Ego Gets in the Way of Love

What we feel and what we know is all filtered through the ego, which makes creating a space that welcomes vulnerability and takes responsibility for mistakes a task that requires real effort.

May 25, 2026

My new app for couples Ready Together is now available on iPhone and Android!

Ready Together has a lot of new useful updates that can help you and your partner elevate your emotional intelligence and love each other better. Sara and I are really enjoying using it. At the end of this newsletter I added new screenshots of us using Ready Together this morning. Don’t forget to invite your partner after you download it.

Download it and use it for free on iPhone and Android. Hope it serves you well!

Ego Gets in the Way of Love

The ego’s main goal is to survive and it will defend itself, sometimes blindly, to achieve this. Relationships are challenging because when two human beings are in proximity to each other, there is the potential for friction to occur. Egos are inherently rough and they struggle to accept responsibility for their mistakes. The ego would rather place blame because seeing the fault in others is easier than accepting responsibility and the need for personal growth.

The ego lives in its own perspective; it experiences reality as if it were the center of all things, which makes it really hard for it to see beyond its own perceptions. The ego is also easily tricked by its perception, where it sees its perspective as truth as opposed to a stream of clouded information.

What we feel and what we know is all filtered through the ego, which makes creating a space that welcomes vulnerability and takes responsibility for mistakes a task that requires real effort. The ego is great at passing judgment and it processes situations through its defensive framework because the purpose of the ego is survival. But if you go into a relationship with a mentality that is geared toward survival, then you will quickly look upon your partner as a challenger or, even worse, an enemy.

If the ego is always on the lookout for danger and in a defensive mode, it can easily twist the information it is processing and create a narrative where it believes that a threat is there that is in no way real.

Overcoming the limitations of ego is a massive task, not just for your own well-being and peace of mind, but for the sake of creating harmony and nourishing interactions in your relationship. Ego makes communication with yourself and with other people difficult. Teaching yourself to loosen the way you cling to your thoughts, and understanding that thoughts are not facts, they are just perceptions, will help you parse through what is valuable and what isn’t.

Your ego also wants to make your relationship just about you, but relationships are not about getting everything you want; they are a mixture of giving and receiving. Truly, they are about building a balance where both people feel seen, understood, and loved. Trying to get everything you want in a relationship creates a situation of dominance, where your attachment to what you crave is stronger than the drive to support your partner’s happiness. Focusing your energy on trying to control outcomes squeezes the fun and freedom out of a relationship and instead fills it with tension.

You know the love you feel for your partner is real when you genuinely want to see them happy and you feel comfortable letting them take the reins to lead the relationship in a balanced way. Treating your relationship as something you are co-creating together can make the journey of designing your lives more joyful. Part of feeling accomplished as an individual is finding spaces where you can exercise your power in a healthy way. This is especially important in the safety of your relationship. This can be in something as simple as taking turns deciding what is for dinner, how you will use your weekend, where you will go on vacation, etc.

For big decisions, like where you want to live or if you want to have kids, it’s very important for both partners to be in agreement. In all decisions, one partner may defer to the other when there is trust and no big inclination on their part, but even in these situations there should be the opportunity to add your two cents and agree. Knowing that the relationship equally belongs to both individuals quietly strengthens the feeling of home.

When both of you are vocal about what you want, it will help you see where you can each let go so that the other can receive. This consistent communication will help you keep your egos from taking charge too often.

This is an excerpt from my new book How to Love Better, which is temporarily 49% off the original price on Amazon. You can also get a copy in bookstores everywhere.