The divorce rates in most parts of the world have increased. Due to this problem there is a separate branch of psychology known as marital psychology. Psychologists are studying relationships and factors which lead to either a good relationship or a bad one. No one likes to get into problems related to their intimate life. Sometimes people wonder what went wrong that led them to a point where they no longer want to be with the person who they once used to love so fiercely.
There have been hundreds of researches on intimate relationships. Many researches have proven that there are habits in a relationship that might not seem to be right, whereas other studies have proven that those habits are important in a healthy relationship. Let us take the example of a quarrel between a husband and wife. They fight and they get mad at each other and the moment they get out of it, they start to love each other even more. This is how it works. There is a certain level of good’ in the bad’. Similarly, some habits which may look bad are actually healthy for a relationship.
A few of these habits are mentioned below:
1. Letting the conflicts go or keeping them unresolved:
John Gottman is a psychologist who has done extensive research on relationships as well as marriage life. According to Gottman, the belief that the couples that communicate the most are the ones who remain successful is not always true. His research consisted of hundreds of happily married couples that had several unresolved issues. Another thing he observed was that those couples fought over those unresolved issues from time to time. Gottman believes that there should be a certain extent of disagreement in a couple. His research also consisted of many unsuccessful couples and those were the ones who insisted on resolving their issues every time.
2. Being ready to hurt each other emotionally:
We all believe that it isn’t always required to be brutally honest with your loved ones because it may hurt their feelings, which may lead to a small crack in the relationship. That’s not quite right. Not because our brutal honesty will hurt the other person, but because hurting the other one’s feelings will make the relationship weak in any way. Hurting your partner by being honest will hurt them temporarily but it will guide them
to a track where they can be a better person. If you don’t like what they cooked for you, be honest so that they improve.
Practically we all want to be with this one person who makes us a better human, and without honesty one cannot move towards betterment.
3. Being honest about wanting to end it:
We have been reading about romantic stories all our lives, where two people are madly in love with each other and they do everything to be together. Sacrifices are idealized in case of love in many societies. When did love become so hard and cruel in the 21st century? Isn’t love mainly about happiness and peace? Who can afford to have excessive stress nowadays?
The problem is that we have idealized those old stories so much that they have left a mark on us subconsciously. We believe that it is absolutely okay to compromise more than our capabilities. Well, unfortunately it is not. In a world like this, with people striving for survival, there is so much stress already that one cannot afford a stressful relationship. In this case it is okay to want to end it, but the story doesn’t end here.
When you will be honest about wanting to end it and then you’ll actually get some space from each other, it will only lead you to a better and healthier relationship. You will actually get time to thoroughly think about all the things that have been going wrong and you’ll get another shot at fixing all the problems.
4. Feeling attracted towards other people:
This one does sound a little scary because culturally we are bound to believe that being attracted even a little bit towards people who are not our partners is a sin. It will lead us to destruction of an unimaginable extent. Well, that’s not the truth fortunately because biology says something else. After coming out of the honeymoon phase, what happens to the novelty of our relationship is that it starts to rust. A few researches have proven that in many cases human sexuality is linked with novelty and it is all but natural to be attracted to people outside of the relationship.
Whenever you suppress such feelings, you start to give them the power over yourself and it may lead you on a worse track.
Some points at first sight seem quite illogical and scary. The thing is, science looks at things beyond logic and all those points are researched and proved. Which one of these have scared you the most and which one do you like the most?
