Relationship Failures: Preventing the Preventable

RELATIONSHIP FAILURES—PREVENTING THE PREVENTABLE.

By Bill Cottringer

     I have had a mixture of great to ghastly marriages and domestic relationships in my own life. I have also studied many other marriage and relationship successes and failures over the years. As a result of my extensive personal and objective research experience in this area, I wish to offer the following painful lessons learned.

     I prefer to focus on the failures because we don't seem to learn anything much of value by studying our successes in relationships. If they last we enjoy them, and if not, we rarely get duplicate opportunities to fix the particular things that eventually went wrong. Relationships seem to all be driven and interrupted for endless reasons. And, with studying successes, all we do is create unattainable high standards for the majority of participants and produce more frustration.

     People in long-lasting great relationships are in the minority; they work hard at it, know some important things and are lucky too. But all they can really do is demonstrate their love and relationship wisdom for others to see. Or when people ask, they can certainly volunteer some success clues for others to consider or not.

     I believe that if the real causes of relationship failures are understood and corrected as much as possible, there is more reason to expect improvement in the dismal, unacceptable 75% failure rate. This failure epidemic should be causing enough outrage to increase motivation for doing something about the causes of the problem. At least it did for me.

     So here is what I learned. There are two types of failed relationships—(1) ones that start out mostly wrong because of poor selection, wrong reasons, mismatching, excessive baggage, and lack of sensitivity to high potential deal breakers, and (2) ones that start out right, but go South for various preventable and unpreventable reasons. One very strange phenomenon that affects both of these situations is the human habit of not realizing the point of no return before it comes and goes. Failure becomes sadly unpreventable if you don't catch it in time. And, the longer failure goes on, the more of a habit it becomes to the point of no return, which can soon become practically impervious to even the best of professional interventions.

    Good selection involves several things: (a) knowing, loving, understanding and accepting yourself for who you are so you can do that with a potential mate (b) both people clearly expressing and being in sync with their needs. preferences and expectations of each other and the relationship they are starting (c) reaching a comfortable level of trust with each other to know what each is really getting into (d) being comfortably compatible on the most important interpersonal attractiveness dimensions such as intellectual abilities, recreational interests, physical appearances, personality characteristics, vocational abilities, character integrity, strength of religious views and practices, love languages, sexual desires, financial status and family involvement. (e) avoiding red flag deal breakers in critical values, habits, viewpoints or expectations, and finally  (f) being open to and committed to working together to have a good relationship, no matter what it takes, without anyone keeping score.

    The lion's share of marriage and relationship failures can easily be prevented by doing something to improve the selection process. This is where we are weakest, and this can be accomplished by doing  two simple things. The first involves knowing exactly what you want and need from another person on the above list of (a) dimensions,  and the second is taking the time and making the effort to verify and  experience whether or not you are getting these things (this is the dating stage which too often gets shortchanged). If this tells you that things are working well, you proceed further into a relationship that is starting out right; if not, you cut your losses and run before the emotional involvement gets too entrenched.

     Of course it is always a good idea to not fool yourself into wrongly thinking that you can change a person to your liking, when it comes to either these aspects or the critical red flags. Many "fatal" mistakes get made with this point. The fact is that you can't change someone else and sooner or later you have to learn the difficult skill of deciding when to fish or cut bait. Unfortunately the more you have invested, the less you want to bale, even when you know you should. Perhaps the biggest problems are in not knowing what you really want and not going after it with determination and patience. The old immediate need gratification habit always gets in the way here—either in getting into or leaving a relationship prematurely.

     Now, this leaves us with the few relationships that start out right but for some reason or another don't succeed. These are the relationships that interest me most, because this is where most of us could be headed, once we learn the hard lessons of incorrect selection methods. I am starting a good relationship now and do not want to wake up some morning not knowing what went wrong for the umpteenth time.  I am getting too old for this sort of thing.

    These types of relationships that start out right and then get in jeopardy can have a lot of things that can enter into the equation and upset the apple cart. Some are preventable and some are not and that balance sheet really depends largely upon three personal characteristics—tolerance, open-mindedness, and commitment to serious nurturing efforts (during normal times and especially during stressful adversities) on part of both partners.

     Unexpected serious stressful events such as mental or physical illness of partners or family; sexual, substance abuse or gambling addictions; chronic unemployment; financial hardships; job changes and other curve balls can be difficult to deal with and even more so if the stressor is extreme, the tolerance level of one or both the partners is not healthy, or there hasn't been enough loving and nurturing beforehand to strengthen the relationship. And a very sad demise of good relationships is when one person quits growing or changes radically.

    The bottom line that I have learned about all these situations is that if two people are close to each other in their emotional and spiritual development, are open-minded and flexible enough to adapt to change and grow, are of good character, and have the same desire to make things work well, then they can figure it out. But the bottom line to the bottom line is the degree of commitment the two people have made to each other and the relationship. It is too bad that marriage licenses are too easy to get and divorces and quitting are also too easy. This level of nasty adversity that eventually finds us each, is what is meant by the phrase "for better or worse."

     This article wouldn't be complete without revealing the obvious—that relationships are the hardest challenge in life. They are the most difficult tests that we can take and offer the most lessons to be learned. I have almost always know better and have always been with someone who also knew better, but the relationship still didn't work out. Who knows, maybe I was the designated divorce driver. At any rate, I think I am now much more aware of how to select the right person for a lifelong relationship and how to nurture it through any level of stress. Time will tell and at least the bruises, bleeding and broken bones have healed.

William Cottringer, Ph.D. is President of Puget Sound Security in Bellevue, WA. He is author of several books including Passwords to the Prosperity Zone, You Can Have Your Cheese & Eat It Too, and The Bow-Wow Secrets. Bill can be reached for comments and questions at (425) 454-5011 or bcottringer@pssp.net