7 Common Mistakes People Make in Relationships

Relationships are beautiful things but they can sometimes be complicated. Learning how to build a healthy connection, one that makes us happy and, most of all, grows on a foundation of confidence and trust isn’t at all easy.

Certain common mistakes people make in relationships are part of what keeps us from having that.

Dealing with the difficulties and complications of everyday life takes patience and understanding along with the willingness to work them out together.

That’s why, it’s important to learn to identify which of these mistakes you’re making and then find a solution.

It’s normal for relationships to have their tough times, but getting through them (assuming that’s what you want and that it’s possible) contributes to growth.

Below we’ll tell you what some common mistakes people make in relationships are so you can learn to spot them.

1. Common mistakes people make in relationships: Losing sight of one’s individuality

The great paradox of love is that the two people involved in the relationship tend to become one, although they should remain two.

In a relationship, it’s normal for there to be a need to find a shared identity in order to strengthen the bond and avoid conflict. Actually, this is positive because shared interests, likes, and views do help bring the couple closer together.

However, we take the wrong path towards that goal. One of these involves sacrificing one’s individual identity in order to please the other.

Whether this is out of fear of losing the other or because there’s a desire to just keep the peace, the truth is that it’s not healthy because neither person is being true to themselves.

The strongest relationship is one where each person remains true to themselves. Otherwise what we have is a symbiosis, which can cause serious problems.

2. Hiding weaknesses

A relationship cannot grow if it’s not based on a foundation of honesty. Sometimes we wrongly think our partner will only be able to love us if they see us as perfect. This is not true.

True love happens when we show ourselves as we really are. How else will they get to know us? Hiding under another identity will just lead to complications and frustrations in the long run.

And really, what this attitude conceals is a deep lack of self-love. Someone who tries to fake it is saying that they feel unworthy of being loved because they believe the only way to get love is by being someone else and not themselves.

3. Letting yourself fall into a rut

Another common error in relationships is allowing routine to set in where before there was great excitement. This can happen easily and almost without the couple noticing it.

Things start to run on inertia, where what one wanted to do and desired becomes what has to be done. Just because they’re used to it.

To stay out of a rut, the best thing to do is to live a full individual life. Then we’ll be able to contribute our share to the relationship.

That’s why it’s important to find a way to do new things, get out of your comfort zone whenever possible. It isn’t that hard. It only takes a little bit of willpower.

4. Disconnect spiritually

Spirituality has to do with the sense of importance that is given to life and all its components. When the relationship is in the initial phases of falling in love, love itself seems to color everything with something that transcends the ordinary, a connection that isn’t just emotional but also spiritual.

Plans emerge together and each one of them has a profound meaning of its own. The couple is thus not only united by mutual attraction, desire and love, but also by one or several goals in life.

However, this gets lost over time and is in fact one of the common mistakes people make in relationships leading to disappointment and boredom. To fight it, there’s nothing better than renewing your shared higher-level goals every so often.

5. Wanting to change the other

This is an attitude that often comes up later in a relationship. It actually has much more to do with dissatisfaction with oneself, than with the other.

Someone who is satisfied with their life and is emotionally responsible for what happens in it doesn’t try to change others. In fact, they don’t depend on them for their happiness.

Something else happens if a relationship is full of dependence and personal insecurities. The relationship may become a kind of scapegoat. Problems and solutions are seen through that lens.

Then it feeds the idea that if our significant other changes, our own life will improve. However, it won’t happen like that because each person is in charge of their own happiness and responsible for their own decisions.

6. Developing controlling behaviours

Although in any romantic relationship, one “owns” the other in some way, we may sometimes lose sight of the fact that this has very precise limits. While exclusivity is an implicit and explicit agreement in most relationships, this doesn’t mean that one of the two has the right to control the behavior of the other.

There are many common mistakes people make in relationships, but this is crossing the line from healthy exclusivity to selfish possession. That’s when controlling behaviors appear.

One person wants the other to act how they want them to. If not, they feel threatened or start a fight. In this case, it is the individual who is making the error and not the couple.

It falls to each individual themselves to deal with their insecurities and not transfer them or project them onto the other.

7. Hiding important secrets

Each member of the relationship has things they keep to themselves, no matter how much trust and intimacy there is between them. This is healthy. It means that individuality has been preserved.

However, there are issues that concern both of them and which therefore should not be hidden. If this happens, there is probably a more serious underlying issue, since it’s an attempt at manipulation and a breach of trust. It’s at leas a sign of a serious communication problem.

We shouldn’t forget that just as we each have our problems, all relationships have problems too. It’s normal to be dealing with one difficulty after another.

The truth is that these obstacles don’t always indicate that something is wrong. In the majority of cases they’re minor issues that we can correct.

Here’s the important thing. there are common mistakes people make in relationships and that’s ok. But both people must learn to identify them and be sufficiently willing to reflect on how to resolve them.