7 Common Reasons Our Relationships Fail
Relationships don’t just work by themselves. They need to be maintained and nurtured so they can continue to provide a healthy environment for both partners.
Believing otherwise sets us up for great disappointment.
There are many ways in which we — sometimes unknowingly — damage our relationships but here are 7 common ones.
Lack of communication skills
This is often down to a lack of self-awareness, emotional availability or self-regulation skills.
You then either fail to communicate or communicate in a way that puts your partner on the back foot and leads to them shutting down or becoming argumentative.
Disrespecting boundaries
Without respect for each other and an acknowledgment of where you end and your partner begins, there cannot be any trust, love or intimacy.
We also need to set boundaries so that we can purposefully create a healthy relationship environment that works for both.
Lack of gratitude and appreciation
It’s easy to take your partner for granted but showing appreciation is VITAL!
Here’s the hard truth you need to learn to navigate:
you are not entitled to your partner and you also don’t owe them anything.
Instead, ask yourself: what am I willing to lovingly give? And what are the things I can overtly express gratitude for?
Unhealed trauma
Unhealed trauma makes us live out old relationship patterns that don’t help us to create healthy and loving relationships as adults.
You need to break up with old patterns and heal those wounds so you don’t infect your relationship today.
It is your responsibility to do so if you want to create a healthy and loving relationship. It’s not your partner’s job to heal you — it is yours. They can only support you.
Lack of relational skills
We all need a set of healthy relational skills to navigate our adult relationships.
Remember that no one taught you how to do so — you can’t just expect yourself to know or try to create something that requires skills without having those skills and then feeling like a failure.
Just commit to learning the skills!
Make your partner an enemy
Being trapped in a pattern in which you are each other’s enemy is characterised by recurring arguments over the same thing without a solution.
This often stems from unhealed trauma but also shows a lack of flexibility, perspective-taking, compassion, emotional safety and joint problem-solving skills.
Incompatibilities
Incompatibilities in core values or vision for life are a huge problem when they are not openly addressed and negotiated.
Some incompatibilities are dealbreakers and even if it hurts to end a relationship, it would be more loving, healthy and pain-free than pretending that the truth is not the truth.
How Can We Protect Our Relationships?
Learn how to create healthy ones.
Do the inner work to heal past wounds and let go of unhealthy habits and patterns that — usually unconsciously — sabotage your relationships today from the inside out.
Meet your needs in healthy and varied ways to give your relationship room to breathe and grow.
Commit to your own and each other’s growth so tat you can evolve together.
Let it be light and don’t forget to have fun while also learning how to solve problems together and stay emotionally open when things don’t go too well.
See the good in each other and treat each other with love and respect.
Make an effort for each other.
Open up to love and intimacy by decreasing any barriers to it.
And don’t expect yourself or your partner to be perfect at any of it.
Learn together and grow together.
That is love.
That is real love.
