Keeping a new relationship fresh after meeting through online dating isn’t so much a skill as it is the environment that you place your relationship into. There are several key relationship mistakes to avoid.
When we date, there tends to be a very specific formula. We don’t court each other this way randomly. When we are dating and courting, there is inherent or implicit competition. It’s like hey, i better perform well so that this person will want to stay around. So that basic romance that we all begin with is a very strong aspect of commitment. So why do so many relationships completely lose any semblance of it?
If you want to have a passionate and intimate relationship for decades then the mistake to avoid would be losing the romance. No matter what stage your relationship is in, look at ways to introduce some love and romance into the relationship. Don’t do it out of the condition that there must be something received in return, like sex. Give romance for its own sake. Do it for yourself and trust me, it will light a fire under the relationship.
Control and Manipulate
When it comes to things to avoid in a relationship, control and manipulation are high on the list. These are tremendously damaging propensities that are very common in modern relationships. What I have found with my clients and my research efforts is that the vast majority of individuals do not know that they are being controlling. Typically, being controlling means to most individuals that you are not allowed to do this or do that. An example would be the man that refuses to let his wife go out with her friends. Or the man that doesn’t let his wife have any say over the finances, especially if she is not working.
There is however a much more lengthy and necessary aspect to control that you need to understand. Individuals control each other by using their emotional reactions. This is a concept that took myself a very long time to realize, which is one of the reasons I have spent so much of my professional time to help others manage their emotions better.
My advice would be for you to consider all of the ways that your partner acts, in response to your emotional reactions but also all of the ways that you explicitly tell your partner what they can and cannot do.
Expect Perfection
One of the common mistakes made in relationships is to expect everything to be perfect. A lot of individuals actually do expect perfection in a relationship.the problem with this propensity is that it can set the bar too high in the relationship, like those tiger moms that are just never happy with anything, as the bar just gets raised higher.
This means that there is a bit of a contradictory thing we must do. I feel that this goal saved me from myself years ago. I want you to surrender. That means to accept life as it is and stop fighting so much with the world that surrounds us and to appreciate things for what they are. Surrendering doesn’t mean that we lose all drive to improve, rather it sets the stage for it. The goal is for us to be happy in the present moment , and still work to improve so that we can be , perhaps, even more capable of happiness in tomorrow’s present.
Things aren’t going to be perfect, and if we expect them to be, we are going to argue about everything.
Avoid Conflict Resolution
A lot of relationships drown in passive-aggressive games. When we avoid confrontation, we only ensure that fights and disagreements get blown out of proportion and we ensure that they linger on far too long. Typically a partner will avoid confrontation so that the other person will have to eat crow and begin pursuit. If we avoid confrontations too much, they become habitual and second nature.
Eventually, it might feel as if is the right thing to do and it might feel comfortable. The problem is that when we don’t confront the issue, we are literally choosing unhappiness over happiness.
There is an art to confrontations. There is an art to communicating with a romantic partner. Whatever you do, learn how to communicate before you try. Learn how to manage your emotions before you try to resolve problems, in the heat of the moment.
Argue About Everything
There is no perfect relationship and there are mistakes in every relationship, but there are always key relationship mistakes to avoid. Sure you can go on Facebook and find friends or family that have a bunch of cheerful looking pictures uploaded, and it distorts their relationship to look as if it is free from conflict. Pictures just capture an image. We don’t take pictures when we are fighting, upset or having disagreements.
Every single day there are dozens, if not more, reasons that we could use to start a fight. It could be a chore done wrong or not at all. It could be a call that was never made, or it could be words taken the wrong way, whatever it is, we always have things that can be taken personally.
To avoid this, it is critical that you retrain yourself so that you aren’t hypersensitive. Maybe we shouldn’t take so many things personally. We tend to side along with the person that is voicing the most concerns in their relationship, when it is that person that tends to be the most sensitive, and i would argue that they are too sensitive. That doesn’t mean feelings don’t count. It means that if we care about the quality of our relationships, we need to master ourselves first.
I recommend retraining one’s emotions until truly minor things no longer bother them.
Then, anything that does still bother them can be kept in check. At that point we use our emotional intelligence to evaluate it, and to see if our discontent is warranted or not. Then we make an objective action plan. The goal should never be to destroy our romantic connections, just because we feel victimized.
To avoid this big relationship mistake, learn how to control your emotions. Learn how to communicate well and fight fairly. A disagreement doesn’t have to be the end of the world, and if we really want something resolved, we will not try to attack each other.
Relationship Mistakes To Avoid: Don’t Try To Change Them!
First:
#1 find out who you really are.
#2 master yourself
#3 find out who you really want to be with
If you find the right partner, then you will have someone that you don’t need to change.
That said, the rest of this is in the context of partners that might be trying to change one another. I see an incredible amount of these desires get expressed when individuals approach me to help them in their personal and relational struggles. Maybe things looked perfect at first. Often, it seems that way until the relationship goes through a major change, like moving in together or having children. Either way, it takes years to truly get to know someone.
No matter how selective we are, there will be some things that we won’t necessarily like or appreciate about each other and the lightbulb might turn on and you decide to try to get him or her to change.
Sometimes it is warranted, usually it is not. Either way, you need to AGAIN, go back to learning how to communicate at a high level. The reasons for which you have valid reason to seek change in your partner tend to be extremely specific to your relationship, and I can’t give blanket advice for those. The blanket advice i do have is that you should work your tail off to appreciate everything possible with your partner. Then, look at the differences and try to find the benefits in them.
I’ll give you an example, my romantic partner is extremely assertive. I could feel emasculated. I could think all sorts of things. Here is the positive that I focus on. I never have to wonder what she is thinking – because it gets said.
If there is warranted change that might be approached, the only way you have any leverage is if you are not a hypocrite, and you are unconditionally loving. Change has to be approached very cautiously.
Forgetting to Take Time for Yourself
This is a very common relationship mistake to avoid that is often made by one or both partners in a romantic relationship. At some point, your entire lives might revolve around each other. Maybe you are a stay at home parent. Maybe you are a mechanical engineer. Either way, there are hobbies that you have that most likely are very important to you, but not your partner.
My hobbies are writing, debating economics, and driving fast cars. They fulfill me on a very deep level and I couldn’t imagine a life without my hobbies.
Now this advice goes both ways as i consider both partners to be mutually responsible. Your job in a relationship is to #1 take care of yourself, because if you do not , you are incapable of taking care of others. Not looking after yourself is possibly the biggest single relationship mistake.
So take care of yourself, but make sure your role is still fulfilled. Make sure your hobbies don’t take away from the relationship, like if you were a die-hard sports fan and all you did was watch every sports game, ignoring your husband or wife.
At the same time, I want you to lovingly encourage your partner to fulfill themselves. Maybe they just want some alone time, nap time or perhaps they want to find an avenue to express their individuality. Either way, it can bring deep fulfillment to each of you.
Something that can hurt this endeavor would be if one of you were overburdened. Typically this is the stay-at-home mom. So make sure the load of work is shared. The economic value of a stay at home mom is probably the same as her husband’s, so let’s respect that and help each other out. men , for example, when you get home from work, help out your stay at home wife so that you both have some free time.
I greatly wish that this practical advice has helped readers transform themselves and their relationships. We can choose, at any time, to stop and make a course correction, putting our lives on a much brighter and healthier path.
Otherwise, you’ll be back to that Plenty Of Fish dating app very soon, trying to find someone else to go on a date with!