Source: Wikimedia Commons
You may think you have found the love of your life--your dream girl or dream man. You may even be in a seemingly healthy long-term relationship. But if you want your relationship to last, there are certain relationship styles you should attempt to avoid or at the very least keep to a minimum. Here are five common mistakes people make in relationships:
1. Being too dependent. Relationships need to be nurtured. They do not flourish if left on their own. Your relationship ought to be one of your top priorities in life. Of course, your relationship should not be your whole life. If you are reluctant to make plans that do not require both of you to participate until you are sure your partner has no plans, you give too much weight to your relationship. This is a common form of dependent behavior. Another is not being willing to allow the other person to do things on their own or failing to respect their need for alone time.
2. Being too independent. While having your whole life revolve around your relationship is unhealthy, so is not being able to make any compromises. If you always want things to be your way, you are restricting your partner's freedom in unreasonable ways. Compromising is key to relationship success. Certain core values should never be compromised. For example, if one of you want children of your own and the other does not, that may be a core value that is non-negotiable. But when things are less important, you need to accept that you cannot always have it your way. If you have different food preferences, for instance, then you need to claim defeat once in a while. The same goes for
decision making. While some decisions are yours to make, others should be made together with your partner, for instance, how you want to spend your summers or the holiday season.
3. Not being willing to make any sacrifices. Being in a relationship inevitably requires making sacrifices. You cannot live your single life while still being in a committed long-term relationship. Needless to say, if you and your significant other are exclusive, you cannot cheat on each other. But relationships require numerous other lesser sacrifices as well. It all comes down to making reasonable agreements with each other, which amount to satisfying some each other's wishes even when they go against your own. If you have agreed to inform each other when you are coming home late, you cannot just stay out without letting the other person know. If you used to go out partying every weekend, but the other person does not like partying at all, you need to find some middle way. It may not always feel great to have to give up part of your personal autonomy. Unfortunately, relationships cannot thrive if you unwilling to sacrifice some of your top desires and preferences.
4. Being unable to communicate about things that bother you. No two people are going to be exactly the same in their preferences, behaviors, and manners. There is bound to be aspects of the other person's preferences, behaviors or manners that will eventually bother you, especially after the honeymoon phase. Yet some couples are unable to communicate this to one another in a healthy way. They let the annoyance accumulate until it explodes, or they only let out their frustration in the heat of an argument. It is crucial to the success of a relationship, that you can convey negative things to your partner without them taking offense. Likewise, you should be willing to listen to the issues they have with you. When the negative aspects are reasonable things that can easily be fixed, you should both be willing to work on changing what the other person dislikes, or at least come to a reasonable agreement about what needs to be done. It is important that these kinds of conversations take place regularly and when both parties are calm and collected.
5. Explicitly or implicitly encouraging inequality. Although the norm in America today, at least among people from the younger generation, is that people are equal in relationships, it is easy to unwittingly carry on with old-fashioned inequality patterns. But equality is essential to a healthy long-term relationship. if you and your partner both have full time jobs (whether or not one of those jobs consists of taking care of your children during the day), you should contribute equally to homely tasks, including taking care of the children after work hours, cooking, cleaning, shopping, planning, and so on. Some couples realize that they can divide up the homely tasks in a way that makes sense to them, for instance, if one person is a great cook and the other person prefers doing the dishes, they may agree that one person cooks and that the other cleans up afterward. Equality in a relationship, however, goes beyond dividing up homely tasks. Decisions that pertain to, or seriously affect, the relationship need to be made together. And importantly, the same holds in the bedroom. Intimacy (including sex) is something that needs to be discussed. If you have different sexual needs, you need to find a middle way. Likewise, some couples fall into old-fashioned sexual relationship patterns, where the man initiates sex, the woman complies and only the man receives pleasure. Needless to say that this is not a good way to maintain a healthy relationship.
