RELATIONSHIP ADVICE
Harmful Beliefs That Limit Your Dating Ability
Dating is an important aspect of life that we don’t learn about in school.
Although it’s rewarding and fulfilling, it’s hard to understand unless we experience it ourselves.
At this point in your life, you most probably know a thing or two about love. Whether you’ve been in past relationships or established a connection with someone special, you have an idea about how it works and how it can affect your life in general.
And that’s the trick.
Your first-hand experiences make you believe that just because you already experienced them, you think you know how to get things right the second time around. But it isn’t always that simple.
Like with everyone else, we have our own ways of dealing with love. This will reflect in how we handle and take care of our relationships with others.
At the end of the day, we learn something new, and we all experience things differently. The way we think and feel varies. That’s why you need to be careful when applying certain beliefs where you think that just because something worked out well for you will have the same result for others.
It can be difficult to see past our own relationships sometimes. Our emotions and beliefs tend to cloud the reality we should be seeing.
For you to become a better partner and a more effective date, here are some harmful beliefs about love and relationships that you should take note of:
Opposites attract.
This usually works in the early stages of a relationship. In the long run, it can be stressful.
Because you’re still getting to know each other, you find your opposite traits to be interesting and refreshing. There’s excitement every time you get to learn something new about each other, especially if it’s the exact opposite of what you both believe in reality.
But as your relationship progresses, you’ll soon learn that these differences are one of the reasons why you can’t get along well and end up fighting most of the time.
A partner should always be forgiven.
It’s natural to forgive someone you love, but it can be hard when what they did hurt you terribly. It’s never a good idea to let forgiveness be a common response to a partner’s mistakes.
It’s good when you forgive someone for the sake of your inner peace, as what healthy couples often practice, and being the bigger person doesn’t always mean you know better.
You simply acknowledge the reality that you and your partner are bound to make mistakes sometimes, and what’s important is that you help each other learn and get through it.
However, forgiving doesn’t mean tolerating.
It’s counterproductive when you keep on forgiving them over and over again, but they don’t seem to learn from their mistakes, let alone change their ways to be better.
Keep in mind that forgiveness is for yourself.
If they truly love you, you won’t find yourself having to forgive them numerous times because they’ll do what they can to avoid hurting or disappointing you in any way possible.
As a couple, you must always have each other’s backs.
Real love is when you can point out each other’s mistakes in order to develop and grow as better partners and individuals. Again, tolerance is never a solution.
At certain times when your partner is in the wrong, what they need is your honesty. It doesn’t always have to be sweet words and lullabies.
You need to keep in mind that feeding them with lies just to make them feel better will only rot your relationship in the long run. Once they miss the opportunity of knowing the truth, it’ll get harder the next time they make the same mistakes again.
Ask yourself, will you be glad to see them happy with your lies?
Optimism is helpful and it saves the relationship.
Just when you see all the harsh realities between you and your partner, you resort to pitiful positive thinking, believing that it will save your relationship. Well, it won’t.
This type of approach can backfire at any minute. Being optimistic only helps when you’re facing small occasional problems because relationships with small issues don’t need saving at all.
Once you look favorably at your relationship that’s suffering from real and pressing issues, it becomes more challenging to resolve underlying concerns and setbacks. If you want to make things right, you need to acknowledge what you did wrong.
Distance can kill a relationship.
We enjoy spending time with our partner, and because of this, we assume that being physically apart from them can break the relationship.
Distance makes a relationship more fulfilling because it encourages you to have more meaningful conversations and quality time even though you aren’t physically together.
Knowing that you can’t easily see your partner whenever you want makes you become more patient because you’d rather talk happily than fight.
At the same time, a little space from each other makes it less likely for you to feel trapped and end up calling it quits.
Being in a relationship means you can read each other’s minds.
Stonewalling happens when you prolong an unwanted situation by refusing to acknowledge it or answer questions about it. The person on the other end is the victim in this type of circumstance.
In that case, should you always have to wait for your partner to understand what’s on your mind?
What if they don’t get it at all?
Will you let the problem remain unsolved?
It takes courage to be honest with your partner, but even so, mind-reading should not be the solution. If there’s something that’s bothering you that would affect the relationship altogether, learn to talk about it with each other.
To overcome an issue, you must be able to talk about it.
You’re each other’s best friend.
Forcing the idea that your partner is your best friend can make you toxic. Turning them into your only source of support and strength is unhealthy, and you’ll realize this when you face all kinds of relationship struggles.
Outside support from friends, peers, and family can help you from feeling alone because truthfully, a partner won’t always be there just because you want them to be.
Most importantly, you’ll appreciate the value of keeping your friends close when your relationship fails.
Life has to be balanced, like how relationships and friendships should be.
Loving and Believing in Each Other
You can’t find love if you aren’t simply open to the idea of learning. Just because you’ve had first-hand experiences in love doesn’t mean that there’s no more room to learn and grow.
You think you can do so well with what you know, but in the real world, it doesn’t guarantee anything.
Love beliefs are harmless, but once you let them steer the course of your relationship, it becomes otherwise.
You should be in control. Don’t let your past get in the way of how you deal with your present.
Suggested read
