Our constant behaviors determine the outcome of our lives.
Things you do occasionally will have a little fundamental impact on your life.
On the other hand, the things you do daily determine how your life turns out in the long run.
The blunt truth is that in every aspect of life whether in our careers, health, relationships, or any other aspects, our little, harmful behaviors can break our success.
Talking about romantic relationships, I’ve come to realize over the years that we often self-sabotage our happiness and fulfillment by adopting and displaying habits that are nothing but pointless, energy-depleting, and even unproductive.
Some of these habits only cause us problems in our love lives and makes our relationships as messy as hell
The worst part is that these habits are often difficult to get rid of since we’ve been into them for a long time.
However, eliminating some of these harmful habits might change your entire love life for good.
1. Don’t put words in your partner’s mouth.
For some people, this is easier said than done, I know.
Yet, I discovered that failure to really and genuinely listen to our significant others causes verbal competitions ending in misunderstanding, emotional distance, and even divorce.
Most of the time, I listen to my partner with a pure intention to reply instead of actually listening to what she is saying because I wanted to defend my opinion, and often it almost costs me my relationship with her.
Sometimes we find ourselves amid heated conversation, and all of a sudden, we will just say something that just takes away our partner’s breath as they might as well stop talking at that point because we are no longer listening to whatever they’re saying.
Once you learn to listen better and understand what your partner is saying, you will have fewer misunderstandings and unnecessary arguments.
The truth is that we are inconsiderate at times.
We tend to have assumptions thrown in at the base of our presumed general opinion. That’s why we put words in our partners’ mouths instead of listening.
Next time you are in a conversation with your partner, ask yourself if you’re really listening to understand or listening to reply.
Communication is exceptionally versatile and mistakes can happen all the time.
Instead of having assumptions thrown in based on your presumed general opinion, try to listen carefully and understand.
2. Try to know or understand your partner’s love language.
Yes, one more of those cliché relationships advice.
You might have heard this from Gary Chapman’s “The Five Love Languages” or people who have read the book.
According to Gary Chapman, one’s love language is how he expresses love and receives love as well. But here’s the catch:
When couples know and understand the love languages of each other, it’ll help strengthen their bond and relationship with one another.
A lot of relationships suffer huge setbacks due to serious love language disconnects like: A man who showers his woman with gifts instead of spending quality time with her or a woman who endlessly restates how much she appreciates her space and normally squirm away when her man hugs her lovingly for few minutes.
The truth, however, is that knowing your partner’s love language will help you understand how they know how to love so that you’ll feel appreciated the moment they love you in the ways they know how to. What’s more, it’ll help you to be more likely to give them what they need to feel loved thereby making you more thoughtful and loving.
Ignorance of your partner’s love language, on the contrary, doesn’t come with any benefits at all other than making things complicated for you and your partner.
That’s why knowing your partner’s love language can be your holy grail for a more happier and fulfilling relationship.
3. Don’t swallow what you want to say to “protect” your partner’s feelings.
For tons of people, the loving urge to avoid hurting their partners’ feelings is the number one reason for less joy, energy, and fulfillment in their relationships.
Yeah, it’s cool to be considerate of your partner’s feelings, but seriously: what good does bottling up every single thing that stresses you because you don’t want to hurt your partner’s feelings bring?
Probably not much. Instead, you’ll be choosing to wallow in pain to protect your partner’s feelings.
I’m not saying that being considerate of one’s partner’s feelings per se is a bad thing. On the contrary, it’s a great thing. In whatever I do, I love to put my girlfriend’s emotions, feelings, and thoughts into consideration.
However, there’s a massive difference in how you do it.
Are you holding back from expressing your feelings in a bid to protect your partner’s feelings?
Do you act like and say that you’re fine when you aren’t?
Whenever I’m uncomfortable with whatever my girlfriend does or a particular situation, I always open up and express my feelings instead of acting like I’m cool.
My girlfriend and I see no reason to make things more complicated, difficult, and even unbearable for ourselves by holding back from expressing our feelings.
And that’s cool because it makes it easier for us to resolve whatever stressful issue that arises in our relationship.
However, the bitter truth is that most people wallow in pains and frustration after bottling up their feelings to save their partner’s feelings.
Why? Because pretending to be okay with every single thing that stresses someone can wear anyone thin.
The worst part is that one might out of built-up resentment, blow up and end up saying things he will regret terribly.
In the worst-case scenario, It’s like when you have been holding back from expressing your feelings for a very long time and you get stung one more time which might not hold much weight compared to the ones you’ve been silent to, but you end up losing it like a possessed person amid an exorcism.
That’s why you should always open up and express your feelings instead of saying you’re fine when you aren’t.
This might sound hard, I know, but the truth is that life is too short to always bottle up and avoid telling people how you feel when they strike a particular hurtful chord or about an uncomfortable situation.
4. Stop being over-possessive and insecure.
Again, easier said than done, I know.
Yet, with a few simple hacks, it becomes easier to spiral out or avoid spiraling into the possessive state.
As we all know, most people end up in a possessive state due to reasons like trust issues, jealousy, or low self-esteem. They’re either consumed by their past experiences that they find it hard to trust their partners or they don’t think highly of themselves and believe they don’t deserve their partners so they have to make sure their partners aren’t thinking of leaving them.
If you’re not consistently living in doubt, skepticism, suspicion, and uncertainty in your relationship, you’ll not feel any need to be possessive because being possessive can only damage your relationship.
Letting go of the past is one of the easiest and effective ways of dealing with insecurity and possessiveness. Even if you’ve been lied to, cheated on, or betrayed in the past, you shouldn’t let your past ruin the joy of your presence. Your current partner isn’t your ex and will most likely not be like them in any way. Why not give your present partner a fresh start and yourself a chance to feel better since you can’t undo what’s already done by letting go of the past.
Knowing your self worth is another excellent way of stopping insecurity and possessiveness from sabotaging the success of your relationship. By realizing your partner is lucky to be with you and have chosen to do so because you’re a great and amazing person, you won’t feel any need to be jealous of anyone else they’re hanging out with. And this makes it easier to avoid spiraling into the possessive state which will, in turn, make your relationship stress-free.
By letting go of the past or knowing your self-worth, you’ll quickly realize that being insecure and over-possessive doesn’t make sense and harms your relationship. Plus, it’ll be much easier to let go of the negative feelings you have about your relationship and focus more on being positive.
5. Stop pretending to like something that you don’t like.
Molding yourself according to what you think your partner might like is the safest way to be unhappy in any relationship.
That’s why you should by no means pretend to like things you don’t like or abandon the things you like because that’s what your partner might like.
Because at the end of the day, you’ll end up losing yourself and your identity which means you’ll be losing your self-image and worth and it’s quite unfriendly to your entire well-being.
Spending too much time in a relationship pretending to be someone you aren’t in a bid to be liked more will cost you so much energy and your true happiness.
Why not start respecting yourself and saying no to the things you don’t truly like?
Use every minute you spend in any relationship to be true to yourself and nothing else. Instead of molding yourself into something your partner might like.
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Previously Published on medium
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