Many unwanted events occur in life that may not always bring a negative impact or destroy relationship but sometimes it contributes in increasing the closeness or attachment. Conflicts in a relationship are a normal action-reaction process.
A relationship in which no misunderstanding arises is wrongly considered to be perfect instead a relationship in which several misunderstanding arises and still both partners manage to resolve such conflicts and tend to remain together happily is in true sense a prosperous relation. Misunderstandings are part of all relationships. However, what really matters is how serious and determined you are to resolve misunderstandings and protect your relationship.
Causes that destroy relationship
1. Diminishing trust
Any relationship depends on trust in order to exist. However, sometimes that trust isn’t as genuine or as honest as it should be. If one or both partners questions the other’s activities, words, or actions, a lack of trust can form.
Trust issues may include factors such as jealousy, possessiveness, unreasonable rigidity, emotional infidelity, physical/sexual infidelity, relational game playing, lack of reliability and dependability, lack of emotional support, lack of financial compatibility, and lack of mutually-supportive goals.
2. Disrespectful relationship
A disrespectful relationship is one in which people don’t feel valued. It might be a relationship where one person is treated unfairly or even experiences abuse.
Your child might not realise a relationship is disrespectful to start with, or he might misinterpret signs. For example, he might see jealousy or constant text messaging as a sign of love, rather than as a warning sign of abuse.
Disrespectful behaviour can also start off small and can grow over time and turn into abuse. For example, something can start as minor jealousy about spending time with others. Person might even misinterpret this as romantic. But this kind of jealousy can result in people becoming isolated from friends and family as relationships progress.
3. Unrealistic expectations
If you don’t know what to do, your unrealistic expectations will continue to hurt you and your relationship. You develop resentment, anger, and disappointment. You do not get what you need in your relationship. Month after month, year after year, your relationship continues to suffer.
When your expectation was unmet, you were left with disappointment.
This letdown tethered your thoughts and energy to pouting the entire week. Your expectation stole the light and splendour in your relationship.
This happens all the time. You expect your partner will do something specific for you. You expect your partner will celebrate your birthday like you celebrate his. And when your expectations are unmet, you’re disappointed. You suffer in silence. He loves you. Doesn’t that mean he has to fulfill your expectations?
Unrealistic expectations hurt your relationship.
4. Lack of communication or unhearted communication
The effects of lack of communication on a relationship can destroy relationship. The symptoms of communication breakdown include feeling like the other person is not listening, arguing constantly, feeling like nothing of substance is being said and of course, acting defensively. Unhearted communication can chip away at self-esteem and self-confidence.
Not giving enough time to the person to express his/her thoughts can really hurt a healthy relationship, often causing poor communication and unresolved issues. Lack of proper communication can ruin the positive affirmations between the two individuals and can even hamper the growth of their bond.
Lack of communication can trigger argumentative behavior. The person deliberately starts annoying others, starts blaming others for his/her mistakes and often refuses to comply with requests or rules.
5. Different perceptions for life
The way we experience life is often tied with the way we perceive things. Perception doesn’t tell us the truth about events. Instead, perception gives us singular observations, washed in a mixture of emotions, memories and logic. That’s the reason why many people can experience the same thing, like a movie, and walk away with different interpretations and conclusions. The same is true in how we perceive each other in our relationships.
The challenge with perception in human relations is that we may not always understand someone else’s perception and/or assume their perception is our own. This is where disagreements, misunderstanding and other communication issues can occur that destroy relationship.
6. Addiction
Every relationship that comes face to face with substance abuse and addiction is bound to suffer tremendously. Romantic relationships where at least one partner is dealing with addiction likely include a great deal more conflict than most. Trust issues, hurt feelings, and anxiety can be side effects of substance abuse in a relationship — for either partner or for both. These issues slowly destroy relationships, gradually leading to the dissipation of happiness that eventually leads to relational failures, and not just the romantic kind.
Addiction does not just hurt the person who’s battling it; it affects all aspects of their life, including family, friends, and lovers. Relationships will suffer because of substance abuse and addiction. Siblings grow angry with each other, mothers cry, fathers wrestle with helplessness, friends grapple with anxiety and confusion — all of them wishing they knew how to make it better.
7. Blame game
When you’re in a relationship, it’s so easy to place all the blame on your partner even if you know it’s not entirely their fault. After all, nobody ever really wants to be wrong. But when you’re in a relationship, it’s important to sacrifice being right for the good of the relationship. If you don’t, experts say the blame game can destroy relationship.
“Blaming is a very unhealthy communication style and often leads to us fighting unfairly and bringing in the past into current arguments,” psychologist Kelsey M. Latimer, PhD, CEDS-S, founder of Hello Goodlife.
8. Lacking patience
How many people have the patience to make the most of their relationships? Do you? When we act impatiently towards someone, it can be extremely hurtful. It communicates that we don’t value or care about the person we are in a relationship with.
How do we show our spouse or partner, or even our closest friends or family that we care?
As our stress increases, our patience decreases. Things that we were once able to move quickly past, become sticking points. If we are not careful, impatience takes over. It begins to characterize our feelings for our partner and makes the relationship painful for both.
The less patient partner is also at risk of taking their loved one for granted. If left unchecked, these feelings can weaken the sense of safety in our relationships. At first, lack of patience may seem like nothing to be concerned about. But without intervention, can start an unhealthy relationship pattern.
9. Only you (Self-centered)
People consider self-centeredness to be a negative character trait. Anxiety drives self-centeredness. It can be an existential insecurity regarding your inherent worth, value, safety, or wholeness. For some, it is a painful sense of a lack of integrity or authenticity. There is a feeling that they are somehow frauds.
Narcissistically self-centered people suffer from an addiction to their specialness; they have an underlying insecurity related to an inability to safely love and be loved. Self-centeredness then is driven by pain. The pain is that we are not worthy or safely connected to others.
It is at the root of many psychiatric illnesses, including addiction, personality disorders, anxiety disorders, and depression. Self-centeredness destroy relationship, because self-ruminations rob you of the capacity to tune into and attend to others. You cannot be empathic.
10. Compatibility issue
People are simply not happy when they’re with someone they’re not compatible with. Unfortunately, we don’t always pick partners for the right reasons. We might be drawn to someone for unconscious reasons based on adaptations from our childhood. The psychological defenses we formed in our early lives were adaptive to the interpersonal environment we grew up in, however, they may limit us in our adult relationships.
At first, this pattern may seem comfortable and familiar based on the position we adopted in our families. But later on, partners often become resentful and angry about the traits of their mate that at first seemed so alluring and that start destroying relationship.
11. Sexual drive
Research suggests that sexual satisfaction plays a pivotal role in healthy relationships according to research, but several factors can influence the quality of a couple’s sex life as well as individual sexual desire over the course of a relationship. Every relationship can go through dry spells when your partner is suddenly less interested in sex than you.
It may a short-term problem related to stress at work or other issues that have driven your partner to distraction. Even more commonly, a sudden, hectic schedule—ranging from end-of-year exams to a do-or-die work deadline—can leave your partner exhausted and uninterested in anything more than sleep or a night in front of the TV.
While dry spells like these are common and usually resolve on their own once things stabilize, a prolonged and unexplained disinterest in sex can be harmful to a relationship and the general well-being of both partners.
12. Unforgivable mistakes
Big mistakes like lying and cheating can destroy relationship pretty quickly. But the small things can do just as much damage over a longer period of time. According to experts, it’s important to be mindful of the seemingly small mistakes you may be making because it can create misunderstanding in relationship in a big way. You might be thinking of the bigger mistakes, but it is the small things that do the damage.
One mistake and it might cost you everything you have built so far with your partner. If you’re not mindful about your actions or apologetic when you make a mistake, it’ll give your partner reason to doubt your love and level of commitment to them. Too many bad things can build up and cause uncertainty around and destroy relationship.
13. Tragedy or life-changing event
Somewhere along the way you’ve endured a personal tragedy or life-changing event that has affected you and your partner. These can range from small tragedies, such as not getting that promotion at work, to big tragedies, such as a life-altering accident or even the loss of a child.
The little tragedies can be a test, especially at the beginning of a relationship. How does each person react to the tragedy? Then, how does each support the other? As a couple, we learn and grow with each other, and this includes all of life’s ups and downs. How we support each other, even while enduring a tragedy ourselves, shows a lot about our personal character as well as our how we value the other person’s feelings.
When the big tragedies come along, they can change us and our relationships. After a horrific accident, a death in the family, or some other type of loss, things will never be the same – for each person and for the relationship. For couples, it brings a new dynamic into your relationship. You may feel as if there was a life before, and now there is a different life after.
14. Secrecy in life
We keep secrets to protect ourselves and our relationships, and secrecy can achieve those effects. But keeping secrets can hurt us all the same. There are secrets that clearly destroy trust in a relationship, such as having affairs, a hidden addiction or the secret use of money your partner is not aware of. We know these are wrong and can destroy relationship.
In fact, there are some secrets that are fun (like surprise parties) or important for other areas of your life (like confidentiality at work or a secret you are holding for a friend).
But secrets are a very slippery slope and especially when they involve contact with someone to whom you feel attracted. Secrets are lies of omission, and research shows that the first lie is the hardest. After that, it can get deceptively easy once the pattern has begun.
15. Over possessive
Often people don’t understand the difference between over possessive behavior and possessive behavior, there is a very thin line between possessiveness and over possessiveness, and over possessiveness destroy relationship. At some extent, another partner will able to take it, but at a certain point things will become worst and chances of saying “ enough is enough” Will increase, Hence before your over possessive nature ruins your relationship and kills your commitment Overcome that behavior and Make your relationship smooth and comfortable.
Your over possessive nature will can lead your relationship to unhappiness, anxiety, anger and depression. Over possessiveness kills your relationship, because it takes freedom of the other partner, it takes the personal space of the other partner, over possessiveness takes the happiness of the other partner and this way relationship doesn’t survive for very long, Maybe sometimes your partner will not able to say how they feel when you always teach them what they should do, how they should do.
