Relationships are not easy. Anyone that tells you otherwise is full of it. A lot of what we learn growing up and from the general advice out there just isn’t accurate – I know this all too well and it’s why I’ve spent a lot of time teaching myself all of these things here that I write about.
Today I’m bringing you a list of 10 things that I find people waste their time with when it comes to relationships. These are mindsets and mentalities that can really mess things up for you in both life and relationships, in my opinion.
Everyone has their own beliefs and their own idea of what’s right and wrong. These are simply what I’ve found throughout my experiences and coaching hundreds and hundreds of both men and women.
1. Comparing yourself to past partners
When dating someone, the last thing you ever want to do is to compare yourself to your partner’s ex. Even if your ex says something fucked up about how you don’t measure up to the ex, don’t let that shit get to you.
A true high quality individual won’t do this to you, however. They won’t expect you to be like their ex. High quality people are open-minded and know that everyone is unique. So you really don’t need to worry about this when you’re dating someone of quality.
In order to be a high quality person yourself, you need to not even think about comparing yourself to someone else. You should be confident in yourself and on your journey towards success and happiness. So spend time building yourself up. Don’t worry about anyone else except you.
2. Constantly finding yourself too busy
This is an interesting thing that I chose to place at number 2 because I find that a lot of us are just way too busy these days. It’s not productive busy, it’s more of just being busy and tired with life.
Life is so fast-paced these days, we’re working and when we’re not working we’re usually commuting to work. And when we’re not at work, we’re getting food, we’re cleaning things up, we’re running errands, we’re working out, and on and on.
We’re just really busy! So the one thing I want you all to take away from this is to just work on giving yourself at least some time to breathe throughout the day. If you can squeeze out an hour per day to just relax and have free time, that is huge. [Read: Master Your Emotions and Gain Confidence]
3. Feeding into needless drama
Relationships and drama go hand in hand. Sometimes the drama is good as it brings issues to the front that you can talk about and figure things out.
But there is a right and a wrong way to handle drama. A lot of the skills I teach here and in my programs are these skills to deal with drama and issues that pop up.
A lot of drama that you’ll experience can either make things better or worse depending on how you respond to the drama. It’s very important that you learn the skills so you don’t make things worse.
If you find yourself dating a narcissist, then the drama will be daily if you fall for it. He will manipulate you on purpose just to get a reaction out of you.
Don’t fall into that trap. Be stronger that. Master your emotions as I mentioned above and be smart. Put yourself first from now on.
4. Desire for things that you don’t have
We all wish we could have more than what we have right now. But the difference is how you feel when you wake up in the morning and how you feel when you go to bed at night.
What I want you to take away from this is that when you wake up in the morning, no matter how shitty you make think life is right now, just find some things to be thankful for. For example, I’m simply thankful for having a bed to sleep in every night. I’m thankful to have my own place.
I’m thankful that I have this website where I can write out all of these thoughts in my mind. I’m thankful for YOU that you read these articles. As much as I would like other things in life, I’m very thankful for the basic things I have.
And, you should be as well. Don’t let your partner’s negative moods destroy your appreciation for the simple things in life.
5. Focusing on the past instead of the future
I talk about this a lot in my articles here. As easy as it is to think about the past and regret decisions you’ve made, your only task when looking at the past is to learn from it. Anything else is just overboard.
Like I said above, the past is what teaches you for the future. A lot of people don’t do this right and instead hold onto an ego. They’d rather regret and not learn instead of just accepting what happened, learning from it and moving on.
A big part of my coaching and training is to help people learn from these events. So I encourage you to read my articles and seek me out for help if you need my professional opinion.
6. Forgetting to put yourself first
A big issue I notice with both men and women is that in toxic relationships, all your thoughts and actions start to focus completely on your partner. This ends up making 100% of who you are about your partner.
As you are probably sure, this just isn’t healthy at all. Relationships are supposed to be 50/50. If you find yourself constantly confused with all your thoughts bent on your partner, you’re in for a bad situation.
This is why you need to put yourself first. Never forget that you cannot take care of anyone else until you can take care of yourself.
7. Thinking you can fix your partner
This ties in with the point above, but when you’re constantly focused on your partner and trying to ‘fix’ things, you’re going to end up disappointed and consistently in a bad place.
You’ll never be satisfied in the long-run. This is because you can’t fix your partner. Your partner is who they are and unless they want to fix themselves, all of your efforts in helping them is not going to be returned.
You can always do things out of love, but you shouldn’t be expecting anything in return. I have a lot of people that tell me they expect love in return. But it just never works out this way. [Read: Codependency and Relationships]
8. Seeking perfection
One of my core values is Perfection Is Imperfect. So if you have this idea in your head of an ideal relationship, you’re better off dropping this idea because chances are you’re not going to find a partner that can satisfy this kind of relationship for you.
Every single one of us including you have issues. You might be dating someone that has BPD or some other issues, but I promise you that your issues are causing problems as well.
So you need to understand that no one is perfect. We all have issues. The thing that you can do that will improve the quality of your life is to consistently be learning new skills and educating yourself to be better. This is what the focus of my website is and I hope I can help you.
9. Seeking temporary fixes, techniques, things to say, etc.
One of the big difference between my website and training programs is that I don’t focus on teaching you temporary solutions, techniques, lines to say, etc. A lot of websites, articles and programs on the internet are all about temporary fixes.
Actually, most books you find in book stores and Amazon are usually temporary fixes. I’ve never found these things to be helpful for the long-term which is exactly why I don’t teach things like this.
Instead, I focus on teaching you what works long-term. The skills I teach are all long-term life and relationship skills that will benefit you until the day you die. These are skills that change you and earn you the respect you deserve so you can find that success and happiness you deserve.
10. Remaining close-minded
In this day and age, there’s no excuse to be close-minded. When it comes to politics, both sides always have pluses and minuses. Like I always say, you want to be in the middle when it comes to most things in life.
You don’t want to be polarized at one extreme or another. The more polarized you are, the more close-minded you become. So when it comes to relationships, you want to be very open-minded about people and the way they may think.
Your partner could be insanely close-minded. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have to be either. If you choose to date someone close-minded, then you’re going to have to deal with what comes your way from this.
But generally speaking, being open-minded, educating yourself, expanding your knowledge is definitely key to success in life.
Conclusion
This list is the biggest one I’ve done yet. I find that all 10 of these things are very common for most people in relationships. If you find that you identify with some of these, then I hope I’ve been able to open up your mind a bit so that you can break these habits.
The most important choice you have is to take action. I have an (almost) daily email newsletter where I rap about all relationships, dating and more. It’s free, it’s fun, it’s entertaining and you’ll learn something.
What other things do people tend to waste time on when it comes to relationships?
– Rick Reynolds
Suzy says
Hi Rick,
I am a constant reader of your articles and I am eternally grateful for them.
I do admit some material may not always apply to me, but a lot of what I have read on your site has helped me change my life in more ways than I can ever thank you enough for. What I like most about it is that you lay it out in a very simple, easy to understand manner which makes it very easy to digest and apply in our lives.
My contribution to the article above may tie in with Number 6 above but not quite.
……..Its being nice (too nice) in relationships.
In my experience, a lot of us with relationship issues tend to think that nicer you are, the more you will improve the relationship. So you set out to be “nice” to your partner. Nice here means keep the peace, don’t fight, pretend his jokes are always funny, compliment him when you don’t mean it, tell him the sex was great when it was crap…………….. just stuff that you think a good wife, girlfriend should do. You also don’t get angry, because anger is not an emotion we allow ourselves to have, and we also think anger will negate all the gains we have made from being nice. Inside however we are dying from all the bottled up emotions, and the fact that we are the only ones trying to make the relationship work…..because of course it doesn’t.
Most of the time we don’t even realize we have been manipulated into playing this part and we do it perfectly. Your partner has defined what nice entails, and without realizing it we just plug in and play. Nice also is not a constant. It keeps changing, and at the point at which you think you now officially the perfect spouse/lover, the definition changes and there is suddenly a new hurdle you have to first overcome. The strange thing is that as soon as you have been perfectly conditioned into burying your anger, no longer expressing yourself genuinely, …………..the relationship goes South so fast your head spins. This definitely ties in with co-dependence, but I still think its noteworthy cause its an action on its own
Rick says
Yup, pretending to be nice is actually toxic for the relationship because you’re actually lying. So by pretending to be nice, you’re just causing more toxicity since the relationship is being built on more and more lies. It’s always better to be honest. If the sex sucked, then tell him why and what he can do to make it better. If you don’t like his attitude, then tell him that his attitude sucks and it’s pissing you off. If you’re angry, then get angry. Don’t hide and bottle things up. Trying to please your partner through faking it/lying is only going to make things worse. Thanks for the great comment :)