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(#1) They Make One Person Their All
From Redditor /u/fairiefire:
[Common mistakes are:]
1) Expecting one person to be everything for them. You need friends, coworkers, a support system, and hobbies.
2) Keeping secrets or lies.
3) Failure to communicate effectively - this can be taught.
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(#2) They Don't Listen To Hear
From Redditor /u/cplkm:
Not listening. Most people listen to respond and don't listen to hear.
This is what I spend the most time teaching couples how to do!
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(#3) They Are Scorekeepers
From Redditor /u/natgoeshome:
Keeping score. A partnership is a team, not a competition. Whether a person keeps score of everything they have done, or everything their partner has done, it is a death knell for the relationship.
This is one of the most common causes of resentment in a relationship, and you see it often when people use absolute terms to describe themselves or their partners (e.g, "I always," "She never"). Remembering that each person has his/her own needs, abilities, skills, and boundaries is essential to a healthy couple.
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(#4) They Assume Their Partner Knows How They're Feeling
From Redditor /u/natgoeshome:
Expecting that because your significant other knows you better than others and is around you most, that they are aware of all of your thoughts and feelings. Your partner is not psychic, and no matter how often they are around you, or how well they know you, they cannot pick up on every nuance to determine how you are feeling and how they should respond.
That is called emotional babysitting, and it cascades into a host of problems and unnecessary hurt.
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(#5) They Try To Be Right In Every Situation
From Redditor /u/WhyAreYouUpsideDown:
[The] No. 1 problem I see is overactive threat response creating anger and rigidity. People don’t stop to turn down their defense mode, and lose sight of love because all their energy is going toward being right or controlling the outcome. Of course that control comes from a place of fear, but fear and vulnerability feel too dangerous, so it typically gets expressed as anger, frustration, or rigidity.
Surrender to not having control, accept what’s in front of you, and cultivate compassion. Please. Because y’all rigid couples who just can’t prioritize empathizing with each other over your fear response are driving me nuts!
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(#6) They Don't Talk About Money
From Redditor /u/WholeMilkStandard:
If you're marrying someone with a sh*tty credit score, you should know how and why they ended up with it, lest you find yourself in their shoes very quickly. A credit score can cost thousands and take years to rebuild. Know if they have any tax liens or liability.
Are they paying child support, and do they have any kind of garnishment? Who is going to be responsible for managing the finances? How many credit cards does the other person have and what are their balances? I've seen money kill a lot of marriages.
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(#7) They Don't Discuss Intimacy
From Redditor /u/WholeMilkStandard:
Another one a lot of people don't think of is actually talking about [intimacy], not just having [intimate relations]. Do you enjoy the [intimacy] you have? Would you like to have more of it? Less? Would you like to see it change?
Do you or the other person have any weird [preferences]? Just have the talk. Different... wavelengths can be difficult to reconcile.
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(#8) They Aren't On The Same Team
From Redditor /u/thudly:
As soon as a couple stops being on the same team, fighting all the bullsh*t of life together, things fall apart. Get on the same team. Get behind each other's goals. If you're not on the same team, you're just going to wind up annoying the f*ck out of each other.
All that bullsh*t of life is going to be beating you down and your life partner is just going to be part of it instead of a refuge.
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(#9) They Get Married For The Wrong Reasons
From Redditor /u/molten_dragon:
Getting married because they wanted a wedding, not because they wanted to be married.
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(#10) They Don't See Themselves As Individuals Who Are Together
From Redditor /u/Negromancers:
One of the most toxic things I have found in doing marriage counseling is when couples think of themselves as individuals who happen to be together and not as a couple. (Not that I’m advocating enmeshment.) That’s not really marriage. That’s having a roommate, or perhaps less than that even.
Marriage is a union of two people. That’s what the unity candle and sand and knots are all about. There is a bringing together of two lives that is inseparable. If [they] conceptualizes themselves as solely autonomous individuals whose actions and dispositions impact only themselves, things will go bad eventually.
They go bad because it results in people caring more for themselves than their spouses. This [happens] when couples spend money behind each other’s backs because “it’s my money; why does it matter?” Or when couples keep secrets from each other, which inevitably results in pain. Or when they don’t stop to consider their spouse’s thoughts, feelings, desires, dreams, abilities, and strengths alongside their weaknesses.
The remedy is behaving as a unit in small and large ways. If you’re getting something from the fridge, see if your spouse wants something. It even helps in arguments: no longer is it spouse against spouse, but it’s the married couple against the issue causing stress to the unit.
When one person considers a course of action, their thoughts ought to be about how it impacts the unit.
TL;DR: “and the two shall become one flesh so they are no longer two but one.”
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(#11) They Don't Fight Fair
From Redditor /u/probablynotapreacher:
People don't learn to fight. You have to fight fair in a relationship. People go nuts when they get mad, and some couples never learn to fight in a way that honors the person you are fighting with. It is so important to learn to respect space, don't assume motives, and take turns in explaining your views.
It's a big deal and I work on it quite a bit in counseling.
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(#12) They Are Selfish
From Redditor /u/Auto_Fac:
I work with couples and their relationships a lot in my line of work, and do some forms of counseling though it is not my job or training. One of the common threads I see running in the midst of relationships/marriages that fall apart is a kind of selfishness. People don't realize that marriage works best when you are both acting in the other's best interest and seeking their happiness more than your own.
It crops up a lot, but not exclusively, in... intimacy: if your primary concern... is you, you are not going to build any kind of bond or intimate connection, nor is it going to be much fun for your partner.
Marriage is a lot about sacrifice, and the couples I see thriving are the ones who are each willing to make sacrifices for the other and for their family.
Couples who get married thinking the coming decades of marriage are going to be exactly like the dating or the honeymoon phase, when they face major challenges or speed bumps in their life together, have a real hard time dealing with it: "But I thought I was supposed to be happy."
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(#13) They Don't Discuss Unspoken Rules
From Redditor /u/Stellaheystella:
Current marriage, couple, and family master’s counseling student here. Unspoken family rules that you bring into relationship are huge.
Obviously you didn’t grow up together, and... you may have had completely different family of origin experiences. It can be as simple as your family separated out laundry by color, and your significan other's just threw everything in together, so you have different family rules regarding laundry. Or you had the rule of “family problems stay in the family,” and your significant other talked to people outside the family about all the problems freely.
Everybody has these rules. Talking about and uncovering them (without judgment) will go a very long way toward maintaining and deepening connection. If you don’t talk about them, it is easy to get into negative interactional patterns that are just rehearsals of how your family did things, [insead of creating] healthy, mutually safe patterns.
Also, I recommend everyone in a relationship take an attachment style quiz and compare their attachment style (secure, anxious, or avoidant), because that reveals a lot of unspoken rules as well.
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(#14) They Don't Build On The Initial Giddy Feelings
From Redditor /u/ericdavis1240214:
They confuse love with the chemical high you get early in a relationship. That cannot last, for reasons built into our biology.
A successful relationship is built on that feeling. It’s built on mutual respect and a mutual decision to make it work each day.
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(#15) They Get Married Too Young
From Redditor /u/BellicoseBelle:
Getting married young. I keep having married clients in their mid-20s with three kids who are now realizing 19 was really young to be married. They say they miss the opportunities they never had to date, have [intimate] partners besides their spouse, and not have to take care of their kids at such a young age, etc.
Also, a lot of my clients got married young for religious reasons, then one of them begins to question their faith, which is difficult for both.
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(#16) They Don't Express Anger
From Redditor /u/jrkLPCLICDC:
Not actually expressing anger or resentment and allowing it to cool into contempt.
There's no coming back from contempt.
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About This Tool
It's no secret that lasting and stable relationships take effort. There is not a formal that describes the skills, strategies, and ingredients necessary for a successful relationship. Everyone has different ways of communicating and getting along in different relationships. In the search for a healthy relationship, many couples try to avoid the same mistakes their parents made. These efforts may be helpful, but they may not prevent the couple from making mistakes.
Some marriage counselors and therapists have seen many couples make the same relationship mistakes. You could find 16 of the biggest mistakes couples make in this random tool.
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