Perhaps it is time to examine the emotion of Pride.  It has a few angles that can serve a positive purpose or it can be a destroyer in a relationship.

Performing a service for someone and giving it your best work with a smile is pride with a purpose.  You are performing your work to render successful results because it has meaning for you.

Being resistant in flexibility; reluctant to give your heart to someone who loves you beyond life; too stubborn to do what is necessary to maintain your relationship; letting your partner take all of the emotional risks while you ration out your emotion, because falling in love means some form of humility for you.  These are useless by products of the emotion of pride.  This is pride without purpose.  This is pride of destruction.

Telling someone you need them has nothing to do with humility.  Being the first to say ‘I am sorry’ is not about being humble.  Admitting a mistake is not being humble.  These actions are basic and necessary responses for someone who loves someone. 

Pride prevents you from being open and honest about your feelings, because your ability to being open is blocked by stubbornness and fear.  Stubbornness has you believing you are degrading yourself to being open and loving.  Fear is holding you back because you worry that you will get hurt.  If you fear you will get hurt, is pride serving as a guard to your heart?  If so, what is in your heart that requires so much guarding? 

Pride is high maintenance in a relationship.  It demands additional understanding and exemption  of certain allowances that behaviors and words of love can never be expected, but is somehow understood?  What?  All because pride lacks to ability to say it or do it?  What an inhibiting way to live.  And you take someone else with you on a limited emotional, rationed out loving and un-nurturing life. 

Pride is the push to you being in your own way of building a relationship.  You are either a builder or a destroyer.  Pride is using you (I like the word punking you..  Now being punked is humiliating.) to destroy what you would like to build.

The only allowances that should exist is “Just do it” as Nike says, and “Just say it.”  Do the relationship –don’t just do you.  You may not be enough.  So go for it!  You have one life to live.