6 relationship habits that aren’t toxic
Parent Post
Issues that are important
Issues that are important in relationships but are harder to face like fighting, hurting each other’s feelings, dealing with dissatisfaction, or feeling the occasional attraction for other people don’t get talked about.
Here are some traits that don’t fit our traditional narrative for what love is and what love should be are actually necessary ingredients for lasting relationship success.
It’s important to make
It’s important to make something more important in your relationship than merely making each other feel good all of the time.
If you feel smothered and want more time alone, say that without blaming your partner and they need to be capable of hearing it without blaming you.
Such conversations are crucial to maintaining a healthy relationship, one that meets both people’s needs. Without them, we lose track of one another.
Sometimes the only thing
Sometimes the only thing that can make a relationship successful is ending it at the right time. The willingness to do that allows us to establish the necessary boundaries to help ourselves and our partner grow together.
“Until death do us part” is romantic, but when we worship our relationship as more important than ourselves, we create a sick dynamic where there’s no accountability.
Spending time apartWe all
Spending time apart
We all have that friend who mysteriously ceased to exist as soon as they got into their relationship.
When we fall in love we develop irrational beliefs and desires. We allow our lives to be consumed by the person with whom we’re infatuated. This feels great but it’s intoxicating. The problem only arises when this desire becomes reality.
Successful couples accept and
Successful couples accept and understand that some conflict is inevitable, that there will always be certain things they don’t like about their partner, or things they don’t agree with.
Sometimes, trying to resolve a conflict can create more problems than it fixes. Some battles are simply not worth fighting.
The most optimal relationship strategy is one of live and let live.
It’s important to occasionally
It’s important to occasionally get some distance from your partner, assert your independence, maintain some hobbies or interests that are yours alone.
Have some separate friends; take an occasional trip somewhere by yourself; remember what made you, you and what drew you to your partner in the first place.
Without this oxygen to breathe, the fire between the two of you will die out and what were once sparks will become only friction.
Being willing to hurt
Being willing to hurt each other’s feelings
Honesty in a relationship is more important than feeling good all of the time. Stop censoring your love.
When our highest priority is to always make ourselves feel good or to always make our partner feel good, then more often than nobody ends up feeling good. And our relationships fall apart without us even knowing it.
Being willing to end
Being willing to end it
Romantic sacrifice is idealized in our culture. Every movie with romance at its center is bound to feature a desperate and needy character who treats themselves badly for the sake of being in love with someone.
Our standards of a “successful relationship” are screwed up.
If a relationship ends and someone’s not dead, then we view it as a failure, regardless of the emotional or practical circumstances present in the person’s life.
Accepting your partner’s flawsLet’s
Accepting your partner’s flaws
Let’s break it down:
- Every person has flaws and imperfections.
- You can’t ever force a person to change.
- Therefore: You must date somebody who has flaws you can live with or even appreciate.
Letting some conflicts go
Letting some conflicts go unresolved.
The idea that couples must communicate and resolve all of their problems is a myth.
In a study of happily married couples, most successful couples had persistent unresolved issues. While many of the unsuccessful couples insisted on resolving everything because they believed that there should never be a disagreement between them.
This led to a void in the relationship.
Feeling attraction for people
Feeling attraction for people outside the relationship
Once we get past the honeymoon phase of starry eyes and oxytocin, the novelty of our partner can wear off a bit. And unfortunately, human sexuality is partially wired around novelty.
People who suppress these urges are often the ones who eventually succumb to them and come to deeply regret them about twenty-two seconds later
When we commit to
When we commit to a person, we are not committing our thoughts, feelings or perceptions to them. We can’t control our thoughts, feelings, and perceptions most of the time, so how could we ever make that commitment?
What we can control are our actions. And what we commit to that special person are those actions. Let everything else come and go, as it inevitably will.