The biggest relationship misconceptions and mistakes

When starting a relationship for the first time, most people don’t have much knowledge about handling it in the right way. There are common misconceptions and mistakes in relationships that will result in a toxic relationship or a painful breakup. With just a few investments in reading and learning about how relationships and love work, you can avoid most of these mistakes. This will make your life much easier and your relationship will work in a healthy and lasting way.

1. Problem: “The partner needs to make you happy.”

Some people treat a relationship as a means to being happy. Wanting to be happy is not unfair; we all want to have a good life. The world is not easy; it can be full of problems and mischief. It is hard and does not always provide the happiness we need. So starting a relationship during those unhappy times can change your life for good. It’s not just you anymore; it’s two people. So we start to have a very happy beginning in the honeymoon phase of a relationship. This can take months, or maybe even a full year, before the effects turn down. If your relationship makes you happy, it is not a problem.

However, sometimes bad times will come; the honeymoon phase has basically ended, and the feelings of excitement will be reduced a lot. You become unhappy. In this time, we often tend to judge our partner. “Why am I not happy? You are supposed to make me happy.” And so we expect happiness from them, and if we don’t get it, we demand it. But things can never work that way.

You can’t expect from your partner to give you a meaningful, fulfilled life. A relationship never should be the foundation of your life, because if it’s gone, your life will crumble down. Besides that, it’s unfair to your partner to expect something you can’t do for yourself.

Instead of wanting them to make you happy, work together on improving each other’s lives. If you are single, you can work on that alone right now. For a happy life, you need hobbies, friends, and a goal to achieve. Ask yourself what you want in life and work towards that. Connect with people and try to befriend them. Try new things to develop some good habits that will make you happy.

If you worked on that, your life will be happy, even without a relationship. Your partner will still make you more happy, but even if you both break up, you have a stable foundation.

2. Problem: Being too obsessed with the partner

Sometimes in dating, our behaviors are not equal to each other. One person invests way more into the other while being into them barely. I am talking about the obsession of a certain person, which mostly happens in relationships but starts early at the beginning of the dating phase.

It is a form of blind love, where we see the other person as the perfect being. At the same time, they are the perfect partner, but they are not the perfect partner. We are becoming blind to every one of their imperfections; we just don’t see them. Besides that we want as much as possible from it, in some cases our life just becomes about them.

All that can come from different mental issues in your life. So can certain things like loneliness, depression, or just simply neediness result in you becoming obsessed with your partner? It can come together, but doesn’t need to, with a dependence in life on the partner. This will result in even stronger obsession as we start doing everything for them. I will talk late about how to avoid it or come out of it.

This obsession makes you vulnerable because you are ready to do everything for them. You don’t see their imperfections, even if those are manipulation techniques, like gaslighting or anything else. With this vulnerability, people can do a lot of harm to you without you even noticing it. You will do what they want, even if it makes you uncomfortable. Of course, in the best case, your partner won’t use any manipulation techniques and treats you well. But even then, the relationship will develop an imbalance in the form of time and energy. A big difference in energy and investments could drive your partner away from you. They might see you as “annoying.” Issues that occur through a partner obsession will hurt your relationship and, in most cases, make them toxic.

Back when I had my first girlfriend, I was really happy to have one. It happened unexpectedly, and I would not have thought that I could even get one. So I accepted her for who she is; I adored her and then started loving her blindness. It was good in the beginning, but it ended to be a happy relationship when my ex started to be more unhappy with me. She wanted something different; she did not love me; she loved an idea of what I could become. On the other hand, I still loved her blindly, without seeing anything bad about her. Even when she manipulated me and tried to change me into someone I was not, I did not notice anything about her behavior.

When you are obsessed with a person, you need to change that behavior. At first, you need to find out what exactly is the root cause. Are you unhappy in life and your partner the only happiness source? Could that obsession come from any other experience? Invest yourself, think about your behavior, and find out what actually causes it. Only then can you change yourself and start a happy relationship.

3. Problem: Not communicating

Another very common issue that breaks partners apart is the lack of important communication. Whether you don’t talk about wishes you have, problems your partner has, or anything else, These missing communications with your partner will result in long-term problems that can destroy the whole relationship.

First, there are always wishes you want to be fulfilled, things you like to be done or improved in your relationship. But sometimes people want to avoid confrontation; they are scared of speaking out their wishes. Especially sexual wishes are often unfulfilled because no one speaks about them. Instead of speaking out, we are afraid of what the partner thinks about us. But are these not also part of ourselves? Shouldn’t the partner love you like you are? It’s part of showing yourself to them, so don’t be afraid to communicate your wishes to them.

Secondly, during your relationship, problems can occur, whether it’s something small like “not bringing the trash out” or something more big like an addiction your partner has. You need to talk about it. Problems will never resolve themselves alone. You need to communicate about them; the earlier the better.

If you always communicate honestly and respectfully, this will help you get a healthy relationship. Problems will be solved quickly, and even if you don’t have the same opinion, you can find some solutions that will make both of you happy.