Three causes of failed relationships.
It’s not easy to maintain a romantic connection.
It takes dedication and the willingness to put in some effort for a romantic relationship to survive the test of time. And while there are many natural reasons why relationships don’t work out (timing, diverging growth trajectories, differing values, etc.), there are three avoidable reasons that will cause any relationship to fail: non-acceptance, lack of trust, and poor communication.
And while there are many natural reasons why relationships don’t work out, there are three avoidable reasons that will cause any relationship to fail.
In the next section, you’ll find out why these errors occur, as well as how you may prevent them from happening in your relationship.
Non-Acceptance
“Complete acceptance of your partner as he or she is, without the desire to criticize or modify them in any way, is the greatest stimulus for development in a relationship,” says relationship expert John Gottman. — Eckhart Tolle
It is certain that the person you choose to spend your love life with will have characteristics that annoy you or opinions that you do not share.
Does this imply that you need to split ways with your current spouse in order to find your “ideal” match?
No! It is impossible to avoid having disagreements with your spouse. What is important, however, is how you come to terms with these disagreements and how you respond to them in the context of your relationship.
Take for instance the belief that you should eat healthily, practice moderation, and exercise on a regular basis. After moving in with your spouse, you come to the startling realization that he has a voracious appetite for delectable sweets and shuns physical activity like the plague.
And whereas at the beginning of your relationship you appreciated your significant other’s lazy Sundays and a never-ending supply of Reese’s peanut butter cups, you are now irritated every time he grabs a cookie and declines your offer to go to a yoga class.
And while at the beginning of your relationship you appreciated your significant other’s constant supply of Reese’s peanut butter cups.
The fact that you and your spouse have contradictory views on health may irritate you over time, and as your level of annoyance increases, you may strive to alter the beliefs held by your partner. It’s possible that you may begin by “forgetting” to pick up ice cream whenever you go grocery shopping.
However, while your boyfriend still manages to find a way to supply the home with pints of Ben & Jerry’s Chubby Hubby ice cream for his mid-day snack, you could make snide remarks about how his body is beginning to feel a little bit “different.” You do not consider this to be an issue since you believe that you are assisting him in leading a life that is more healthy.
However, it is only normal that this will make your spouse upset. Your refusal to accept his routines and your passive-aggressive efforts to alter his behavior will give rise to a deeply rooted feeling of bitterness on his part. Over time, the aggravation and anger felt by both parties might eventually result in conflicts that destroy the partnership.
Your relationship with your spouse is not the issue at hand; rather, the issue is with you. You could assume that your efforts to improve your husband’s food and exercise habits come from a place of love and that you are trying to help him live a healthy life. However, the fact is that you are not accepting your partner and you are projecting your ideals about health onto him.
You will need to adjust your strategy in the relationship if you want it to be successful in the long run.
You have to embark on this endeavor from a point of sincere acceptance. Because when you embrace your spouse, you attempt to understand him rather than criticize him, and this is an important distinction.
And when you arrive from a position of understanding, you listen more and may begin to see the reasons why his ideals and behaviors could be different from your own.
You could find out that his current eating and activity patterns date back to when he was a youngster.
Maybe he had an anorexic brother whose obsession with health and appearances led to years of anxiety and depression, and because of this experience, he fears the way that an obsessive focus on health can reduce a person’s quality of life. Another possibility is that he had a sister who was anorexic and whose obsession with health and appearances led to years of anxiety and depression.
As a result of comprehending this, you can get a fresh viewpoint about your lover. He is no longer the sluggish, ice cream-obsessed, and careless about the health person he once was. Instead, he is a person who has been through a bad event in the past, which now shapes his ideas and the way he behaves. When you have reached this level of comprehension, you will likely be able to engage in more fruitful dialogues with the matter.
The path to calamity is paved with refusal to accept one’s mate. Simply said, if you don’t accept someone, they won’t trust you and they won’t feel comfortable being around you. They will experience feelings of being assaulted as well as resentment since you have refused to accept them.
Therefore, rather than using your irritation with your partner’s routines or beliefs to motivate you to engage in the “noble” quest of changing those things, you should first accept those things and then determine what that means for your relationship. If you consider your health to be one of your most important values but your spouse does not feel the same way, you may come to the conclusion that it is time for you to move on and find someone who shares your thoughts about the importance of a healthy lifestyle.
The absence of trust
“The greatest way to find out whether someone can be trusted is to trust them,” people often say. — Ernest Hemingway
I had a crush on a girl while I was in the eighth grade. In the week leading up to Christmas, she went on a cruise, and just a few days before she arrived back, she left a message for me. I was expecting to hear her gentle and mellow voice, but what I heard was a man with a southern accent:
“Hey dude, I just wanted to let you know that your gal has got some serious kissing skills,” the other guy said.
When she returned, she informed me that she was breaking up with me because she was going to be with a wonderful man from Tennessee. My uncle advised me to “suck it up” as I sobbed through Christmas as I was locked in the office of my grandparents.
This event left a deep wound in the teenage part of my spirit. I had a hard time trusting women for a number of years. My lack of trust presented itself in a variety of ways, including my inability to be vulnerable, my extreme reaction to my girlfriends interacting with other males, and my decision to quit relationships before I was wounded.
Because I was unable to trust my partners, I unintentionally ruined a good number of my love relationships when I was a young adult. I didn’t know I had this problem at the time, but looking back, I can see how the emotional scar tissue left over from the romance I had in eighth school impacted my capacity to form connections that would last.
Lack of trust is the issue that plagued me, as it does many other people today. And even if you are able to get over the unusual ways in which a lack of trust shows in the short term, it will be fatal to your relationship in the long run. Your spouse will become frustrated with your unwillingness to trust them at some point, and as a result, the relationship will come to an end.
If you have trouble trusting your spouse, even when they haven’t done anything to be untrustworthy on their end, you need to undertake some in-depth investigation to figure out why you don’t trust them. A fear of being injured is often the root cause of a lack of trust, and this fear might have its origins in the experiences we had as young children. You are the one who has to handle the problem and regain your partner’s confidence, regardless of what caused it.
If you feel uneasy about leaving your significant other in the company of the most alluring and intriguing person on the whole globe, then you do not trust that person. And when you don’t trust the other person, you’ll do all sorts of stupid sh*t, often subconsciously, that will hurt your connection with them.
Ineffective communication
“Communication is the fuel that keeps the fire of your relationship going; without it, your connection falls cold.” — “Communication is the key to keeping the fire of your relationship blazing.” — William “Paisley” Paisley
Although the first few months or years of a relationship may go without a hitch, it is certain that you will face difficulties at some point down the line. And to properly navigate and suffer these problems, you need to be able to communicate well with your spouse in order to successfully navigate and endure them.
Imagine, for instance, that your significant other gets the chance to head up a project that would completely change the trajectory of her professional life. If you really care about your spouse and the goals she has set for her professional life, then you will be just as excited as she is about this possibility.
However, as the project moves forward, you may have noticed that she is putting in a much longer amount of hours at work. It’s possible that she’s experiencing an abnormally high level of stress or is unable to be present with you. This shift in behavior from your spouse is likely to annoy you, as it should.
You will start to question whether she cares more about her job than she does about you and the connection you have with her. Your capacity to express your feelings, opinions, and requirements to one another is essential to your success in preserving a good relationship when difficulties of this kind arise.
If you are unable to express your dissatisfaction to your spouse in a constructive manner, you may begin to engage in behaviors that will only serve to make the situation worse.
You may, for instance, react to your irritation by being abrupt, by creating disagreements about trivial matters, or by copying her lack of presence in the situation. If you continue to do this, the difficulties will only get worse, and your spouse may get the impression that you do not support her efforts to advance in her professional life.
You will have a much easier time dealing with the difficulty if, on the other hand, you have the ability to articulate your thoughts, feelings, and convictions in a manner that is composed, open, and forthcoming from a place of true understanding.
Instead of lashing out at your girlfriend, you might try telling her that you feel that she is not fulfilling your needs because of her emphasis on the project at work (which you totally support). This would be a better alternative to lashing out. You get the impression that she no longer brings the same lively energy and captivating presence to your dates as she did in the past.
You will be able to open up a communication channel that will help you to find a positive road ahead if you explain honestly how her emphasis on work and lack of presence is impacting you. However, it is important not to assume that this is a direct insult to either you or the relationship.
One possible approach is to schedule a date night once a week during which neither of you brings your phone and neither of you talks about work. It might be that you need to assist your spouse in negotiating the excessive expectations made by her supervisor.
In any event, in order to arrive at a solution that is good to all parties involved, you will need to first learn how to speak from a position of understanding, compassion, and faith in the relationship.
Lack of acceptance, distrust and ineffective communication are the three things that will doom any relationship.
The good news is that you can prevent these typical factors that destroy relationships by recognizing them as they arise, looking within, and committing to putting in the effort necessary to make your relationship survive despite the fact that it will be difficult.
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