Are people putting too much effort into saving relationships?

Are people putting too much effort into saving relationships when they should really be breaking up and moving on?

So I’ve received a question on our website, and I wanted to answer it. It’s a really good question actually.

The following text is a direct transcription from the video

In my opinion, people give up too quickly, and I think this is just what has happened in our modern day and age.

People are kind of getting into the habit of, if something doesn’t make you happy, you move on quickly, and we value our happiness and have a sense of entitlement to our happiness, and are impatient for those things to happen.

Now, the truth is, the real secret to a longterm relationship is learning … is having low expectations, and learning patience and delayed gratification.

You have to go through some tough times to push through the pain barriers, to actually make a success of a relationship, like anything great that we want to achieve in life.

You know, if you’re training to run a marathon and you’ve never run a marathon before, you need to learn how to have strong feet, and learn how to run and strike the road in the right way, and build up your stamina and endurance over time.

There’ll be times where your muscles are sore and you’re not getting on with the running, and other days where it’s brilliant and you’re really enjoying yourself. You’ve got to kind of push through to achieve this goal and outcome that you’re seeking.

Same thing in a longterm relationship.

It might start really beautifully, and it’s full of giddiness and excitement, and then over time that excitement wanes, and you get to know bits and pieces about the person that you might not enjoy as much, and you’ve got to push through those things to come back together and find exciting things in the relationship again.

In the same way, you’ve got to push through those pain barriers to ultimately achieve the goal, and if you think of today’s society, in our culture and the way that people work, you know, your iron breaks, you throw out the iron.

A toaster breaks, you chuck out the toaster. The guy that you’re with isn’t exciting you anymore, and you decide you want something else, you just chuck him, as well. We’re just getting … we’re quitting really quickly.

It’s really important to understand, you’ve got to push through some pain barriers, and in interviews that I’ve conducted for successful longterm relationships, all the people say the same thing; low expectations of the person, combined with delayed gratification, the ability to have commitment long beyond troubles and tribulations that you go through, and trials that you experience within the relationship.

You need to push through those barriers to actually fall back in love again, and sometimes it ebbs and flows. Sometimes one person is really committed in there, and the other person is checked out, and sometimes it’s the other partner that is experiencing checked-outness, while the other one is displaying that commitment.

So a few tips and techniques that I … a few tips that I would recommend to save relationships and give them another chance is as follows.

Not disposable

First things first, accept that your partner is not a disposable commodity. They’re not an iron or a toaster that deserves to be chucked out.

There’s a reason you were brought together with that person in the first place, and sometimes you’ve got to push through some pain barriers, assuming the relationship is not toxic to you, assuming it’s just the normal ebbs and flows of irritation, you’ve got to push through those pain barriers and fight to save the relationship.

Delayed gratification

Next thing, you need to have delayed gratification. If you’re sowing some positive seeds today, it could be three to six months before you begin to reap the rewards of that, so you’ve got to have some patience that work that you put in today might take some time to shift something within the relationship.

Takes one person

The next thing I would recommend is it really only takes one person to shift the environment of a relationship.

If you’re struggling in your relationship and you are not flowing with each other, you just need one person to decide and choose, “You know what? I’m going to work on this.

I’m going to focus on seeing the best qualities of my partner, and I’m going to fight to work on this relationship, and shift the filters through which I see that person, so that I can fall back in love with them.”

You’re the person that can do that work on your own. You don’t need both people to shift that initial environment. But the truth is, to save a relationship, you need that nice environment actually in place.

It’s not that the two of you first need to save the relationship to return to a nice environment. A relationship is easier to save, when the nice environment is actually present, we’re there. To do that, it really only takes one person to shift their view of their partner.

Don’t chase the past

Next thing is to understand that if you’re chasing the beginning stage of a relationship, this is a fruitless pursuit. That beginning stage of a relationship is when we’re full of lust and limerence, and it’s all beautiful and shiny, and almost perfect. This is just never sustainable.

If you’re seeking limerence, you’re at risk of falling into affairs and that kind of stuff. You’ve got to really be seeking true love, and true love is a function of acceptance, and it’s a function of commitment, long beyond that limerence kind of feeling.

So it’s that choice, and choosing this person that you’re with, and going, “Okay, for better or for worse, you’re my person, and I don’t really like you right now, but I’m going to work on this relationship because I trust that in ebbs and flows we will fall back in love with each other. I’m going to work on myself to shift how I view you, how I see you. I’m going to focus on what I’m grateful for in this relationship, thereby we get ourselves to a better place where we can regenerate this relationship.”

Support

Another tip that I can give you is that you can get support. I think support is a really important aspect. Sometimes when you’re inside a problem, it can often feel like there’s you against the person that you’re arguing with. It’s, “I have my viewpoint, my partner has their viewpoint, we’re against each other.” Ultimately, where you need to get to is that it’s the two of you against the problem, not one person against the other, and if you’re struggling to do that on your own, then getting support and another view could support you in really rising above the issue and having you and your partner against the problem, attacking the problem together.

Confront issues

So the final point that I would say is to confront your own issues.

If your partner and you don’t find a way to work things out between you, it can often be, “Well, you know, they’re the wrong person. I’m going to move on and find a better person.” Yes, you can think like that, but often we repeat the same patterns, over and over.

You always wind up in a relationship with your unfinished business, so it’s actually always about you because you’re in every relationship that works and every relationship that doesn’t work.

So the more you confront your own issues, and work on yourself and your own focuses and views in life, the more successful you will be in tackling issues in relationships and having better relationships and qualities of relationships with people. 

So work on your own issues, work on them hard, because you’ve always got to pack yourself in every suitcase that you’re … you know, every travel that you go on, every relationship that you move to, so focusing on those issues will give you a better success rate, moving forward.

I hope those tips and techniques help, and thank you for listening, and feel free to ask us more questions so that we can address those in these kinds of videos. Thanks.