Why You Keep Splitting People Into "Perfect" or "Trash" (And How It's Killing Your Relationships)

You know that moment when your partner does one thing wrong and suddenly you're

questioning the entire relationship?

Like they forgot to text you back and now you're convinced they don't care. Or they criticized how you loaded the dishwasher, and you're spiraling into "maybe we're just incompatible."

One minute, they're everything. The next minute, you're emotionally checked out.

If this sounds familiar, you're not dramatic. You're not broken.

Your brain is doing something called splitting, and it learned to do this a long time ago.

What Is Black-and-White Thinking (Splitting)?

Black-and-white thinking is when you see people and situations in extremes:

• All good or all bad

• Perfect or worthless

• Safe or dangerous

There's no in-between.

In relationships, it sounds like:

• "If they loved me, they wouldn't have done that"

• "I finally see who they really are"

• "This whole thing was a mistake"

• "They're perfect" → (three weeks later) → "They're the worst"

You flip between idealizing someone and completely devaluing them. And it happens fast.

Here's the Thing: This Isn't Really About Your Partner

Black-and-white thinking doesn't start in your current relationship.

It starts way earlier.

When you were a kid, your brain was learning how to make sense of love. And if love felt inconsistent, unpredictable, or unsafe, your mind couldn't handle complexity.

You couldn't think:

• "Mom loves me but she's stressed"

• "Dad cares but doesn't know how to show it"

You needed clear categories to feel safe:

✅ Good parent = I'm okay❌ Bad parent = I need to protect myself

Your child brain split the world into black and white because nuance felt too scary.

And that survival strategy never left.

It just transferred from your parents to your partners.

Why Your Brain Still Does This

Psychoanalytic theory calls this a defense mechanism.

Not a flaw. A defense.

Your psyche learned that holding two opposing feelings at once, like love and disappointment, closeness and frustration, felt unbearable.

So splitting became your shortcut:

• If someone is all good, you can relax and trust them

• If someone is all bad, you know to pull away and protect yourself

  
  

The middle ground? That felt dangerous. Because the middle ground is where you once got hurt.

But here's the problem: Adult relationships live in the middle ground.

How This Shows Up Now (And Why It Feels So Real)

1. Small Disappointments Feel Like Betrayal

Your partner cancels plans because they're exhausted.

Logically, you know they're tired.

But emotionally? It feels like:

• "I've been lied to"

• "I can't trust them"

• "They don't actually care"

Your nervous system isn't reacting to this moment. It's reacting to every time someone wasn't there when you needed them.

2. You Project Old Wounds Onto New People

This is called transference in therapy.

Without realizing it, you start seeing your partner as:

• The parent who was emotionally unavailable

• The person who always disappointed you

• The one who's eventually going to leave

Even when they haven't done those things.

You're not being unfair on purpose. Your brain is trying to protect you from a pain it remembers.

3. Getting Closer Makes You Want to Run

When someone gets close, the splitting gets worse.

Why?

Because intimacy activates all your old fears at once:

• What if I need them?

• What if they hurt me?

• What if I'm too much?

So your brain goes into protective mode. You find reasons they're wrong for you. You emotionally shut down. You pick fights.

Not because you don't care.

Because caring feels terrifying.

The Deeper Issue: You Can't Hold Contradiction

One of the hardest truths in therapy:

You can love someone and be frustrated with them at the same time.

You can want closeness and need space. You can be grateful and disappointed. You can be hurt and still choose to stay.

But if you grew up in an environment where love felt conditional or unstable, your brain never learned how to hold both feelings at once.

So it splits them apart to protect you from the emotional overwhelm.

The problem? Real love requires you to hold both.

What Changes When You Stop Splitting

When you start loosening black-and-white thinking, relationships become:

• Less chaotic

• Less anxious

• Less intense

But way more stable.

You begin to experience:

✅ Disappointment without catastrophizing

✅ Conflict without ending things

✅ Imperfection without panic

This doesn't mean accepting bad behavior.

It means you can see your partner as a whole person, flawed, trying, human, without your nervous system treating every mistake like a threat.

How to Actually Work on This

1. Notice When You're Splitting

Ask yourself:

• "Am I seeing this person as all good or all bad right now?"

• "How old do I feel in this moment?"

Sometimes just naming it creates space.

2. Pause Before You React

When you feel that familiar flip from "they're amazing" to "I'm done," give yourself 24 hours before making any big decisions.

Text a friend. Journal. Go for a walk.

Let your nervous system calm down before you act.

3. Practice Saying "And" Instead of "But"

Replace:

• "I love them but they hurt me"

With:

• "I love them and I'm hurt right now"

This small language shift helps your brain hold complexity.

4. Separate the Past From the Present

When you're triggered, ask:

• "Is this person actually abandoning me, or does it remind me of abandonment?"

• "Am I reacting to what happened, or what it means to a younger version of me?"

5. Talk About It (In Therapy or With Your Partner)

Say something like:

"I notice I sometimes go from feeling really connected to you to suddenly feeling like I need to protect myself. I'm working on it, but I wanted you to know it's not about you, it's an old pattern I'm trying to change."

Naming the pattern reduces its power.

What This Looks Like in Real Life

Before:

Your partner seems distant one evening.

Your brain: "They're pulling away. This is the beginning of the end. I knew this was too good to be true."

You shut down or pick a fight.

After working on this:

Your partner seems distant one evening.

Your brain: "They seem off. I'm feeling anxious."

You pause, breathe, and ask: "Hey, you seem quiet tonight. Everything okay?"

They say they had a stressful day at work.

You realize it's not about you.

That's progress.

The Truth About Healing This Pattern

You're not going to stop splitting overnight.

This is a deeply wired survival response. It took years to form.

But with awareness, therapy, and practice, you can:

• Slow down your reactions

• Stay present through discomfort

• Build relationships that don't collapse under the weight of your past

Real intimacy isn't found in perfection.

It's built through staying present with someone even when it's messy, even when you're triggered, even when you want to run.

You don't have to see everything in black and white anymore.

There's a whole spectrum of color waiting for you.

Ready to Work on This?

If black-and-white thinking is affecting your relationships, therapy can help you understand where it comes from and how to shift it. You don't have to keep repeating the same patterns.