短篇英语美文欣赏：10 Ways We Hurt Our Romantic Relationships
It’s not easy to have a great relationship with your boy/girlfriend,partner, or spouse. But it’s not impossible, either — it takes some work, of
course, but it’s work, work that’s a joy when everything comes together.
A lot of times, though, the work isn’t enough. We get in our own way with
ideas and attitudes about relationships that are not only wrong, but often work
to undermine our relationships no matter how hard we work at it.
I’ve watched a lot of breakups (some of them my own). I’ve seen dramatic
flare-ups and drawn-out slow fades, and I’ve tried to pay attention to what
seems to be going on. Here are a few of the things I’ve seen that cause people
to destroy their own relationships.
1. You’re playing to win
One of the deadliest killers of relationships is the competitive urge. I
don’t mean competition in the sense that you can’t stand to lose at tennis, I
mean the attitude that the relationship itself is a kind of game that you’re
tying to win. People in competitive relationships are always looking for an
advantage, the upper hand, some edge they can hold over their partner’s head. If
you feel that there are things you can’t tell your partner because she or he
will use it against you, you’re in a competitive relationship — but not for
long.
2. You don’t trust
There are two aspects of trust that are important in relationships. One is
trusting your partner enough to know that s/he won’t cheat on you or otherwise
hurt you — and to know that he or she trusts you that way, too. The other is
trusting them enough to know they won’t leave you or stop loving you no matter
what you do or say. The second that level of trust is gone, whether because one
of you takes advantage of that trust and does something horrible or because one
of you thinks the other has, the relationship is over — even if it takes 10 more
years for you to break up.
3. You don’t talk
Too many people hold their tongues about things that bother or upset them
in their relationship, either because they don’t want to hurt their partner, or
because they’re trying to win. (See #1 above; example: “If you don’t know why
I’m mad, I’m certainly not going to tell you!”) While this might make things
easier in the short term, in the long run it gradually erodes the foundation of
the relationship away. Little issues grow into bigger and bigger problems —
problems that don’t get fixed because your partner is blissfully unaware, or
worse, is totally aware of them but thinks they don’t really bother you.
Ultimately, keeping quiet reflects a lack of trust — and, as I said that’s the
death of a relationship.
4. You don’t listen
Listening — really listening — is hard. It’s normal to want to defend
ourselves when we hear something that seems like criticism, so instead of really
hearing someone out, we interrupt to explain or excuse ourselves, or we turn
inward to prepare our defense. But your partner deserves your active listening.
S/he even deserves you to hear the between-the-lines content of daily chit-chat,
to suss out his/her dreams and desires when even s/he doesn’t even know exactly
what they are. If you can’t listen that way, at least to the person you love,
there’s a problem.
5. You spend like a single person
This was a hard lesson for me to learn — until it broke up a 7-year
relationship. When you’re single, you can buy whatever you want, whenever you
want, with little regard for the future. It’s not necessarily wise, but you’re
the only one who has to pay the consequences. When you are with someone in a
long-term relationship, that is no longer a possibility. Your partner — and your
children, if there are or will be any — will have to bear the brunt of your
spending, so you’d better get in the habit of taking care of household
necessities first and then, if there’s anything left over, of discussing with
your partner the best way to use it.
This is an increasing problem these days, because more and more people are
opting to keep their finances separate, even when they’re married. There’s
nothing wrong with that kind of arrangement in and of itself, but it demands
more communication and involvement between the partners, not less. If you’re
spending money as if it was your money and nobody else has a right to tell you
what to do with it, your relationship is doomed.
6. You’re afraid of breaking up
Nobody in a truly happy partnership is afraid of breaking up. If you are,
that’s a big warning sign that something’s wrong. But often, what’s wrong is the
fear itself. Not only does it betray a lack of trust, but it shows a lack of
self-confidence and self-esteem — you’re afraid that there’s no good reason for
someone to want to be with you, and that sooner or later your partner will “wise
up” and take off. So you pour more energy into keeping up the appearance of a
happy relationships than you do into building yourself up as a person. Quite
frankly, this isn’t going to be very satisfying for you, and it also isn’t going
to be very satisfying for your partner.
7. You’re dependent
There’s a thin line between companionship and support and dependency. If
you depend on your partner — that is, if you absolutely cannot live without her
or him — you’ve crossed that line. The pressure is now on your partner to fill
whatever’s missing in you — a pressure s/he will learn to resent. If you expect
your partner to bring everything while you bring nothing to your relationship —
and I’m talking finances as well as emotional support, here — you’re in trouble.
(Note: I’m not saying that you need to contribute equally to household finances
— what I’m saying is that if you’re not contributing to the household budget,
and you’re not contributing anywhere else, things are out of whack and that’s
never good.)
8. You expect Happiness
A sign of a bad relationship is that one or both partners expect either to
make the other happy or for their partner to make them happy. This is not only
an unrealistic expectation to lay on yourself or on them — nobody can “make” you
happy, except you — but it’s an unrealistic expectation to lay on your
relationship. Relationships aren’t only about being happy, and there’s lots of
times when you won’t and even shouldn’t be. Being able to rely on someone even
when you’re upset, miserable, depressed, or grieving is a lot more important
than being happy all the time. If you expect your partner to make you happy — or
worse, you’re frustrated because you aren’t able to make your partner happy —
your relationship isn’t going to fare well when it hits a rough spot.
9. You never fight
A good argument is essential, every now and then. In part, arguing helps
bring out the little stuff before it becomes major, but also, fighting expresses
anger which is a perfectly normal part of a human’s emotional make-up. Your
relationship has to be strong enough to hold all of who you are, not just the
sunny stuff.
One reason couples don’t fight is that they fear conflict — which reflects
a lack of trust and a foundation of fear. That’s bad. Another reason couples
avoid arguments is that they’ve learned that anger is unreasonable and
unproductive. They’ve learned that arguing represents a breakdown rather than a
natural part of a relationship’s development. While an argument isn’t pleasant,
it can help both partners to articulate issues they may not have even known they
had — and help keep them from simmering until you cross a line you can’t come
back from.
10. You expect it to be easy/you expect it to be hard There are two deeply
problematic attitudes about relationships I hear often. One is that a
relationship should be easy, that if you really love each other and are meant to
be together, it will work itself out. The other is that anything worth having is
going to be hard — and that therefore if it’s hard, it must be worth having.
The outcome of both views is that you don’t work at your relationship. You
don’t work because it’s supposed to be easy and therefore not need any work, or
you don’t work because it’s supposed to be hard and it wouldn’t be hard if you
worked at it. In both cases, you quickly get burnt out — either because the
problems you’re ignoring really don’t go away just because you think they
should. or because the problems you’re cultivating are a constant drag on your
energy. A relationship that’s too much work might be suffering from one of the
attitudes above, but a relationship that doesn’t seem to need any work isn’t any
better.
Your choices
There isn’t any one answer to any of the problems above. There are choices
though: you can either seek out an answer, something that addresses why you are
hurting your relationship, or you can resign yourself to the failure of your
relationship (and maybe the next one, and the next one, and…). Failure doesn’t
always mean you break up — many people aren’t that lucky. But people can live
quite unhappily in failed relationships for years and even decades because
they’re afraid they won’t find anything better, or worse, they’re afraid they
deserve it. Don’t you be one of them — if you suffer from any of these problems,
figure out how to fix it, whether that means therapy, a solo mountain retreat,
or just talking to your partner and committing yourselves to change.
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