If you’re married and don’t want to end up divorced, you really need to think about something. You know, there’s something holding a lot of people back from fixing their marriages (or their serious, long-term relationships).
It’s the idea that they’ve found the culprit for a bad relationship, solved it, and figure they don’t have to worry about it anymore.
For a huge number of people, that culprit (or scapegoat) is bad communication.
It almost seems like everyone blames “bad communication” for any problems that come up in marriage and assume once the communication is fixed then everything goes back to being peachy.
It’s just not the case, sadly.
Take The Quiz: Is He Getting Bored Of You?
With that in mind, here are the 8 real problems that could easily end any marriage:
1. Change
People get married because they like each other, and they think that they’ll continue to like each other for the rest of their lives.
The problem is, people change. Everyone changes, no matter what. Instead of marrying someone for who they are, or who you want them to become, marry them for the person that they want to become.
You can’t stop a person from changing – count on that. The best thing you can do is to fall in love with someone who wants to change into someone you love just as much.
8 key signs your partner is in love with you
2. Loneliness
Once you get married, loneliness doesn’t just “go away”. It’s a part of being alive and being human.
No matter what, even if you’re married to the perfect person, there are still going to be times that you feel lonely. If you try to blame your partner when you feel lonely, all you’re doing is sabotaging your relationship.
Because the truth of the matter is, your partner can’t prevent you from being lonely all the time. You’re meant to share your loneliness with your partner, while they share theirs with you, and out of that create something beautiful.
All healthy couples do these 10 things
3. Shame
We all carry around things inside of us that we’re ashamed of. Things that we feel terrible about. Things that we do everything we can to avoid acknowledging.
So when your partner inadvertently triggers something you’re ashamed of, your first reaction should not be to blame them – they didn’t create the shame, they just accidentally made you feel it.
Everyone needs to work through their baggage on their own. No one else can fix your baggage for you, it takes hard, individual work. What your partner can do is support you while you deal with your own baggage.
4. Having An Ego
An ego serves people well in almost every aspect of life. When you’re growing up, you need one to defend yourself from jerky kids. Your ego is the wall you’ve built to stop other people from hurting you.
Of course, the downside of having that wall is that it prevents vulnerability, and it prevents intimacy. The same ego that served you so well earlier in life is now preventing you from connecting deeply with your spouse.
So leave the ego at the door, and be open with the person you love.
6 ways to spot an unhealthy relationship
5. Thinking Everything Should Go Perfectly
A lot of people suffer the delusion that marriage is the capstone of a perfect life – once you get married, everything will be perfect and everyone lives happily ever after.
That, of course, is delusional. Once you get married life just goes on, the same way it did before you got married, and the same things are still going to be messy and imperfect.
Rather than expecting your spouse to make your life perfect, work on making life perfect with your spouse. Work together, not against one another.
6. Lack Of Empathy
Look, I’m not going to sit here and tell you that you have to become a super empathetic person overnight.
Empathy is hard. It’s scary to do! You can’t empathize with someone at the same time they’re empathizing with you – you have to take the plunge and go first, and hope that they’ll reciprocate later.
That takes guts… it takes the knowledge that you might be disappointed and hurt.
But it’s also worth it. Without empathy, true intimacy in a relationship can’t exist. Take the time, and the effort, and overcome the fear of empathizing with your partner, so you can build the intimacy and trust of the relationship from the inside out.
7. Kids
Kids are magical, incredible gifts that words simply cannot describe.
They also can be a huge drain on the successful dynamic of a relationship.
A common pitfall of a marriage is when one or both parents decide paying attention to the children is more important than paying attention to each other – when in fact, it’s important to balance one’s attention so that the entire family unit doesn’t become disrupted.
Being a family together is about balancing everyone’s needs and reaching (some sort) of harmony with each other.
8. The Intimacy Struggle
In a lot of relationships and marriages, the woman wants way more intimacy and connectedness with her spouse than the man does. In other relationships, that dynamic is reversed.
Whichever way the direction flows, this conflict can be a huge source of tension in many relationships and marriages – and can even be enough to tear the marriage apart.
That’s why it’s so important to work with your partner and together, explicitly decide how close and intimate of a relationship you want with each other. This will always be a compromise, but if it’s not decided openly and with love – it will create tension and fights that undermine even the strongest relationship.
Want to find out if he’s already getting bored of you? Click here to take our quick (and shockingly accurate) “Is Getting Bored Of You?” Quiz right now and find out why he’s already getting bored of you…
Take The Quiz: Is He Getting Bored Of You?
In summary…
The Biggest Threats To A Marriage That People Overlook
- Change
- Loneliness
- Shame
- Having an ego
- Thinking everything should go perfectly
- Lack Of empathy
- Kids
- The intimacy struggle
If you loved this article, then check out these other must-see related posts:
Avoiding Threats to Your Relationship
Protecting Your Marriage from Its Greatest Threat
The Five Biggest Mistakes that Threaten Relationships
did not help i already knew these things!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11
These are valid threats to any marriage, old or new. Great awareness in this post!
I can see how most people would overlook these things. They are simple, every day things and they should be overlooked. I guess the issue comes into play when they are overlooked too long or not addressed by both of you where it gets kinda dicey.
Threats to a marriage are everywhere. These are like silent killers that come up to you in the middle of the night and can end things in a hurry without you even knowing what just happened.
I would bet that lack of empathy might come over a few years together. That is too bad if that happens, but I can see how it might threaten a marriage.
IF you think that kids is a threat, that is something that should be discussed before having them. It would not be fair to the children to grow up in a family that is not fond of them.
Somewhat simple, yet very relevant as a concern.
I think that is what the concern is all about. The fact that they are so simple.
It is scary to think about things like this. They are really every day things that could be trouble for your relationship.
Do you think these would keep anyone from getting married? Not a chance, however, they are valid concerns you should have.
It is sad that these seem so minor, but they are actually quite serious if you take a step back and look from both sides of the coin.
Without reading through these, I certainly would have overlooked them as possible threats.
That is part of the problem with married couples these days. They are missing the real reasons that they would not want to be married to their partner BEFORE the marriage. The divorce rate is out of hand these days.
Ouch, these are threats, but I cannot stop thinking about the fact that they should be figured out BEFORE marriage is even talked about.
I agree. It seems like people get married to quickly these days and maybe they are getting a divorce because these conversations are not happening soon enough.
It sucks that KIDS are on the this list, but I can see how it would be something that might slow things down a little. That is why a discussion about children should be had BEFORE you get married.
These are things that are not commonly ending a marriage, however, they CAN. That is the scariest part.
Even though it would be nice if everything went perfectly, I can certainly see what it would not sometimes. Once you realize it will happen the bad way sometimes, you are going to be in a better place.
Very enlightening post. I never really thought about these types of things like this, as others have said here. It really makes you realize how fragile marriage can be.
Over time, it is common to see these things kill a marriage, but it really comes down to the whether or not you can respond to the changes.
I am hoping that in most cases, BEFORE marriage that most of these are figured out by the couple.
Oh yea, I can vouch for the things on this list. It is sad, but these things can kill a marriage very quickly!
Change is going to happen for sure, as long as you are ready for it, the threat should be small. It also depends on the type of change I guess.
I don’t want to think about things like this right now. I am getting married next weekend!
I wouldn’t call these real threats, BUT if you are not in a healthy relationship to begin with, these are the types of things that can ruin a marriage for sure.
Yeah, I can see how people might over look these. They are not real threats, but they could be made into them. My guess is that if you are younger, these would bother you!