3 Signs Your Relationship Is Never Going to Work

I hate this aspect of my job. I hate thinking about it, talking about it, and in my own life I hate facing it myself because it's depressing. But my last article was on facing the reality of your relationships and to be clear, I feel obligated to share what criteria you should look for as signs that your relationship will never be perfect the way you want it to. My material comes from an article published in the Journal of Family Psychology back in 2012.


There are three things that are strongly correlated to divorce, separation, break up,  and as I like to call it, "relationship endings." Those three things are:

1. Poor Communication
2. Poor Emotional Management
3. And a lack of perceiving that your needs are being met

Poor Communication often comes down to conflict management. How do you resolve your conflicts? Do you insist that you are right and the other person is wrong and therefore the discussion is over? Do you avoid discussions with the other person because you don't want to upset them? Do you avoid conversations with them because you don't want them to hurt you? Do you cave every time they want something from you because you don't want to upset them? Do you get upset that they don't remember things? Do you get upset because they don't appear to value the same things as you?--All of these issues are a symptom of poor communication. --I'll write an article on this eventually, and have in fact devoted a significant portion of my book to this very topic, but if you know your relationship suffers from poor communication then expect it to fail sometime in the future. That is, if you don't commit now to improve your communication.

Poor Emotional Management is all about feelings. How do you feel in the relationship? If you were to take an hourly log of how you are feeling in a week, how many hours would you classify as you feeling "satisfied" or "happy" with your relationship? If you feel stressed, if you feel sad, if you feel angry, if you feel scared more than 50% of the time, expect your relationship to come to an end eventually. In fact, if you are in that situation, let me remind you that the only reason you still have a relationship of any kind with that person is because you are keeping it alive.

Lack of Needs Fulfillment I stated above that it was the perception of your needs being fulfilled. This is a tricky issue to attach to relationship endings. For starters, it is not your responsibility to fulfill other people's needs. Ever. However, we form relationships because it makes it easier to fulfill our needs and wants. If you aren't helping them meet some of their important needs, or you are blocking them from meeting those needs (or making their life more stressful), you might need to reconsider why you are in the relationship in the first place. And, if your needs aren't getting met, you shouldn't blame the other person for not fulfilling them, but you should consider developing other relationships that can help you fulfill those--if not fulfilling them on your own without complaining.

It's not unlikely that at some point in the life of your relationships you will experience each of these things. You might recognize that the communication in your relationship is terrible, or that you are projecting your emotions on the other person or feel that they have made you upset or angry. You may even think that you aren't getting any of your needs met by the other person. This is fine, so long as it is temporary--that is when you try to work on those things.
If your relationship doesn't communicate very well, work in it. If you keep feeling the same emotions, focus on resolving those emotions. If you aren't getting your needs me, you REALLY need to find ways to get those needs met. No, you don't need to put your relationship on hold, but you need to commit more to resolving these things. You can still maintain the same level of relationship with them and, on the side, be improving your personal ability to communicate, handle your emotions, and get your needs met.

With that in mind, if you try your damnedest, you're committing to the relationship and you're working on yourself, and you're still having these problems, then it's time to admit defeat. There is no shame in ending a relationship that isn't working out. If it doesn't get you closer to that dream relationship you're working towards, or if it keeps slipping back into those three negative areas, then set up some boundaries and move forward.

There is really only one sign that your relationship will never work, and that is that you or the other person no longer wants to improve your communication, no longer want to manage the emotions, or no longer wants to find a solution for helping the other person get their needs fulfilled. No matter what happens, no matter what mistakes are made, the hurtful things said, actions taken, or the decisions made, if you both want to keep working on these three things, then you will maintain a relationship and hopefully it won't be bogged down with so many boundaries that it can become a great relationship.

5 Reasons You Shouldn't Do Everything With Your Significant Other

I wanted to do a followup to my last podcast about compatibility. Perhaps you're under the impression that you need to have a lot of common interests with your significant other and that you need to include them in your hobbies or with your friends (or even your family)? This podcast gives 5 reasons why you shouldn't get carried away into thinking your significant other has to be your twin.

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& Here's the Download: download

1. People need avenues for releasing stress.
2. Doing things alone and achieving things builds confidence.
3. When you are exposed to people outside of your norm, you learn new ways of thinking and can apply the best parts to your preferred relationship.
4. Having your own friends helps you see that you have "options" and are in your relationship by choice.
5. You can't meet all of your needs in one person!

We need to live the life that we want to live rather than the life that our significant other wants us to live; and then we can include our significant other in that life, just like they should include us in their life. The best relationships are those created when we have a complete choice and not because we were forced or because we desperately needed them. 

We Hurt Others After We Have Been Hurt

(Hurt People, Hurt People)

We hurt others after we have been hurt. This is another type of cycle; when we get hurt it is natural for us to want to retaliate or take it out on other people.

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Here's the Download: download

People are initially fragile with their emotions until they are trained otherwise. We approach new experiences the same way a baby does and we default to certain feelings until we train ourselves to act differently.

It is common for people to default to: anger, sadness, fear or anxiety; which might lead us to a fight or flight response, or blaming ourselves or others when we ought not to.

A few things to take from this:

1. You can usually tell when someone has been hurt a lot in their past because they don't know how to appropriately cope with the hurt and tend to be more confrontational or blame others for their hurt.
2. When you are completely comfortable with yourself, you are more apt to recognizing your flaws, owning them, correcting them, and not letting others hurt you. You remain in control of yourself.
3.  If you have hurts that you haven't resolved, you need to fix them before you will progress in your relationships with others. You can "fix" your hurt places by acknowledging them, accepting them, relieving them, working on getting over them and finding a resolution to them. 
4. Most people carry around some hurt. You need to respect that other people have been hurt and may be hurt by things you say or do to them--intentional or not! And when someone else is suffering from some kind of hurt, don't let their reaction to the hurt affect you--recognize that their pain may be causing them to lash out at you. A little bit of empathy (read: understanding) will go a long way in allowing you to forgive them and not be affected by them. 

Cycle 2: Walking Away

Cycle 1: Blaming Others
Cycle 2: Walking away (or The Fear of Commitment)

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Just over 18 min (Hey, I'm slowly shortening them!)

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I prefer to call this cycle the cycle of walking away, but most people refer to it as the fear of commitment. Basically, if you find you have had a lot of short relationships; or if you are the one who always ends relationships, then you may very likely be stuck in this cylce.

The pattern is as follows:
1. (normal)Things are going along fine
2. (something happens) Something changes for you or the other person, or the realization that something has changed finally sets in.
3. (you react) You reflect on your goals, dreams, life, etc and put everything into perspective and how some of those things are now harder would be different if you continued on the current path.
4. (resolve) You react by turning inward, planning an exit strategy, looking for a reason to leave, check out mentally, or just plain disappear.

Blaming others is often an internal struggle to cope with your own emotions whereas this cycle of walking away is more of a struggle with dealing with change and risk.

Society likes to fill people's heads with garbage about "one true love" or differentiate between people who are "Right for you" and people who just aren't. There is a common misconception out there that you will "find" the ideal relationship--you'll meet someone who everything just clicks and live happily ever after. There is no such thing. Relationships require work, they require you to take risks and manage changes. You have to build your best relationships, they don't just happen.

Quotes:
Relationships are Risks
The only person holding you back from your goals or dreams is you.
Any two people can be right for one another if they are committed to making it work
If you're really committed to the relationship the way you should be, then you will learn the skills needed to have a good relationship with that person.
You need to commit today to stick with your next (or current) relationship no matter what.
Relationships don't hold you back, they help you.

Additional Topcis in this podcast:
Synergy - The principle that two people together produce more than two people individually.

Change is Inevitable - Everyone changes. The person you are today is not the person you will be tomorrow. Something will happen between now and when you go to bed that makes you just a little bit different tomorrow than you are right now. Being in a relationship with someone means you are agreeing to adapt to the changes that affect both of you.

Risk - Risk is defined as any unforeseen event or activity that can impact your life, the other person's life or the relationship. Risks require you to put in an effort or investment that you may not get back in the way that you want or may be worth substantially more.

Follow the links to the right to continue to the next podcast, or go directly there by clicking here.