Why is your relationship failing?

Do you know why your relationship is in trouble? If your partner has been unfaithful you might think there’s not much detective work left to do. But you’d be wrong.

Having an affair is a symptom – not the cause. Whatever the ‘obvious’ reason is – whether its infidelity, arguing over money, boredom or something else entirely, it’s important that you get to the root cause of why your relationship is failing. If you don’t, then you haven’t really saved your relationship, you’ve only patched up the wound.

How to save a relationship is a difficult question for me to answer succinctly on a website because the potential reasons for why your relationship isn’t working are almost infinite. Having said that let me give you some guidance on the things you should consider when looking to save your relationship. 

Is Your Relationship Worth Saving?

That may sound a bit harsh to ask. But, there’s a populist view that if you work with your partner to save a relationship you can patch things up and live happily ever after. This is a modern day fallacy – in most cases.

I won’t go into the detail of why, suffice to say that if the two of you are not compatible in a few key areas of your lives then it doesn’t matter how much relationship or marriage counselling you do, you aren’t going to be fully happy in the long term. Ideally you’d have thought about this before you got together, but in my experience people rarely do.

If you’re in a serious or long term relationship then I suggest you work out whether that compatibility exists. Then you’re in a much better place to confirm that your relationship really is worth working on.

Sure you can learn how to stop arguing for a while. Yes, you can learn how to share with your partner that what they do isn’t acceptable to you. But wouldn’t you prefer a relationship full of love and passion. Something to treasure. Not some kind of negotiated peace, void of true feeling or heartfelt commitment. Which is what you’ll end up with if you’re not compatible.

If you’re coming out of a short term relationship then you can still work out your compatibility, it’s a significant piece of work, but well worth it. And you can use a lot of the work you do within it again should you decide to move on and find your ideal partner.

Seek help from a professional

If you’ve identified that you really are compatible, but somehow managed to lose sight of each other, then I’d encourage you to do whatever it takes to get back on track. Divorce or separation are both shattering experiences that cost both parties more than they can ever imagine when they make the decision to part.

As I said up front, the real root causes for relationships not working out are almost infinite. Add to that the fact that you’re probably emotionally charged about what is going on between you and your partner and it becomes next to impossible to do this on your own with any level of lasting success.

So if you really do want to save your relationship, contact me or another relationship professional and get the assistance you need.

If after all that, you want to go it alone in trying to save your relationship,
here are some of my favourite books that may well help.

Work to save it yourself

There are few quality self help books around to help you save your relationship.
Why so few? Perhaps because it’s such a complex area to deal with.

Here are a few I’d recommend:

• The New Rules of Marriage
  
• Hold Me Tight
• The Seven Principles For Making Marriage Work