If Your Relationship Is Failing...

Relationships aren’t difficult, they really aren't. People are difficult. People make things overly complicated. They screw up and make mistakes, they lie and cheat, they make promises and break promises. People fail, relationships don’t.

I’ll admit, not everyone is compatible. Some relationships are bound to fail from the start. Some things in life simply are what they are. There’s nothing we can do to change them, but many relationships fail not because the people in them aren’t right for each other, they fail because they fail to put in the effort. You can say to someone you’re not ready for a relationship. You can say you’re not in the right place in your life for a relationship, and you can say the timing isn’t right and you need more time to focus on yourself and your personal goals. And I’m sure that at least some of these excuses are true, but it all boils down to one simple fact: YOU are not trying. YOU aren’t in the right place. YOU are the one who’s only focusing on your goals. YOU are the one who’s breaking that poor guy or girl’s heart.

Some relationships can’t be saved, but many of them can. How do you save a relationship that is already heading south? How do you keep the two of you together when things are already starting to fall apart? The only thing you need to do to give your relationship a chance of making it is this: You need to try. You need to try to make it work. You need to honestly, fully, genuinely and lovingly do all you can to make it work. It’s really that simple.

You may think you’re giving it a real shot. You’re wrong. In reality, you’re allowing your ego to get the best of you. You think your relationship is difficult because you have entered a partnership. You are no longer an “I” in a relationship; you are a “we”. Semantics aside, there’s a huge difference between the two. When you become a “we”, what YOU want isn’t as important as what the relationship needs. Obvious problems arise when what YOU want doesn’t sync with what your partner wants. When what you want differs from what the relationship needs and what your partner wants, what are you to do? Compromise.

Compromise is the key to any relationship. Without compromise, the relationship becomes one-sided, with just one of you getting what you want and living the life you want to live. The other person is simply along for the ride and waiting for a turn. If you want to save your relationship, you’re going to have to go out of your way to let your partner have his or her way. You’re going to have to make an effort to watch the movie that you would usually never be caught dead watching. You’re going to have to go to the event you’re dreading. You’re going to have to learn being happy isn’t enough. In fact, it’s far from enough.

You need to focus more on your partner’s happiness than your own. True love means loving someone so much that the only way you can be happy is by making your partner happy. If you want your relationship to work, you need to have this kind of love. This kind of love may seem one-sided to you, but actually it’s not. When you focus on your lover’s happiness, your lover should be focusing on yours. You have to be each others best friend, confidant, advisor and biggest fan.

When things get difficult in a relationship, we tend to create space, withdraw and zero in on how we’re feeling. We focus on how we see the relationship. We focus on all the things we feel aren’t working. In short, we focus on the negative. How do you expect something to work out when you aren’t communicating your problems? How do you expect things to resolve without sharing your feelings with each other? Stop focusing on the negative. Learn to be positive. Your relationship won’t have a chance of making it if you’ve already thrown in the towel. And if you’ve already given up on your relationship, how can you say you’re trying to make it work?

You need to try your best to be a team. I’ll be honest with you; sometimes you aren’t the only problem, and you alone can’t remedy the situation. You both need to want to make it work, and you both need to try to make it work. You need to be a team. You can go through life on your own, but I don’t recommend it. It’s not that you couldn’t make it on your own, but it’s much harder for yourself. Life is already incredibly difficult; why make it more so? Having someone by your side through thick and thin is what makes us human. Human beings aren’t meant to live alone. We’re meant to love and be loved. We need this.

You are certainly far from perfect, and your partner is far from perfect too. You’re both only human, and you will make mistakes. You will tick each other off, annoy one another from time to time, and possibly even make each other cry. Relationships aren’t easy, but they are doable, and you need to be in it together. You just need to try to make it work. Stop making excuses for yourself. Stop finding reasons why you should give up. Instead, find reasons to make it work. The grass seems greener on the other side, but once you cross that fence, there’s no guarantee of a way back. If you want your relationship to work, you’re going to have to give it your best shot.

No one can ask more of you than your very best, and if you aren’t giving it your very best, then you’re the one to blame…

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