Let’s be honest …
At times, no matter how solid your relationship
may be, it will experience challenges.
Disagreements and conflict are simply facts of
life, and are certain to arise.
Here are 5 of the most common sources of
relationship troubles, so you can identify what is
going on and get yourselves back on track.
1. Having expectations of how you should be loved.
There is a natural human desire for love and
acceptance. When this desire turns into an
expectation, it often leads to disappointment and
demands.
Truth is, no one can love you as you want to be
loved, because no other person can be you. We
each love another person based on how we
perceive and understand love. So your partner
loves you the best they know how, given their
current understanding and belief about love.
If you have expectations for how you want to be
loved and feel frustrated your partner isn’t
“getting it,” you are suggesting the person should
know you the way you do. This is unrealistic, and
a setup for the relationship to remain challenging
and unfailing for both of you.
2. Letting your past experiences shape your ongoing beliefs about love.
Both you and your partner come from different life
experiences. You didn’t share the same parents,
childhood experiences, living space, etc., so it is
natural that both of you will have different
perspectives and belief systems around the way
relationships “should be.”
Based on each of your unique experiences,
perspectives and beliefs, you are both right and
living your own truth regarding expressing loving
and being in relationship.
Somewhere in the middle of both of your
perspectives and truths is the actual truth of how
the two of you can best give and receive love and
be in relationship.
To find that mid-point, you must both be willing
to accept the other’s point of view and, from
there, work at finding common ground.
Relationships becomes more challenging and
taxing when we resist and refuse to accept the
other’s perspectives and ways.
3. Allowing your need to be right to be more important than your need to be happy.
One of the biggest relationship challenges of all is
the need to be right.
This need causes power struggles, mistrust, and
conflict in relationships. This need to be right has
a negative impact on communication, setting and
achieving relationship goals, cooperation with
financial issues, and intimacy and sexual
struggles.
If you need to be right above all else, your partner
will feel judged, unimportant, insignificant,
unloved and under-valued for who they are. What
makes relationships work is when both partners
align with the relationship, not themselves.
Your challenge is to see the value in your
partners views and beliefs and to consider their
points of view. This helps broaden your
perspective of your partner’s experience, and
deepens the meaning of the relationship.
Doing this promotes inner happiness , and shows
your partner you care about them, value their
perspective, and value your relationship with
them .
4. Sweeping important issues under the rug.
Many relationship concerns and issues get
ignored, overlooked, and buried because of the
daily rush around work, raising kids and meeting
other needs and obligations. These demands
leave little to no time or energy for partner-to-
partner discussion.
Maybe one or both of you dread confrontation and
conflict, or maybe you just don’t make the time to
talk things out and work through issues together .
Sweeping problems under the rug is avoidance,
which only leads to bigger challenges and
problems arising later on. You can only avoid an
issue for so long before it shows its ugly self in
the way of resentment, tension, arguments, and
mistrust.
As the saying goes, “What you resist will persist.”
Learn to accept and deal with issues and conflict
as they happen to avoid greater conflict and hurt
in the future. Use constructive problem-solving
skills and seek to be proactive rather than
reactive within the issue and the discussion
around problem-solving it.
5. Putting your children’s needs first.
As more single and divorced adults are raising
children on their own, they continue to seek a
suitable life partner. While dating and blending
families as a couple can be a wonderful
experience, it can also be challenging and
difficult, full of frustration, misunderstanding,
tension and resentment.
Researcher E. Mavis Hetherington, PhD found that
the the divorce rate for second marriages “to be
50 percent higher in remarriages with stepchildren.”
Not all blended families have the same level of
complexity, Dr. Hetherington went on to specify
that in “simple stepfamilies” (where only one
partner brought a child or children to the new
marriage) the overall divorce rate is 65%, whereas
when both partners have children from previous
relationships (“complex stepfamilies”) the divorce
rate is slightly more than 70%.
There is often much resistance and struggle from
the children, and a major adjustment for them.
Children may feel powerless, because the blending is not their choice. This can cause greater
resistance and defiance to one or both partners/parents in the relationship.
credit: naijaflash.com.ng
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