5 everyday habits that ruin your relationship

Relationship habit 1: Letting yourself go

The more time we spend with our partner, the more comfortable we feel around each other. When we first met them, we strutted around looking gorgeous and acting like butter wouldn’t melt until suddenly, we became comfortable with each other and boom – we look like we’ve just stepped off the set of The Walking Dead and our manners are nowhere to be seen. Sound familiar? While your manners and appearance can inevitably become a little less controlled when you’re spending a large amount of time with that one special person, it’s important to make a conscious effort to still impress your partner every now and again. You don’t have to walk around looking like a perfectly preened superstar and speaking like a queen, but making an effort to scrub up and watching your manners can go a long way in keeping the spice in your relationship.

Relationship habit 2: Being overly lovey-dovey

It’s not a good sign when you’re constantly texting your other half saying “I love you” (just in case they forgot about when you said it ten minutes ago), or you won’t leave each other’s side because “you’re in love” (oh please, this is getting cringe-worthy now), and when you’re kissing passionately around the family dinner table.... eww, stop this! This kind of behaviour makes your friends and family squirm and can also be detrimental to your relationship. Yes schmudgy wudgy cuddle bum, I’m talking to you. All of that lovey-dovey-ness may feel great to start with, but too much of it can lead to these special gestures becoming less special and then we face the dilemma of expressing our love when our partner is used to lots of passion and confessions of love in their everyday life.

Relationship habit 3: Forgetting your friends

Have you ever had a friend who has suddenly partnered up with the guy/girl they’ve been raving about for the past few weeks and then you don’t see them again for months? Maybe that “friend” is actually you? We’ve all probably been guilty of this at some point in our lives. Are you still with this partner now? Probably not (if you are, we’ve got to hand it to you for making it work.) No matter how much we love spending time with our other half, it’s important to keep in regular contact with our friends for the sake of our own sanity. Our pals remind us that there are other things going on in the world aside from romance, and they keep our feet firmly on the ground when we start getting swept off into romantic dream land. Spending all of your time with your other half usually ends up with you getting bored of each other pretty soon into the relationship and this is a recipe for disaster.

Relationship habit 4: Over-spending

Whether you’re a shopaholic who can’t cure your addiction to save for a new rug for the living room floor or you’re an avid gambler up to your eyes in debt and unable to pay your bills, both of these scenarios may eventually wear your relationship down. Maybe it’s your partner who has the spending problem? If your other half can afford to go out and buy a new car, despite having a perfectly functioning Ferrari on the drive, but then has to borrow money off you to buy food for the rest of the month it probably makes you feel pretty grim. Unless you nip it in the bud from the start, things will only get worse. Someone who isn’t grown up enough to be sensible with their own finances doesn’t rate highly on the list of favourable traits in a partner, as it can cause all sorts of stress and put a huge amount of pressure on the relationship in the future.

Relationship habit 5: Bad-mouthing your partner

The negative attitude that “men are all the same” or “women just can’t do anything right” does a pretty good job of embedding itself into our minds and ultimately ruining our relationships. Indeed, both men and women are often guilty of tarnishing their partner with the same gender stereotyped brush, particularly during heated heart-to-hearts with their friends. Relationship expert Joy Davidson, PHP, explains that “these kinds of conversations embed a negative attitude in your head”, which may subconsciously permeate your attitude towards your partner in day-to-day life. In certain situations we have to accept that men are from Mars and women are from Venus so we can stop moaning about them and live together in harmony. Read more on realbuzz.com...
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