7

 Relationship  Killing  Mistakes  That  You  Need  To  

Stop  Immediately  
By Jordan Gray

Relationship Coach and writer at:

http://www.jordangrayconsulting.com/

According to a recent 75 year long study carried out by Harvard University,

there is a single key to happiness.

As it turns out, love truly is all you need.

Regardless of health, wealth, or societal positioning, the most consistent

factor that contributed to the overall happiness of over 250 test subjects
throughout their entire lives was their relationships.

But for something that is so essential to our emotional health, well-being,

and self-assessed levels of satisfaction, we really aren’t taught much about
relationships at any point in our lives.

I mean, seriously... even a simple half year course during elementary or

high school would have done wonders for our emotional development and
understanding of intimate relationships.

In lieu of misinformed education, I have collected what I believe to be the

highest leverage action steps you can take (and the most important things
to avoid) in order to maintain a healthy love life.

Through coaching people through the last decade on their sex lives and
love lives, I have found that people tend to mess up in very consistent and
predictable ways. Stop doing the following things (and replace these bad
habits with productive habits) and you can take your relationship from
barely surviving to thriving.

And just like a highly skilled auto mechanic can pull over on the side of the
road and do simple maintenance at the first sign of a problem under the
hood, you too will be able to correct your relationship’s course when you
hear the first signs of trouble.

Here are the highest leverage things you can stop doing, and do instead,
to have a truly thriving relationship.

The 7 Relationship Killing Mistakes That You Need To Stop

Immediately

1. Being Critical Instead Of Supportive

One of the most common relationship killing mistakes is being overly

critical of your partner.

Criticism, or being overly challenging, is one of the ultimate anti-

aphrodisiacs. It basically lets your partner know that, not only are you
judging them, but that you are judging them negatively.

Being criticized makes people feel small, unappreciated, and eventually

resentful.

What To Do Instead:

Give your partner lavish praise about who they are and what they bring to
your life. Support them in their goals, passions, and decisions (as long as
those decisions seem relatively healthy and positive for them).

It’s better to be a cheerleader for your partner, than to be seen as a drill

sergeant.

2. Going Quiet

One of the worst things you can do in a relationship is to go quiet. By going

quiet I either mean literally going completely silent for days on end,
physically being absent from your partner’s life with no notice, or
emotionally withholding from your partner for extended periods of time.
If you are feeling hurt or upset with your partner, trying to talk it out is
always a good idea. Even if you don’t know what to say, or have even fully
formed your thoughts about the frustration yet, even a clumsy attempt is
better than going completely silent and shutting your partner out.

What To Do Instead:

Talk to your partner. Have weekly touch-in meetings with them so that your
frustrations don’t have the chance to grow into huge issues. Turn your
phones off, remove all distractions from your environment, and set aside
some intentional time to discuss all of the little things that tend to pile up in
the context of intimate relationships.

Take the metaphorical dirt out from underneath the rug and put in the work
to clean it away.

3. Not Continuing To Date Your Partner

It’s so easy (and so damaging) to take our partners for granted. They’re
there when we need them... they always text back within a few minutes...
and they listen to your problems when you need somebody to lend you an
ear. But even the most patient and understanding partner can only be
taken for granted for so long until they start feeling unappreciated.

What To Do Instead:

Remember how you used to act together when you first started dating?
You could barely take your eyes off of them. You put effort into planning
your date nights. You groomed yourself in a way that made you feel at your
best for when you saw them.

No matter how long you’ve been seeing your partner for, these things still
apply to your relationship today. Put in the effort to make your partner feel
appreciated and your efforts will come back to you tenfold. Not sure where
to start? Check out my book 50 Powerful Date Ideas for some starter
plans.
4. Score Keeping

Score keeping equals romantic death in intimate relationships. But what is

score keeping?

Score keeping is when you mentally keep track of everything that you’ve
done for your partner in order that you can make sure that the relationship
is fair and that you are both contributing equally. But there’s a fatal flaw in
this way of thinking.

The problem with score keeping is that it breeds resentment in your mind,
and it also teaches you to narrow your view of the things that your partner
does for you on a daily basis. Maybe you know exactly how many times in
the past month your partner has done the dishes, but because you are
spending so much time selectively paying attention to their lack of
dishwashing effort, you entirely miss the fact that they have been bringing
a different kind of value to your life (helping you decompress by listening to
you at the end of your work day, mowing the lawn, keeping the fridge
stocked with fresh food, etc.).

What To Do Instead:

Recognize that you both contribute different things to the relationship and
keeping score of who does what is only going to make you frustrated and
resentful. Score keeping will make you a bitter person with imagined
scenarios in your mind.

Instead, practice gratitude (internally, in written format, or verbally to your

partner) with what your partner already brings to the relationship and your
life. If you prime your mind for what they ARE doing as opposed to
seeing/inventing what they AREN’T doing, you will both be happier for it.

The more you search for something, the more you will find it. So you can
either choose to be miserable by score keeping, or you can fall even more
in love with your partner by seeing and recognizing all of the little things
they are already doing for you on a daily basis.
5. Keeping Your Vulnerable Secrets To Yourself

The fastest way to drive a wedge between you and your partner is to keep
all of your thoughts and secrets to yourself.

Whether it’s that thing about work that has been stressing you out, or the
low-lying feeling of anxiety that you’ve been having for the past couple of
weeks about a situation with your friend doesn’t matter. Keeping your
fears, insecurities, and doubts to yourself is a recipe for disaster in your
relationship. If whatever is tumbling around in your mind remains unsaid,
your partner will feel you not being present with them and they will wonder
why you aren’t letting them in and allowing them to help you talk through it.

What To Do Instead:

Courageously choose to be vulnerable. Let your partner know what’s

bothering you. Even if you don’t think there’s any possible way for them to
help you with it, even saying it out loud could alleviate a lot of the stress
that you feel.

6. Expecting Sex To Be Owed To You Because You’re Together

Being hopeful that your sex life continues to thrive long into your
relationship makes total sense... but expecting sex from your partner
simply because you are together is something entirely different.

The former sub-communicates gratitude and appreciation, and the latter

shows entitlement and that you take your partner for granted.

Entitlement is the ultimate anti-aphrodisiac.

What To Do Instead:

If you want your sex life to thrive, put in the effort. Date your partner,
actively desire them, and take care of yourself to the extent that you feel
comfortable and sexy in your own body.

If your sex life has waned recently, either remove the lifestyle barriers that
are getting in your way (overly full schedules. chronic stress, etc.) or
reconnect emotionally so that a physical proclamation of your love flow
effortlessly into your life. The biggest reason that I hear from my female
clients as to why they haven’t been having as much sex as they normally
would with their partner is because they don’t “feel connected”. So... the
solution? Connect with your partner.

Clear the space, clear your calendar, and treat love like it’s a verb. Be
proactive in your approach to clearing out your relationship’s
communication channels and your sex life will thrive once again.

7. Not Communicating Your Needs

It makes sense that after a certain length of time in your relationship you
would start to expect that your partner should be able to anticipate your
needs. But unfortunately, people aren’t mind readers.

It takes a lot of courage to express or verbalize our needs when we feel

like they aren’t being met. What doesn’t take courage is subtly hinting
towards your needs (or not hinting at all), expecting that your partner
should already know what you need, and then getting frustrated with them
when they fail to meet your needs/read your mind.

What To Do Instead:

I get it. Often, the times that we most want our partners to read our minds
are the times when we find it the most difficult to say what we need (such
as during a fight, during sex, or in a public social situation)... but you have
to.

The only way around this relationship roadblock is through it. As nice as it
might be in the future when we have publicly available mind reading
technology (please tell me somebody is working on this), you have to learn
to get more comfortable with expressing your needs. Baby steps at first,
and the habit will eventually pick up its own momentum.
Wrap Up

These are just a select handful of the relationship killing mistakes that I
encounter in my clients on a regular basis, but by no means is this an
exhaustive list.

If you want to be proactive about keeping your relationship in a thriving,

healthy state, be sure to check out my books 50 Powerful Date Ideas;
Keep Her Captivated: Lead Your Relationship To Its Maximum Potential;
and my video courses Fight Less, Love More, and Supercharge Your Sex
Life.

I wish you the absolute best of luck in love and life.

Dedicated to your success,

Jordan Gray