3 Mistakes That Can Cost You Your Marriage
Sometimes, it comes a time when your relationship is not like what it meant to be. Sure, there are so many factors that could be responsible for that.
However, being a proactive person you could review yourself before pointing fingers to anything and everything else, which could make things worse. You don't want to rock the boat, for sure. So, we're going to do some digging here. It's not a fun task to do. But, if you want to save your relationship, it is necessary. And oh, you might find gold in your digging, isn't that rewarding?
These are some mistakes that you never want to make.
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking other to live as one wishes to lives - Oscar Wilde
1. Being selfish. Let's be honest, this relationship is about you and your partner, not just you. Otherwise, it will not be called a relationship.
Picture this, you and your partner are embarking on a journey on a little ship called relationship (pun intended). Whichever way you're going, it is only reasonable if you consult your partner first. You should consider your partner in making decision that affects the relationship in any way. After all, he/she is also on that very ship.
Forgetting this lesson is a sure-fire way to destroy your (relation)ship.
2. Being dishonest. Dishonesty hurts relationship. No question about it. It doesn't matter what you hide from your partner. Whether you're secretly going out with a person, telling lies or being untruthful in expressing your feelings.
Sometimes, it seems easier to lie in the short term. However, a lie only demands more and more lies. It is not until your 'network of lies' get complicated that you realise you might get trapped in that net. Remember this: the truth is almost always discovered when you don't expect it.
The truth may hurt for a little while, but a lie hurts forever. At least, as far as your relationship is concerned.
3. Being superior and bossy. To work smoothly, both partners should be on an equal level. John Gottman discovers that contempt is the most important sign that the marriage is in trouble.
Gottman was the man behind a 500-page treatise called The Mathematics of Divorce. What he did was he assigned value to every possible emotion, anger, disgust, whining etc, that he can get from a taped conversations of couples. From that data, he can predict with 95% accuracy whether the couple will still be married fifteen years later.
What helps his prediction was his ability to decode all the emotion and to him the most important emotion of all is contempt. This is his findings in his own words:
"You would think that criticism would be the worst," Gottman says, "because criticism is a global condemnation of a person's character. Yet contempt is qualitatively different from criticism. With criticism I might say to my wife, 'You never listen, you are really selfish and insensitive.' Well, she's going to respond defensively to that. That's not very good for our problem solving and interaction. But if I speak from a superior plane, that's far more damaging, and contempt is any statement made from a higher level. A lot of the time it's an insult: 'You are a bitch. You're scum.' It's trying to put that person on a lower plane than you. It's hierarchical."
Caught yourself doing these mistakes? Correct it now before it's too late. Click here to find out how.
Source: http://ezinearticles.com/
Added: September 17, 2008
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