8 Things You Should Never Believe About A Relationship

If you believe that your relationship should be a certain way, you might be setting yourself up for failure. And when that happens for some, you’re left wondering what went wrong, when all that happened was that no one could live up to your ideal of a perfect relationship.
Maybe you were jaded; thinking that the world would be your fairy-tail filled oyster when you fell in love. To say that there aren’t plenty of amazing relationships out there would be a mistruth, but many are lead down the lane of love believing things about a relationship that for the most part, are simply not true. For that, we’ve come up with 8 things you shouldn’t believe to be true in relationships today:

1. Happy couples don’t fight

Conflict is perfectly natural in relationships; expressing anger with violence is not. Happy couples do argue but they have learned to express their feelings in a more productive way that works toward a solution.
Compromise and collaboration are the tools that successful couples use to solve conflict. You can read more about how to communicate positively with your partner in this article.

2. You have more sex in a long term relationship

It is perfectly natural for couples to have sex less often the longer they are together. In a study of couples over the lifetime of their relationships, couples reported that sex did happen less often over time. Reasons given by the couples for having less sex include age, health problems and sex becoming a routine.
In a successful relationship, partners have many ways to be intimate with each other and only one of those is having sex. If you are looking to increase intimacy in your relationship, you can read more about reigniting passion in your relationship here.

3. Having children is the death of passion in a relationship

Adding another small person to your couple doesn’t have to spell the end of your sex lives, but it won’t fix problems in your relationship either. Children can add great joy to relationships, but they also bring stress and added work.
Expressing your fears to your partner about what changes you will experience with regard to your sex lives by having children. Take your role as a spouse just as seriously as you do being a parent. Make a plan with your partner and devote equal time and energy to sustaining an intimate connection as you do to raising a family.

4. If your partner really loved you, they would know how you feel

No one can read minds, although close partners do pick up on the facial expressions and body language of their other half and they know what they mean. You have to continue to communicate your feelings and desires to your partner throughout your relationship. Strong listening and effective communication skills are important throughout the lifetime of your relationship.

5. If your partner isn’t jealous, it’s because they don’t care.

Jealousy as a healthy emotion is a relationship myth. Trusting partners don’t become jealous over their partner looking at or talking to other potential romantic partners.
Instead, jealousy is often a sign of one partner’s insecurity over the stability of the relationship or their own self-esteem. Trust in relationships is key. Feeling secure in a couple means that you do not question your partner’s loyalty.

6. Happy couples don’t have to work at it

Happily ever after is definitely a relationship myth. Having a caring relationship means continuing to care for and nurture your partner as they do for you.
To make sure that your partner is happy, you can do the relationship equivalent of asking your partner for a performance review. Ask what more you can do to help your partner to be fulfilled in the relationship.
When each half of the partnership is committed to working on being the best person that they can be for their partner, the relationship is in a state of continuous improvement.

7. If it’s not working, you can make your partner change

You will never be able to force someone to change. You can help shape behavior with rewarding language like ‘thank you’ when your partner does something that you like. You can tell your partner what you want them to do but you can’t make them do it.
When it comes to major personality changes, your partner has to want to make a change. If your partner has a general negative outlook or is neurotic in some way, it is unlikely that you can undo these personality traits that were likely developed in childhood.

8. Happy couples don’t look for help outside of the relationship

Couples do seek counseling to work out their problems. Unfortunately, they get professional help when things have seriously deteriorated in their relationships.
Licensed couple’s therapists offer premarital counseling to help partners iron out problems before they make the ultimate commitment. Seeking help early in relationships is best before problems become severe. If one of you has already given up on the relationship, it will be too late to fix it with the help of a counselor.
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The 4 Stages of Life According to Carl Jung

As we wander through this journey that is life, we go through fundamental changes. Some people use terms like “quarter-life crisis” or “middle age” to define where it is we think we are in our lives along the way. To me, there aren’t destinations in life. There are milestones for sure, but we can often come back to the same places that we were before. That is what I love about Swiss psychologist Carl Jung’s 4 Stages of Life. As he described them, these stages have to do with who we are as people and our motivations. They have nothing to do with age or accomplishment, and throughout our lives we often move forward and backward from these stages. As Jung once said, “Thoroughly unprepared, we take the step into the afternoon of life. Worse still, we take this step with the false presupposition that our truths and our ideals will serve us as hitherto. But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning, for what was great in the morning will be little at evening and what in the morning was true, at evening will have become a lie.” These are the 4 stages of life, according to Carl Jung:
Read: 22 of the Most Insightful Quotes from Carl Jung

The Athlete

The athlete is the phase in our lives when we are at our most self-absorbed. There are people in our lives that have never made it out of this phase, or often revert back to it. Of the 4 stages, it tends to be the least mature. It is characterized by being obsessed with our physical bodies and appearance. For an example of the athlete phase, watch teenagers walk past a mirror. The athlete phase can be narcissistic, critical, or even both.

The Warrior

Moving forward in our lives, we reach the warrior phase. This is where we begin to take on responsibilities and get the desire to conquer the world. Well, maybe not the world for some of us, but this is when we become more goal oriented. All of the sudden we can see objectives that we want to accomplish and the vanity of the athlete phase begins to fade. The warrior phase is really characterized by the struggles in our lives that early adulthood can throw at us. The warrior phase is also the most common pshase that people revert back to throughout their lives as they “re-invent” themselves.

The Statement

When the warrior phase in our lives is coming to an end, we find ourselves asking: “what have I done for others?” Your focuses shift from your personal achievements to accomplishing goals based on forwarding other people’s lives. This stage is often correlated to parenting, because your focus becomes providing a better life for your children, and what it is you need to do that. The statement phase for many people is much more than a correlation to parenting, and more about leaving a legacy or a footprint in life. The statement phase is a time to reflect on what you have accomplished, and how you can continue moving forward – not just for you, but for the other people in your life. As far as maturity goes, the statement phase is a huge step forward from even the warrior phase.
Read: Which of the 4 Types of Introvert are You?

The Spirit

The final stage of life is the spirit stage. In this stage, we realize that we are more than what we have accumulated – be it money, friends, possessions, good deeds, or milestones in life. We are spiritual beings. We realize that we are divine beings in a journey of life that has no real beginning and no end. The spirit phase is characterized by a sense of “getting out of your own mind” and focusing on what is waiting for us beyond our physical beings. The philosopher Lao Tzu proposed a question over 2500 years ago that perfectly describes the spirit phase: ““Can you step back from your own mind and thus understand all things? Giving birth and nourishing, having without possessing, acting with no expectations, leading and not trying to control: this is the supreme virtue.”

 

Consciousness October 28, 2015 Justin Gammill