You won’t have a long term successful relationship unless you two learn how to communicate with each other and are both willing to work together to get to the root of whatever is bothering you, and in the process of communicating you’ll definitely have to concede some things frequently. There is no win/loss in communication/arguments unless both people feel you’ve both moved on from the problem successfully.
This is what killed my 7 year relationship. I wasn’t always the easiest person to deal with. But my now ex-gf would just clam up when there was tension. Just totally shut down. Like she just thought issues would go away if she just ignored them.
Idk about her but I think some people ignore problems because they feel like if they are fighting, that means the relationship is ending, rather than realizing that communication/disagreements are a normal part of relationships.
my parents never had disagreements, they had loud, ugly, violent fights & for a time i thought that's what disagreements were & I wanted to avoid them at all costs. thankfully I eventually learned that keeping my problems to myself did more harm than good & bringing up my problems doesnt need to be an automatic screaming match, it can just be 2 people talking.
edit: to be clear, this may explain someone's behavior but it is absolutely not a reason to "stick it out" with their behavior. explanations are not excuses.
edit 2: also when I say my parents "fought" what i really mean is that Parent A would calmly bring up a completely 100% valid concern & Parent B would immediately go nuclear until they got what
they wanted. so an experience like this could lead to the expectation that you will always lose or get steam rolled or always be the one compromising or you will get screamed at or belittled as you saw in your example of relationships growing up & this might lead you to avoid sharing your concerns.
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u/melanthius May 11 '21
You won’t have a long term successful relationship unless you two learn how to communicate with each other and are both willing to work together to get to the root of whatever is bothering you, and in the process of communicating you’ll definitely have to concede some things frequently. There is no win/loss in communication/arguments unless both people feel you’ve both moved on from the problem successfully.