Why relationships fail

Habits or addictions such as these put tremendous strain on relationships and feed into other problem areas, like lack of trust or poor communication. If you are in a long-term relationship, it is possible that life obligations such as school, work, and especially child-rearing got in the way of your connectedness and mutual evolvement.

The longer a couple has been together in a committed relationship, the greater the possibility of financial incompatibility. According to research, differences over money is one of the top reasons for marital dissolution. Money issues tap into some of our deepest psychological needs and fears, including and not limited to trust, safety, security, power, control, and survival.

For appointment requests please text or if you have medication concerns please text Reasons Relationships Fail. Moving Through Life at Different Speeds When one partner is learning and growing at a rapid pace, while the other is staying static, this may be a source of relational divergence.

Communication Issues This is a big one. Life Habit Abuse Life habit abuses are traits which, although may or may not directly involve the partner such as a secret gambling addiction , may ultimately affect the relationship in a destructive way. Financial Issues The longer a couple has been together in a committed relationship, the greater the possibility of financial incompatibility.

If your relationship has been suffering, Dr. One of the foundational feelings necessary in a good relationship is a feeling of security.

If you lack emotional support or find your partner unreliable, you might lose trust. If your partner is vague or hard to pin down, there is cause for concern. Relationships that are built on mistrust are on shaky ground. Lies can have powerful consequences. Was it a white lie or a lie told to protect the person who lied?

White lies are often minor or inconsequential while real lies have far-reaching effects. Does your partner isolate you away from your friends or constantly check up on you? Remind yourself that this is not what a healthy relationship is all about. But if someone is overly possessive and seems to exhibit signs of pathological jealousy, these are red flags. If you suspect your partner is being unfaithful, you may feel like the cornerstone of what you built together has been destroyed.

You might not trust this person anymore. Are they even who you thought they were? Relationships centered on lack of trust, filled with lying, jealousy, and infidelity, will likely not endure. Healthy communications should be about lots of different topics.

Conflicts are inevitable and there are ways to manage conflicts with effective communication skills. Communication should be filled with empathy, understanding, and active listening.

Unfortunately, many couples find it hard to communicate this way. It often reflects the fact that both people are conflict avoidant. This style describes what happens when one partner demands or nags about something and the other person avoids the confrontation and pulls away. Moreover, it was correlated with lower marital satisfaction, too.

But what was surprising was this interesting finding: couples who exhibited signs of gratitude and appreciation overcame this communication problem. Couples often disagree about various issues, but financial issues are often a source of disagreement. Maybe one is a spender and one is a saver. Is your partner respectful?

Do they joke with you about it? Or does your partner put you down, roll their eyes and treat you with utter contempt? These are signs of a lack of respect for one another. John Gottman, a renowned psychologist and expert on marriage stability and divorce probability, views contempt as the biggest destroyer of relationships.

He says contempt is the biggest predictor of divorce , too. This lack of fondness and respect can cause an irreparable rift in a relationship. If you find that someone you're dating or someone you've been with for a while has vastly different relationship desires or life goals than you do, your relationship may begin to fall apart.

Sometimes you have different priorities for the relationship itself. For example, after a month of dating, a recently widowed person might want to book a fun getaway trip with you and keep a no-strings-attached relationship. You, however, may be ready to introduce your family to your love during the upcoming holidays and embark on a more serious path.

Maybe you both have different long-term goals for the future. For instance, you may want to continue ambitiously pursuing a career in the city for another five years. In his research, he polled couples on how often they behaved with contempt, criticism, defensiveness, and stonewalling. Then, he measured perceived relationship satisfaction and found that the behaviors were over 90 percent successful in predicting divorce.

According to Gottman, seeing your partner as inferior in particular is the "kiss of death" for any relationship. And this makes sense, given that another study published in the Journal of Marriage and Family found that couples who showed contempt for each other within their first year of marriage were more likely to divorce before their 16th wedding anniversary.

Feel like things are past the point of no return? In a study published in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science, researchers determined that the people you love most are also the people you're most likely to take your anger out on , given that you interact with them more than anyone. But unfortunately, what they also found is that "aggression is harmful to individuals and to relationships," meaning that the more you hurt the people you love , the more you risk pushing them away.

It's hard to focus on the present when you're busy living in the past. And this is especially true in a romantic relationship , as your complete and undivided emotional and physical presence are required in order to make things work. If you want your current relationship to last, leave the past in the past and let go of the things that are holding you back. Trust is not an easy thing to build with someone especially if you've been betrayed in the past , but you should have faith in the person with whom you intend to spend the rest of your life.

Should you build a partnership on a foundation of mistrust, you risk lacking both physical and emotional intimacy. Plus, you can almost guarantee that eventually your partner will get fed up and walk away. If you love a good nightcap before heading to bed, then you should be sure that your life partner enjoys one as well.

One study from the University of Buffalo found that around 50 percent of married couples with differing alcohol habits got divorced before they hit the year mark.

On the other hand, partners who had similar drinking habits—whether they indulged, abstained, or consumed alcohol moderately—only had a divorce rate of about 30 percent.

Secrets are no fun, especially in a long-term relationship. And what's even worse is lying about them, like when "your partner keeps secrets from you and blames you when you call them out on their secrecy," says Terry Gaspard , MSW, LICSW, a relationship expert and therapist in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. If you notice your partner lying to your face and then holding you responsible for their loathsome actions, it might be time to sit down with them and address the problem directly before things escalate further.

Every couple fights, but healthy ones end them with both parties apologizing and taking partial blame for what has transpired. But in a relationship that's reaching its breaking point, you might find that either you or your partner refuse to accept any of the blame, with one of you painting themselves entirely as the victim. A healthy and happy relationship should revolve around how each person is feeling.

However, partners in unstable relationships often find themselves fighting with their significant other, with little to no regard for how the other person feels. A couple will never understand each other when there is a lack of reverence in the relationship. And if one partner has a blatant disrespect for the other's life choices, neither partner will ever feel comfortable talking about their day, let alone their feelings or beliefs.

A big and unexpected life event, like the death of a parent or a sudden job layoff, can shake a relationship to its core. And, oftentimes, these life-changing moments will result in other major changes that many relationships struggle to survive. It's not necessarily how each partner spends money that causes problems in a marriage, it's how one partner thinks their significant other is spending that does.

When Ashley LeBaron , a graduate student at Brigham Young University BYU , and her fellow researchers studied couples and their spending habits in , they found that husbands who viewed their wives as big spenders had the greatest financial conflicts, regardless of actual spending habits. Relationships are all about give and take—and if you take more than you give, then the balance will be thrown off and your partner will likely seek comfort in other places and people.

In fact, this is such a well-known phenomenon that experts have even given it a name: It's called the Social Exchange Theory. According to Mark V. Redmond of Iowa State University, the theory outlines how "we are disturbed when there is no equity in an exchange or where others are rewarded more for the same costs we incurred.

When your significant other spends the entire day slaving away on a home-cooked meal, don't forget to thank them for all that hard work. Otherwise, your partner will feel like all their efforts have gone unnoticed, or that you feel like your time is more valuable than theirs. When gratitude is not expressed, emotional, and sometimes physical, health is compromised.