Since romantic relationships are part of our lives whatever we do, whether we are employees or entrepreneurs, rich or poor, they deserve some of our time. As usual, we’ll look at them from our own point of view, which isn’t usually governed by old clichรฉs or myths, and with advice from the best professionals in the field.
Most relationships that begin today will go down the drain in less than three years, and only a very small percentage will last beyond ten. We could give hundreds of reasons why this happens nowadays, but that is not today’s topic.
Knowing this reality, though, we can’t underestimate the importance of having conversations about money with our partner before taking important steps. Today it is a must from a shared financial point of view. Unromantic? Maybe. Necessary? Without any doubt. That’s why we published “5 conversations about money you should have with your partner before getting married“.
See also: Marriage today: joint or separate bank accounts?
There are many genuinely toxic habits in relationships that end up eroding passion and trust between partners. And I admit that I have personally been both the author and the victim of some of them.
Among the truly toxic habits that can cool the trust in a couple is keeping score of past mistakes and seizing every opportunity to throw them in the other person’s face, which is the perfect way to keep going back to the past. And as with everything in life, if you only look backwards, you’ll rarely manage to keep moving forward, which, after all, is what a relationship is about: moving forward, and then moving forward some more.
Constantly threatening the relationship is certainly not a good idea either, because sooner or later the other person will take the threat seriously, or you will end up carrying it out out of sheer ego, even though it wasn’t what you really wanted. For example, saying “I think you’re not very romantic with me” is not the same as saying “I can’t be with someone so unromantic”, because if you catch that person on a bad day, they may tell you straight out: “Then don’t be with me. This is where it ends.”
Think of the relationship as a sheet of paper on which every argument and every quarrel leaves a crease. Whatever happens, however hard we try afterwards, we’ll never be able to make the paper look new again, no matter how much we smooth it out. That’s why the idea is to avoid damaging it too much.
Put more crudely, love is like toilet paper: every crappy move uses up a little more of it.
But which habits do most couples consider toxic when they are actually very healthy?
1. Leaving conflicts unresolved
Psychologist John Gottman has spent more than 30 years studying and working in the field of romantic relationships. He is the author of The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work and What Makes Love Last?
Simply by watching how some couples behave, he can predict with 90% accuracy which newlyweds will split up within ten years and which will stay together. His method is based above all on certain communication habits between partners.
What Gottman says in almost all his books is that the idea that couples must communicate and resolve all their problems is completely false. And if you go about it that way, your relationship will fail.
Gottman studied thousands of happily married couples over more than 40 years, and most of them had something in common: unresolved issues, problems they had struggled with for years. Meanwhile, the couples who worked hard to settle every one of their problems and battles ended up falling apart.
The explanation is very simple. If you focus on solving every single problem, you are centring your whole relationship on what’s negative about your partner.
They say love is born when we see the other person’s virtues, but it is forged when we are able to carry on once we have seen all their flaws.
Everyone has flaws and virtues. If you focus only on the flaws and ignore the virtues, you won’t like that person. As long as we are not talking about serious flaws, such as being a serial killer or an abuser.
Couples who have succeeded in their relationships understand that conflict is inevitable and that there will always be things they don’t like about their partners, but at the same time they understand that there is no need to change someone in order to love them.
According to Gottman, trying to resolve conflicts can end up creating more conflicts than it solves. And some battles aren’t worth fighting, because there is no winner. If anything, there may be two losers.
2. Being willing to hurt their feelings
Whaaaat?! Hurting your partner’s feelings may be the most counterintuitive piece of advice for a successful relationship, but it is actually grounded in common sense.
In this case it is Mark Manson, author of Models, who explains why it matters more to hurt your partner’s feelings than to be dishonest.
Suppose your partner has spent four hours in front of the mirror getting ready, doing their hair and make-up, and it is one of those days when she hasn’t managed to put an outfit together well, or she has chosen a dress that actually hides all her beauty and ruins her figure, making her look heavier (when her figure is perfect), or she has simply picked a look that is too tacky and doesn’t suit her.
This is where many women believe their partner should reassure them that they look beautiful “whatever they wear”, but Mark Manson never does that. And for better or worse, neither do I. Why? Because some of us men believe that our sincerity and honesty in a relationship matter much more than making someone feel good by lying to them. And as Manson says, the last person who should censor you or be offended by an honest opinion is your partner.
In fact, although I personally try to stay polite and not give a negative opinion when nobody asks for it, if any female friend asks me how her new haircut or the dress she is wearing looks, I’m going to be very honest. And if she doesn’t like it, she shouldn’t have asked.
This habit may seem very toxic, but in the long run the other person knows they can count on a completely honest opinion from their partner.
If honesty offends, perhaps it is a matter of each person’s values, especially when the comment wasn’t meant as constructive criticism.
3. Ending the relationship
This habit is sometimes one of the healthiest for success in relationships, because you’ll come out of it alive and still eager to succeed in a future relationship.
Those who know me already know that I follow a very clear principle: “always leave things and people better than you found them“. And sometimes, if the way we are is causing the other person some kind of torment because of our values or the circumstances of both people, the healthiest thing for the relationship is to put an end to it.
Romantic sacrifice is far too idealised in romantic films. No wonder, considering that we call the story of Romeo and Juliet romantic, a love story in which both protagonists kill themselves for love.
And the funny thing is that Romeo and Juliet was originally written as a satire, meant to show everything that is wrong with young love, the irrationality of romantic beliefs and all the stupid things you are capable of doing for love. But at some point the story turned into something romantic, even though psychologists have used it to explain how forbidden things become more attractive.
In other words, if Romeo and Juliet were real people and their parents had given them their blessing, they probably wouldn’t have lasted even twelve months together, but the prohibition made their love more appealing. The more it was forbidden, the more they loved each other.
But this kind of idealisation, together with commitment bias, is what leads some couples to stay with an abusive, extremely jealous or neglectful person, which can lead to a lifetime of chaos once it becomes harder to leave that person.
That’s why, sometimes, the best thing a couple can do is end their relationship in good time.
4. Having separate circles
Most people think their partner should be just like them. That is, if I’m a doctor, I should marry another doctor. If I’m an economist, I should marry an economist. And the passion we find in these couples is often about the same as you’d find between two penguins. In fact, according to Gottman, many of these couples start from a mistaken premise: that they’ll do everything together, with a shared group of friends, and that talking about work will save their relationship because they’ll always have things in common to talk about.
But reality shows that this isn’t the case. And boredom soon sets in.
We have all seen something very common: our friend Pepe meets a girl and stops playing basketball and going out with his friends. When we fall in love, we tend to develop irrational beliefs and desires. One of these desires is to let our lives be consumed entirely by the person we are with.
The problem with all this, according to Gottman, is that we lose our identity. And often, every time you change to spend more time with the person you want to be with, you become less and less like the person your partner fell in love with.
“Your partner will try to change you. And once they have succeeded, they won’t like you any more.”
That’s why each person should have their own independent circle, which also avoids a very common conversation: “I sat through the art exhibition you wanted to see, and you won’t make the effort to come to the **** concert.”
There shouldn’t have to be any effort involved. One partner may like art and the other concerts. That doesn’t mean either of them has to do something they don’t feel like doing, or force the other person to do it. Each can keep going to what they went to before and keep their own circle and friendships (as long as there is trust and mutual respect).
Think of this space as oxygen: to keep the flame of passion alive, it needs oxygen, or it will soon go out.
In short:
- A relationship is there to be enjoyed, not endured.
- We all have imperfections, and we can’t force our partner to change certain things, so we should choose someone whose imperfections we can live with and even appreciate.
Finally, Gottman’s research, which Daniel Kahneman mentions in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow, showed that the happiest couples focus more on avoiding bad moments than on creating more good ones. There is a very simple psychological explanation: we remember the bad more than the good. In other words, you can create thousands of good moments, and one big argument can wipe out every single one of them.
Even so, when we take stock of our relationship, if the good moments and our positive feelings outweigh the negative moments in emotional intensity, the balance is positive for the health of our relationship.
But it is also a question of focus. If you focus on the good, you’ll get positive emotions. If you focus only on the bad, that’s what you’ll find. Remember that there will always be good things and bad things, virtues and flaws. You have them and I have them; your partner has them too. Where are you going to look? What do you want to find?
See also: 17 steps to survive the worst moments of your life
Featured image: Frank Bernard Dicksee, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
