6 Early Signs A Relationship Won’t Last

Do you believe in love at first sight? Maybe that seems a bit idealistic nowadays. It’s all the more difficult to believe in instant love IF you’ve experienced heartache and disappointment in relationships. But by the same token, if you believe in love at first sight, then you also believe in “incompatibility at first sight.”

And if you believe in growing in love over time, then you also accept falling out of love, or at least out of infatuation. If you are conscious of what you feel and what you see happening, then you can’t deny evidence that a relationship is NOT going to end in a happily ever after love story.

If you’re honest with yourself, you can also say that what once felt like love, was probably not the real thing. Or at least, it was a love that grew cold, or maybe an infatuation that was intense enough to feel like love. For a little while. Before reality set in.

That’s why it’s best to think logically about the future of a relationship to counteract the intense emotions that can sometimes cloud our judgment. Rather than focus on what feels right or comfortable, it’s time to start paying attention to the evidence. The facts, the stuff we see and hear about and feel, and that send a very loud and clear message. That this relationship is temporary and is not going to progress into something completely different than it already is.

Consider some early signs a relationship is not going to last, despite our best intentions.

1. You have completely different values.

Whether you disagree about politics, religion, or all the other volatile subjects you know you probably shouldn’t bring up at dinner (and right at Christmas in front of grandma, geez!), or if it’s just your lifestyle that’s so different, values matter.

If you are incompatible with a person intellectually and spiritually, all you’re ever going to have in common is sex. The relationship is characterized by lust – and not much else. And sex is not enough to make a relationship.

2. Your partner is always testing your loyalty – and challenges get more and more ridiculous.

Most relationships get peaceful over time. You find the things you have in common and you hold them dear. You don’t have to prove anything to each other. You just enjoy each other’s company – and then you go off to do your own thing.

But when you’re with the wrong person and the relationship is crashing and burning, THAT’s when the testing starts. Your partner gets suspicious. They don’t just accuse you of all sorts of wrongdoing – they push you. They dare you to leave. They do things to piss you off because that’s the TEST.

Testing is not the sign of a healthy relationship! It’s just one or both of you wanting to bring things to a head. Wanting conflict and wanting him to SAY what you know he feels. Come on, this psychodrama is just rehearsal for a breakup.

3. You never feel completely honest about who you are with this man.

Sadly, he’s the most important man in your life and yet it feels like he doesn’t know you. You have to act around him. You have to pretend to be someone else. Or at the very least, you can’t share your real feelings because he’s going to get triggered and start a big discussion or a loud argument. That’s not someone you can grow old with, trust completely, and give your whole heart to forever. That’s a volatile relationship that will burn to a crisp in time.

4. You don’t like his family, friends, or anything about his life.

The more you think about it, you’re just so unevenly matched. His family is difficult. His friends are judgmental. His job, his schedule, is too much to deal with.

Was it the perfect fling in the beginning? (Or maybe a nice flirtation) But the more you got serious, the more you realized “Wow, we are complete opposites in everything.” Attractions can be opposites sometimes. But they usually don’t lead to long-term relationships.

Most relationships succeed based on shared values and goals. When you have opposite goals you progress in different directions.

5. Your opinion is disregarded.

If your partner doesn’t listen, or never takes any of your opinions seriously, or even admits he devalues your opinion, something is way off. This is not a healthy relationship. Why get together in the first place unless you both value each other’s opinions? Your wisdom, your beliefs, your intelligence and experience – does he cherish all of this? If he devalues your opinions all the time, then he’s just dating you for your body. Mind is optional – and that is not the sign of a respectful relationship.

6. You are both trying to change each other.

What happens when both partners think they’re right and never admit to being wrong? What happens when both partners lose all trust in the other and begin making accusations? What happens when both partners decide the other is wasting their life and needs to start taking life seriously?

These are all examples of extreme conflict – and the final result is that you’re both trying to change each other. It’s a war, quite literally, a war inside the home.

If neither of you is backing down (meaning your disagreements are so entrenched in your values and identity) it’s a no-win situation. You will both try to change each other until conflict explodes.

In order for there to be a loving union, you can’t be at war. You must be on each other’s team. You must believe in each other and deeply respect your partner’s identity.

If your relationship is in constant conflict, it’s never going to get any better.

In conclusion, don’t regret that you had relationships that didn’t work out. Sure, it’s easy to do that and think of them as mistakes. But in the end, if you learn something about yourself from a doomed relationship, that’s valuable.

Every relationship teaches us about ourselves – what we want out of life. What we expect from others. What we need to be happy. Consider the end of one relationship the beginning of a better relationship, one that completely meets your needs. Take a positive approach to the past, and don’t linger on the mistakes. Think of them as lessons learned, and take that with you to a better tomorrow.

The Four Attachment Styles of Love

If you’ve ever heard about the four attachment styles, then you might be researching two slightly different but related ideas.

First, we have the basic four attachment styles of psychology. Then, there are the four attachment styles speaking of love – as in the four ways someone expresses love, according to the type of attachment they feel.

First, let’s consider what are the four attachment styles and why people follow these patterns.

Defining Attachment

According to Scientific American, attachment is a bond that we form with a caregiver, typically a parent in the formative years of youth. When you’re a baby you look up to the person taking care of you and will continue throughout your life. Eventually, the great love you have for a parent affects the way you think, feel, and even the way you approach romantic relationships.

Even when you grow up you will still feel the same feelings of attachment, to a parent, and eventually to a person you want to date. Most psychologists agree these attachment styles include:

● Secure
● Dismissive-Avoidant
● Anxious-Preoccupied
● Fearful-Avoidant

Let’s consider each of these and how they work. Then, we’ll discuss how it affects the way you “love” in relationships.

1. Secure

Secure attachment style means that you grew up feeling safe in your home. You always felt protected, welcomed, and comforted by your parents or guardian at that place. As time went on, you matured and had high confidence, a good sense of who you were and what you wanted, and knew what kind of relationship you wanted, when you were ready to marry.

When you love someone, you understand what motivates them. You can commit and adapt fairly easily when you know your partner’s needs. You are emotionally open and honest about what you feel. You’re independent alone but also can come together as a team.

2. Anxious-Preoccupied

This attachment style typically happens when childhood role models are inconsistent. Parents may have been emotionally moody, unpredictable, and erratic. They were not necessarily abusive but uneven in their approach to emotional openness.

Therefore, children will become confused about how to love. This kind of attachment is characterized by anxiety – to the extent that you put the needs of your partner over your own. You can have normal relationships, but you will often lose the sense of what you really want and who you are, by trying too hard to please the other person.

Emotional highs and lows may cause stress in your relationship. You do want to connect and you even want to be intimate with someone and find happiness. But the dependency on your partner and the clinging behavior may push your partner away, despite your best intentions.

3. Fearful-Avoidant Attachment

For children who experienced great loss, trauma, or even abuse during youth, they can develop a destructive dismissive-avoidant approach to relationships. They may long to be close to someone emotionally but may also fear what they really want.

If you tend to push a person away, pull them back to you, perhaps apologizing, and then doing the same thing again, this is a pattern of mistrust. Other people may see you as indecisive, ambiguous or even abusive, especially if you lash out at others in anger.

They key issue is that you don’t like depending on others, trusting others, and cannot deal with the stress of that in a healthy way. In fact, it might be easier for you to isolate yourself and find other unhealthy coping mechanisms (like loveless sex or alcohol) rather than chasing what you truly want.

4. Avoidant-Dismissive

Avoidant-dismissive attachment results from a childhood of detached parental love. If your parent(s) were emotionally detached or even completely unavailable or absent. In this category type, a parent’s coldness (but not abusive behavior, mind you) teaches you the pattern of distancing yourself emotionally from others.

You may have great difficulty developing closeness to a partner, just as you found it difficult to open up emotionally with your parent(s). You see yourself as a lone wolf. On one hand, you are independent and perhaps emotionally mature, at least on your own. Your self-esteem may be high and you may feel successful.

But you will find it very difficult to trust others or become emotionally vulnerable with someone else. In fact, avoiding emotion is what keeps you strong. You may not be opposed to trying to love someone, but when it’s time to confront feelings and have those honest and stressful conversations, you tend to hide.

Can You Change Your Style?

Once you realize what attachment style seems like you, you have a choice. To see the pattern and learn where it comes from, and then make a conscious choice to avoid the same actions that make you unhappy.

Learning these patterns and understanding where they come from doesn’t mean you blame your parents. It simply means you have observed these patterns, you accept them, but you also accept that you can change.

It’s not a matter of you “should” change. Rather, if you want to be happy and change your bad dating experiences to something positive, you can make a conscious effort to avoid reverting back to those patterns.

You can see the disaster coming. This time, you understand that it’s not your bad luck, your destiny, or another sad chapter in the novel of your life. You learn, over time, that every relationship we enter into is by choice.

You always have the choice to see the pattern coming and put a stop to it. Rather than letting the wrong type of guy into your heart, or the wrong type of circumstances qualifying for a relationship, you can make an effort to do something different.

Not surprisingly, as soon as you start making different choices, you notice immediately that these new relationships turn out different. You resist falling back into the same old patterns just because they’re familiar. Even though emotionally they feel right, your logical mind says, “Maybe I shouldn’t do this anymore. It’s always brought me heartbreak.”

Yes, you can always “change your bad luck” and start creating the relationship you deserve and truly want.

The #1 Thing That Prevents You From Getting Over a Man And Moving On…

After working with hundreds of thousands of women in their dating and relationship lives, helping women get out of toxic situations and move on to healthy relationships where they’re loved and cherished…

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Talk soon,

Matthew Coast

P.S. I helped a woman who was still stuck on her ex after 7 years of being apart from him…

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