to spot, but it can also show up in subtle ways that you might overlook at first.

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1. They Dominate Conversations

According to Aimee Daramus, PsyD, a licensed clinical psychologist, self-centered people tend to speak the most in conversations and meetings. When you talk to them, it can feel like the conversation only focuses on their life, their accomplishments, and their problems.

2. They Lack Empathy

Being empathetic toward others requires one to put themselves in another person’s shoes and understand their feelings. Self-centered people may not be able to see things from another person’s perspective to empathize with them.

3. They Take More Than They Give

Your relationship with them can feel one-sided because it feels like you put in all the effort to maintain it, without getting anything in return.

4. They Want Things Done Their Way

People who are self-centered often want things done their way. They may have a hard time compromising and doing things someone else’s way.

For instance, they typically won’t let anyone else pick the movie or restaurant, says Dr. Daramus.

5. They’re Quick to Blame Others and Avoid Responsibility

Self-centered people may not be able to recognize that they’ve done something wrong and may blame others for any mistakes.

6. They Always Want to Be the Center of Attention

If the focus happens to shift to something or someone else, they may try to find a way to bring it back to themselves. They might interject their own story to one-up the person or insert themselves into the situation to make it all about them. A self-centered person may even try to comfort someone by telling them stories about themselves, says Dr. Daramus.

Is This Different Than Selfishness or Narcissism?

Self-centeredness and selfishness are similar concepts, but they’re not exactly the same thing. 

Self-centeredness is a single-minded focus on oneself and one’s own needs, desires, preferences, and problems. Someone who is self-centered may be preoccupied with their own thoughts and feelings and may not be very attentive to the needs and perspectives of others.

On the other hand, selfishness is a lack of concern for others, to the extent that someone may actively pursue their own goals and desires at the expense of others.

Self-centeredness is similar to narcissism, but less severe, says Dr. Daramus. “While a narcissist has trouble caring about others, someone who is self-centered can have relationships and care about others, but they tend to focus more on what’s going on with themselves than with others.”

Why People Become So Self-Centered

While you may experience the impact of someone’s self-centered behavior, it’s important to consider that there are reasons why they may behave this way.

These are some of the reasons why someone might be self-centered, according to the experts:

• Upbringing: The person might have been raised in a way that taught them they didn’t have to consider or include others, says Dr. Daramus. “If they’ve been taught that it’s OK to consider only themselves, they may not even realize how they come off.”
• Rejection: Self-centeredness can also come from early feelings of rejection, says Dr. Daramus. The person may not have been heard or prioritized when they were young and therefore may have an intense need to feel seen as an adult, says Yolanda Renteria, LPC.
• Trauma: The person may have experienced something traumatic. The experience could have taught them not to rely on others and to look out for their own needs above all else.
• Sociocultural factors: Sociocultural factors can also contribute to self-centeredness. For example, in a society where people believe that wealthy people earned and deserved their money (and low-income people must have deserved their fate), the person might see their entitlement as the rewards of “doing the job right,” says Dr. Daramus. Or, she says that people might only be self-centered with people they see as “other.”
• Mental health conditions: A 2020 study found that being self-centered and being unable to see others’ perspectives are linked to higher levels of depression and neuroticism.
• Neurodivergence: Any condition that limits someone’s social skills, such as social anxiety or autism, can sometimes feel like self-centeredness to people who are trying to connect with them, says Dr. Daramus.
• Sociopathy: People who have antisocial personality disorder, formerly known as sociopathy, may frequently disregard or violate the rights of others. If someone’s self-centeredness stems from sociopathy, they might be aware of it, but they may not care, says Dr. Daramus.

How to Deal With a Self-Centered Person

Tell Them How You Feel

While some people may have awareness of wanting to be the center of attention and take the attention away from others, most people who do it probably don’t realize that they are doing it or how their behaviors impact others, says Renteria.

If the person is unaware of their behavior, you can have an honest discussion with them about how their words and actions are affecting you. Most people respond to being re-directed or can learn to be re-directed, says Renteria.

Suggest Therapy

If the person is open to the suggestion, therapy could help them examine their behavior, explore what’s causing it, and learn to be more considerate of others.

Assert Yourself

If the person is being inconsiderate, you can assert yourself to make sure your needs and preferences are heard. Dr. Daramus recommends being diplomatic but specific in your needs and preferences.

For example, if you’re upset and need to vent, but the person tends to monopolize the conversation, you can ask for their attention. Dr. Daramus suggests saying something like: “Hey, I had a wild day at work, do you have 15 minutes to listen to me vent?”

Or, if you’re trying to plan an outing with them, Dr. Daramus says you can take charge and avoid giving them control over the decision-making process by saying: “We’re planning to go for this movie, would you like to join us?”

Adjust Your Expectations

Being around a self-centered person can cause you to feel disappointed, upset, or angry if they’re inconsiderate toward you. You may even feel used because you’ve given them so much of your time, energy, attention, and support without receiving much in return.

However, recognizing them for who they are and adjusting your expectations accordingly can help you cope. For instance, a colleague who tends to be self-centered may not be the best friend you confide in and rely on for support, but can still be fun to hang out with once in a while.

Set Boundaries in Your Relationship With Them

Self-centered people can take up a lot of your time and energy if you let them. Setting boundaries in your relationship can help you protect yourself.

For instance, if it’s a friend who’s calling you for a chat, let them know at the beginning that you only have 15 minutes before you have to get back to work.

Or, if it’s a coworker, Dr. Daramus recommends setting agendas for meetings in advance with time-limited goals so they don’t take up your whole day.

Keep Your Distance From Them

If being around them is draining your energy or causing you to feel angry or upset often, it may be best to avoid them.

If it’s a friend or romantic partner who doesn’t seem capable of change, you can choose to end your relationship with them in order to protect your mental and emotional well-being. 

If it’s a family member, colleague, or neighbor whom you may not be able to avoid entirely, you can limit your interaction with them to what is strictly necessary and distance yourself from them as much as possible.

How to Tell If You’re Too Self-Centered

While we can recognize self-centeredness in other people, it can be harder to recognize it in ourselves. Dr. Daramus says these are some signs that can help you identify self-centeredness in yourself:

• You monopolize conversations: You tend to monopolize most conversations, meetings, and interactions. When you’re trying to connect with others, you do so by telling them about yourself rather than asking them about themselves.
• You don’t really listen: You have a hard time listening to others. After a conversation, meeting, or date you can’t really recall what others had to say. Your performance at work is limited because you’re not paying attention to others’ inputs and tapping into their knowledge base.
• You attract people with weaker personalities: You don’t get along well with people who are assertive. Most or all of your friends lack strong opinions. There aren’t many interesting, opinionated people in your life because you don’t pay attention to their ideas.
• You’re alone when you need help: Since you tend to attract people who aren’t very assertive, you find yourself alone when you need real help. It’s fun to get your own way until you have an emergency and no one around you is strong enough to help.

How to Be Less Self-Centered

If someone in your life has pointed out that you’re too self-centered, you may wonder how to correct that. Dr. Daramus suggests some strategies that can help you be less self-absorbed:

• Listen to others: Try to listen as much as you speak. Ask people what they think about a subject. Get to know them better, instead of only talking about yourself. Let them steer the conversation sometimes, both at work and in your private life—you might be pleasantly surprised at what you learn.
• Participate in things others want to do: Instead of wanting things done your way all the time, occasionally participate in activities of others’ choice, to strengthen your relationship with them and make it more balanced.
• Be more empathetic: Try this simple exercise to be more empathetic: When you talk to someone, and they mention a problem or difficult situation, take a few minutes to picture yourself in their shoes and think about how you would feel in that scenario.
• Ask what others need: When you’re comforting or helping someone, ask what they want from you. Don’t make the situation about yourself. Try to be more thoughtful and considerate of their feelings and needs.
• Consider therapy: If you’re having a tough time with this, consider therapy to help you understand what’s driving your behavior and how to be more thoughtful.

Key Takeaways

• Self-centered people often show clear signs, such as dominating conversations, lacking empathy, and constantly redirecting attention back to themselves.
• Self-centeredness can stem from a range of factors, including insecurity, upbringing, a need for control, or mental health issues. Understanding why it’s happening can help you respond more effectively.
• Dealing with a self-centered person often involves setting boundaries, practicing empathy, and asserting yourself. You can also practice becoming less self-centered yourself by listening to others, asking what others need, and talking to a mental health professional.