Top 3 reasons why your relationship is failing

Any of ya'll love being in love? That's me. I love being in love.

Here's the thing about being in love (and sustaining it)......it comes with having to acknowledge your shadow side, trauma, insecurities, fears, harmful beliefs.....and not only do you have to acknowledge it, but you also have to do the healing work.

So why do relationships fail? Here are the top 3 reasons (I'm leaving out the obvious one - infidelity).

1. Lack of trust.

A past love may have scarred your heart and soul. This leaves you struggling to trust romantic partners, and it shows up in your ability to be vulnerable, your tendency to overreact if your partner talks to the opposite sex, and leaving relationships before you can ever get hurt. Eventually your partner will get tired of your inability to trust them, and this burns the relationship down. If you have trust issues, it's important that you address them, so you don't bleed on people who didn't hurt you.

2. Poor communication

It's ok to disagree, but conflict should be dealt with effectively - think of active listening, understanding and empathy. If you bottle everything up, or get explosive when you communicate - guess what? You fall under "poor communication". Relationships fail when one partner wants to talk about something, and the other wants to run away from the conversation. This builds up resentment, and eventually someone gets tired of the other person's behavior, and leaves. Research indicates that couples who frequently express gratitude and appreciation for one another tend to experience higher relationship satisfaction, and have better communication.

3. Non-acceptance

Your partner is going to have traits that annoy you - you can either accept them, orrrr you can complain about them till you both get frustrated/argue all the time/breakup. Having differences is unavoidable. You just have to be willing to look at what you can learn to understand + accept. Basically, stop trying to change your partner. If you don't like habit XYZ, then maybe you need to ask yourself if it's something you're willing to work on. Eg: you enjoy 6 am runs, your partner enjoys sleeping in till 9am. I'm sure you can see how forcing your partner to go for a 6am run is going to annoy him/her. Similarly, if your partner pressured you to give up 6am runs, and replace them with 9am sleep-ins, how would you feel? It doesn't matter if your idea of changing them was coming from a place of love, you need to ask yourself if you are willing to change your approach. How do you do that? Start from a place of genuine acceptance.