Dodging the Most Common Relationship Pitfalls

Avoid hurting your mate — or yourself — by considering the ways relationships can falter.
You Will Need

Stability
Communication
Personal space
Restraint

Step 1: Seek stability

Surround yourself with good, stable friends. Keeping up and socializing with old buddies can help you maintain the critical connection to good advice and needed perspectives.

Before starting a new relationship, make sure you are over your previous one.

Step 2: Discuss sexual problems

Discuss and work on sexual problems rather than ignoring the destruction that can result. Seek to experiment and challenge discomforts rather than let things worsen.

Step 3: Pull back

Pull back and recharge periodically, and don’t be afraid to say no when life is getting confusing or too busy. Have some fun once in a while and turn off the brain.

Step 4: Stop yourself

Stop yourself from rejecting the other person before — as you might fear — they reject you. Learn to accept yourself or your self-doubt and confusion may sink the relationship.

Forgive rather than nurture injured feelings. Sometimes we have to let cherished illusions go.

Step 5: Confront jealousy

Confront jealousy before trust and intimacy are destroyed.

Everyone needs a degree of privacy, including the desire not to share past lives and relationships.

Step 6: Require trust first

Earn trust and require the other to earn theirs before sharing your secrets and declaring feelings of love. Respect yourself and take time to know someone.

Step 7: Model healthy relationships

Model a good, healthy relationship for the children. Keep children away from negative situations, such as a partner if you’re planning on ending the relationship — it will only make matters worse in the end.

In 2008, there were more than 27,000 marriage and family therapists in America.

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