Do These Things Now to Improve Your Relationship.

I recommend you read the “Why Am I Here” tab before you read this. It will give you some much needed context. After you do that, return here and read this…

Here we go…

I spent the first month of this blog explaining why the experts we typically look to for relationship advice actually hurt our chances of finding sustainable happiness in our relationships. I’ve explained why society defends the belief that all relationships will have difficulties. If you have read any of my prior posts, hopefully you’ve come to realize that the belief in those difficulties, accompanied by the willingness to compromise and work through them for the benefit of your relationship, is actually the cause of all those current difficulties and will be the cause of all your future difficulties. It is a vicious circle. The more willing you are to fight for a difficult relationship, and the more willing you are to work through frustrations and arguments, the more frustration those difficulties and arguments will cause, the more fights you will have, and the less chance you actually have of being happy in that relationship.

What you’re about to read is a comprehensive plan that you can follow to either improve your current relationship or find one that will be individually perfect for you.

Yes…PERFECT.

I’m not afraid of that word because that is how I describe my relationship.  My wife and I are 100% compatible. We have the same hobbies, interests, goals, personalities, desires, religious and political beliefs, and the same general understanding of the world. Oh yeah, we’re also physically attracted to each other.

I believe that sort of absolute compatibility is the goal people should look for when deciding if a relationship is “good enough”, but I know many people won’t shoot that high. They won’t shoot that high because they believe my relationship is impossible. That’s not the issue of the moment. If you’re not going to shoot for perfect, and you just want to improve what you have, I can still help.

None of the things I’m going to explain are easy, but none of them are impossible either. I’m a normal person just like you and I did all of these things. If you’re willing to do them to, I promise you, your life will be better than it is right now.

Step 1. Accept that perfect is possible.

The first thing you need to do is realize that relationships can be perfect. If you don’t like using the word perfect, at least realize that they can be better than what you have. If you’re actively seeking relationship advice because you’re in a difficult relationship, they get a lot better than what you have.

Absolute compatibility exists. The only reason we don’t see more of it, is because people don’t even try to look for it.

We have been trained as a society to believe people are too different for that kind of compatibility to be possible. That training has taught us to look for some compatibility and accept some incompatibility. Because of that belief, people aren’t concerned if they aren’t a perfect match for their prospective spouses. They try to find someone they consider “close enough.” Unfortunately, the things that make you imperfect are the exact things that cause all your problems.

The incompatibilities that you believe you can live with become the things that frustrate and anger you as your relationship matures. Those things force you to try to change, compromise, and become someone different than who you were when you met that other person. At the end of the day, you simply can’t live with those constant incompatibilities without eventually rebelling against them.  That’s why relationships start out great and become difficult over time. All the incompatibilities you were willing to deal with at first, start to bother you more and more as the excitement of the new relationship fades.

Society compounds this belief by telling us that we are all so unique that there is nobody just like us anywhere in the entire world. We are all amazingly individualized snowflakes. Society’s beliefs on this topic are wrong. To put it simply, nobody is so interesting or so unique that they can’t find someone else who is compatible with them in every important way. All you have to do is figure out what is truly important in your life and focus on finding someone that values the exact same things. It truly is that simple.

I’ll tell you right now, if you aren’t willing to accept the possibility of individual perfection being out there, you might as well stop reading this right now. Your belief in the MYTH that your relationship can get better through compromise, concessions, and willingness to change is causing the problems you have.

The belief in individual perfection, the belief that you can find someone who wants all the same things you want, likes all the activities you like, looks at the world the same way, reacts to the world the same way, and will be happy just being with you every single normal boring day, is the one thing that can help you find the kind of individual perfect relationship I’m talking about.

Step 2. Get to know you.

Many of us go through life following a general plan that we lay out for ourselves based on the norms that society tells us we should want. Money, possessions, marriage, a career and a family become the typical goals many people set for themselves because society tells them those things will make them happy. People work for all those things believing they will be happy once they have them all. Unfortunately, many people acquire those things and find themselves in a situation where they still aren’t happy.

What you need to understand is everything defined as normal in our society is nothing more than what the majority of that society is willing to accept. Normal is the middle of the road. Normal is safe and generally comfortable. There’s nothing exceptional about normal. There’s nothing individual about normal.

When setting goals for your life, you need to ignore normal. You need to look inward to your own beliefs, desires and passions and allow those things to guide you instead of being influenced by the things other people say you should want. In other words, don’t allow society’s definition of a normal life dictate what will become normal in your life. All you end up with if you allow that to happen is a life that doesn’t fulfill you specifically but is defended as normal and “the best it gets” by the people around you.

If you want to create a life that will make you truly happy, you need to figure out what things you’re passionate about and put yourself in a position to be able to do those things as often as possible. That might not put you in a position to live a “normal life” by societal standards, but it will put you in a position where you will be so much happier than the normal members of that society that you will be considered abnormal anyway.

Step 3. Get to know who your significant other really is, not who they pretend to be for you.

Do you really know your significant other, or do you only know who they are for you? If you weren’t around, would they make the same choices? Would they take part in the same activities? Would they be the same person without your influence upon them every day?

People believe we all change when we get into a relationship, but a better word for what we do is adapt. We adapt to the preferences of our significant others and adjust how we behave in order to keep the peace with that person. We do this because being ourselves all the time without adapting to their desires would cause problems in our relationships.

That is a key distinction to make because adapting and changing are two different things. If you’re only adapting to a new situation, you don’t ever truly stop wanting to react to that situation in your preferred ways. Every time you have to consciously adjust your natural reactions to any situation because of your significant other’s differing preferences, you are adversely affected by those differing preferences. While that affect may not always be noticeable, it is there, and it eventually becomes frustrating.

In turn, they are adversely affected by your preferences and adapt to you as well. This creates a duel situation where frustration and stress slowly build for both of you. Over time those things build enough that they start to cause explosions and arguments that seem to come out of the blue.

The only way to avoid that mounting frustration and the resultant explosions is to act natural at all times…but again, acting natural would cause problems for you as well because of your differing preferences.

The only thing that can help this situation is a true understanding of why both of you act the ways you naturally act. If you know your significant other well enough to understand their preferences equally as well as you understand your own, you will have a better chance of accepting and dealing with those differences if you choose to stay in your relationship.

Don’t get me wrong, those differences will still be troublesome even if you truly understand and expect them, but at least you won’t constantly deal with the additional frustration and let-down every time you hope your significant other will finally change or react in the way you would prefer they react to a stimuli that you deal with differently than they do.

Step 4. Understand where your problems and frustrations are born.

You have been programmed to accept that all relationships will have problems due to unavoidable incompatibilities. You have also been trained to believe that people who love each other will grow and change together in a relationship. Neither of those things is true.

Whether you believe me or hold strong to your beliefs, you are stuck between a rock and a hard place if you’re in a relationship that has those incompatibilities. Believing that all relationships will have problems and incompatibilities doesn’t mean you are able to accept the specific incompatibilities in your relationship. It also doesn’t mean that your significant other will be willing to change the specific things about themselves that you don’t like.

Both of you are willing to deal with those incompatibilities in the beginning because you believe your significant other will grow out of the behaviors you don’t like and change into someone that no longer wants to do the things you don’t want them to do. After all, if they love you, they’re supposed to be willing to make those changes for you right?

You need to start thinking from their perspective as well and realize that your resistance to those specific things you don’t like about them is one of the things they don’t like about you. They also have the hope and expectation that you will change that specific incompatibility and become someone that will accept those things in them because you love them and you are supposed to be willing to change for them too.

Frustrations build and problems start because these opposing desires can’t be brought to a favorable conclusion for both of you. Those frustrations are the root cause of all the arguments and explosions that experience.

Most people faced with this realization will actually try harder to compromise rather than immediately end the relationship. When they then become even more frustrated with the compromises and concessions they have made for the sake of their relationship, they continue to defend it by regurgitating the common sentiment that “even with all the hard times and compromises we’ve had to make, I wouldn’t change anything about us for the world.”

That’s a lie!

I used to buy those Valentine’s Day and Anniversary cards. I used to say those words. All while I was screaming the exact opposite in my mind. Those are the words people are supposed to say, not the words they want to say. After you say them, you immediately begin to list the things in the back of your mind that you would change about them in a heartbeat if you had the power to do so.

The simple truth of the matter is you are in a relationship with someone who is fundamentally different from you. You stay in that relationship because you have been preconditioned to believe that you have no chance of finding someone who is 100% compatible with you. You choose to deal with your different beliefs and preferences because you believe your significant other will eventually change out of love for you. When they don’t, or when they try but fail in that attempt, you become frustrated and angry because you don’t understand why they just can’t think or act more like you. The reason they don’t change is because they feel the same frustration, and they believe you should be the one to change and think or act more like they do.
Your frustrations and arguments are born here because neither of you are capable of truly changing. You also aren’t willing to change because you know you won’t be happy being the person they want you to be. Your frustrations and arguments are only going to build over time because there is no way for both of you to win in this scenario. There is no way to be sustainably happy.

If you refuse to get out of this kind of relationship, your only option is to find a way to truly accept those specific incompatibilities and know that you will always have arguments and frustrations…

They will NEVER stop.

After doing that for 12 years, and then finding the type of absolute compatibility I’m here to teach you is possible, I can tell you with certainty that your life can be so much better should you choose compatibility, that your only regret will be not getting out of your incompatible relationship sooner.

Step 5. Do things that make you happy individually instead of sacrificing those things to keep the peace in your relationship.

We have been programmed to believe that we routinely have to do things we don’t want to do, or sacrifice the things we want to be doing in order to keep our spouse happy. This has been taught to us for so long that very few people now think about doing things just for themselves anymore. They sacrifice their own desires and long-term goals because they have been trained to believe joint happiness in their relationship is more important than their individual happiness.

Allow me to propose a question: How can you be happy with another person in the long-run, if you’re not doing the things that are necessary along the way to make you happy personally?

I’m not saying you should drop everything and ignore all your responsibilities so you can go off and do things just for yourself. What I’m saying is, when you have free time available to you, you should use it to do exactly what you want to do instead of what other people want to do, regardless of who those other people are.

As a father, I know that there isn’t much time left over after household responsibilities, commitments with my kids, work, and all the other things I have to do in life to keep the lights on, food on the table, and a safe environment for my family. I also know that doing the things I love to do when I do find some time to do them, gives me a feeling of calm and relaxation that I need in my life to be happy.

I used to plan my free time around things I didn’t really want to do, but my ex-wife or society demanded them of me as a husband. All those experiences ever did was create frustration and animosity because after putting in all the work necessary to maintain our lives, I didn’t get to enjoy the fruits of my labor the way I wanted to. When I started planning my free time around doing all the things I loved as often as I could possibly do them, I became much happier than I ever was before. (Luckily for me, I got divorced and found someone who loves to do all the same things.)

Simply put, if the things you want to do in order to be happy individually don’t correlate with the things you routinely have to do with the free time you and your significant other spend together, you are not going to be able to enjoy that time as much as you otherwise would. That is a very bad sign.

What that is telling you is simply that the things you need to do to be happy as an individual, are the exact things that your significant other doesn’t want you to do. Therefore, you have no choice but to accept the fact that it is the limitations being imposed on you by your relationship that are preventing you from being happy in your life in general.

Step 6. Actively define the activities that are truly important to you AND why those things are important. Then schedule time to specifically explain those things to your significant other.

If the entire world existed like it does today with every pastime or hobby available to you, but nobody would try to influence how you chose to spend your free time, what are the top five things that you would want to do every single day for the rest of your life?

These aren’t things to do with or for your kids. These aren’t things you want to do with or for your spouse. These aren’t bucket-list activities you want to do just once. These are every-day activities that you would look forward to waking up and doing. These are things just for you.

If you can define that list of things, you are taking a huge step towards understanding how to be happy.

Once you define that list (which shouldn’t be taken lightly), you also need to define why those things are so important to you. If you can’t define why those things are important, they probably aren’t. The activities on your list should be so fundamental to the core of who you are, that the enjoyment of doing them can be clearly articulated, and just talking about those things would excite you.

Once you have that list together, and a clear definition of why those things are so important to you, you need to share that information with your spouse. You then need to start doing those things as often as you possibly can.

Understanding your core desires and being true to yourself as often as you can is the healthiest thing you can do for you. If both you and your spouse understand these things about each other, and if you can truly accept those things as a part of your life together without the frustration and animosity that usually accompanies opposing desires, you can have a happier life together.

At the same time, if you go through this exercise and still experience resistance from your significant other even after they thoroughly understand why those things are important to you, you now know that they will always actively resist the things you want to do in order to be happy.

Should that be the unfortunate circumstance you find yourself in, I recommend you end the relationship and find someone who loves to do the same things you’ve identified.

Step 7. Stop hiding who you really are and what you really think.

Too many of us bite our tongues, compromise, give in, and alter our true responses and desires because we know our natural responses would lead to arguments with our significant others. You can’t possibly do that indefinitely and at the same time avoid anger, frustration, and eventual explosions that come from choosing to hold back those responses.

The more you bite your tongue and hope those behaviors stop, the more they will happen, and the bigger the arguments will be when you finally let the flood gates open on the negative emotion you’ve been hiding.

Holding back your natural negative reactions to things you don’t like, makes your significant other believe they can continue to do those things and actually increases the frequency of those things happening. In effect, you are training them to act in ways that frustrate and anger you because they don’t feel any negative repercussions when they act in ways that frustrate and anger you.

You need to be clear and honest when you see them acting in a way that bothers you. When you are honest about such things, they will more than likely throw things back at you that frustrate them about your actions. This will give you the opportunity to openly discuss whether or not those things can be eliminated from or accepted in your life together.

Remember, the earlier you are in the relationship, the more you’ll be willing to deal with those differences and the more willing you will be to compromise on your desires. Eventually, that willingness will wane and you’ll have to have the discussion again.

If there are enough of those differences and frustrations right away, my recommendation would be to end the relationship before it gets to that point. Why deal with that many incompatibilities when a much better relationship is out there waiting?

Step 8. Stop playing the blame game.

If fundamental things about your spouse or the decisions they make routinely frustrate you, your resistance or anger in response to those things frustrates them in return. Your incompatibilities in both desires and beliefs cause your problems, and incompatibility is a two way street.

You may feel strongly that they are wrong in whatever situation arises, but in reality, they think you are wrong when you don’t agree with their choices or actions. In cases like this, opposing opinions and desires make right and wrong impossible to determine.

Think about it this way… If there were 100 random strangers observing the two of you in your normal daily interactions, some of them would identify with your spouse’s choices and some of them would identify with yours. When arguments arise based on those choices, asking those 100 people who was right and who was wrong, would yield different answers depending on which of you they identify with. What their answers show us is neither of you are undeniably or completely right or wrong. You are just different.

When it all comes down to it, there are things about your personality that don’t fit with their personality, and things about their personality that don’t fit with yours. You knew and accepted that when you decided to enter into and stay in a relationship with each other.

THAT DECISION IS WHERE THE BLAME BELONGS!

Since both of you made that decision, and continue to stick to that decision every day you stay together, both of you are to blame for every issue between the two of you…and neither of you is individually or entirely at fault for any of them.

You may not want to take ownership of any of the responsibility for dramatic issues that happen such as excessive drinking or a spouse’s infidelity or abuse or any other hot button issue, but in effect those issues wouldn’t be there if you didn’t stubbornly hold fast to your decision to stay with that person.

In relationships fraught with incompatibility, it is the frustrations you cause each other that lead both of you to sometimes make questionable decisions. It is the sadness or confusion or pain caused by arguments and frustrations that lead people to partake in any number of destructive behaviors or make poor choices that can adversely affect your relationship.

If those things are happening, you are not in a respectful, healthy relationship and you know it. If you choose to stay in that relationship, you are choosing to put yourself in a position where you will continue to deal with unhealthy and disrespectful actions. You are also choosing to keep subjecting your spouse to your anger and frustration, thereby causing the same type of negative reactions from them. All of this happens because you both choose to stay in a bad relationship. Therefore, you are both responsible for the problems you are continually dealing with in your relationship. Neither of you is entirely individually to blame.

On a personal note, there are choices I made when I was married to my ex-wife that I look back on now with a strong degree of embarrassment or shame. I don’t like the person I was at the end of that relationship. That’s one of the main reasons I got out of it. Looking back at those decisions, I understand why I made them. The frustration and loneliness and pain I felt every single day in my marriage led me to do things that I wouldn’t even think of doing today. I wouldn’t do them today because I’m now in a healthy and truly happy relationship with no frustration or pain what-so-ever.

I was partially able to make the decision to get out of that relationship because I stopped blaming my ex-wife for what was wrong with our life and realized I was an equal part of causing those problems. Once I realized that, I didn’t have to struggle against the decisions she was making anymore, I just had to change my decision to stay with her.

9. Be willing to get out of a relationship when it isn’t working.

Some people say that all relationships are worth fighting for. There was something there in the beginning that you can get back if you try hard enough.  Unfortunately, that’s just not true.

After reading all of this, If you still decide you want to try to change and work with your significant other on your relationship issues, you will become invested in the process of fixing those issues and you will stop thinking about whether or not the relationship is worth fighting for in the first place. The longer you fight and claw to make progress in that endeavor, the more you will want to accomplish it.

Nobody likes to fail, and I’ve added fuel to your fires by telling you that you will if you’re dealing with incompatibilities right now. I know that you’re thinking about all the effort you’ve already put in to maintaining your relationship, and you’ve become stubbornly driven to make it work because you don’t want to be someone who couldn’t.

What you need to realize is fundamental differences in personality or preference that lead to the type of difficulties you are working to fix, can’t be fixed. Who you are won’t change. What you want won’t change. You might think you can change those things if you try hard enough, or care enough, or work diligently enough, but eventually you will realize that the “changes” you tried to make are nothing more than daily concessions. You are only acting differently to make your relationship easier. You still want what you wanted before. You still feel the way you felt before. You just decide to continually repress those desires. While that may seem worth it to you now, that sentiment will change in the future.

Those repressed desires will continue to cause your frustration, anger, arguments and hard feelings in general. Until you stop pretending to be someone you’re not, you will never feel at peace.

You can’t stop being who you are because you want a dysfunctional relationship to work. If you are currently in a relationship fraught with incompatibilities, you need to get out of that relationship to have a real chance at sustainable happiness.

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