7 Stupidest Things Everyone Does In A Relationship

Anyone who claims to be the perfect partner is a liar. 

Because everyone stuffs it up with their significant other every once in a while.

Everyone can forgive innocent mistakes. You accidentally drop your partner's favourite vase. 

It happens. 

You didn't do it on purpose, nor did you intend to make them upset when you realise how valuable and sentimental the piece was. 

S**t happens, after all.

Everyone can forgive misguided attempts at being romantic. Sure, you tried to book their favourite restaurant, but it was fully booked. Instead, you opted for the inferior alternative, and the night didn't have the sparkle you hoped. Or that your partner deserved. 

S**t happens. Again. 

And you tried. It simply didn't work out this time.

But then there are all those things we know are going to pull on the tension strings of our relationship, and we still do it. 

We know it's dumb. We've done it before and learned how stupid it was then. 

Yet, like sticking your hand in the fire and finding ourselves surprised it's hot, we do it again. And again. Rinse and repeat.

Here are the stupidest things we do to sabotage our relationships and keep doing despite knowing better.

1. You see the fight and you go for it

This is a contentious one to start with, but I'm game if you are. More than once in your life, you, like me, have started an intentional fight with your partner.

There are two types of fights we have with our partners, so we need to make sure we know the difference here.

There is the unintentional fight and the intentional fight.

An unintentional fight is your regular old fight. 

You have a difference of opinions, something one of you does annoys the other, or an uncontrollable life event throws a massive spanner between you. The list of fight causes is endless.

Here is the distinction, though. You didn't know by discussing or addressing the issue would cause an argument between you. 

Perhaps you could have predicted this might happen, but it wasn't a guarantee. It's not why you started talking either, hoping a fight would result.

The intentional fight is the one you know is going to happen the moment you start speaking. 

You know a war of words will start as soon as you bring up the topic. It's like flicking a switch, and you deliberately do it to argue with your partner.

This is where the phrase 'pick your battles' comes into play. 

You have so much to fight about life that you can't control. You don't need to deliberately start a war, too. 

Especially when you know it's only going to end in fighting.

2. Thinking playful banter is appropriate romance

My ex-boyfriend was short. 

He was shorter than me and shorter than most. He didn't love his height and could never sustain any playful banter about his stature. 

He was great at dishing the playful banter, by the way. If someone else had something to pick on, in good fun between friends, he would. 

But with the roles reversed, it was a no-go.

And perhaps it was his ability to dish it and inability to take it that meant I enjoyed teasing him about his height. 

I would usually do this to appease whichever friend he had insulted, hoping he would take the hint about dishing it and taking it. 

I knew it was wrong. I knew it hurt him. Yet, it didn't stop me from laying in the boot when I thought the timing was right.

We all know what buttons to press, and what emotions to manipulate. 

When we want something, when we want to feel superior, we will use this information to tease. It's wrong. Why would we want to deliberately tease the person we love? 

It doesn't make sense.

3. Romance stuff ups

Now I know I spoke earlier about innocently messing up romance, but it wasn't from a lack of trying. I'm talking about all the times we went out of our way to get it wrong.

We're trying to look as if we're romantic, and know what our partner wants. 

But instead, we do something that constitutes anti-romance in your relationship. We do things like:

• Take them for dinner at a restaurant they hate
• Buy champagne for a romantic date even though you know they don't drink champagne
• Inviting people around to your house for a surprise party even though they hate surprises
• Buying them a gift you would want, but they would hate
• Taking them on a helicopter ride, but they are afraid of heights

If you look at the gesture, you can't argue with the idea you are trying to do something romantic.

Yet, you lose all points for trying because you haven't thought about your partner at all during the decision-making.

When we know our partner well enough, we knew it would turn out to be a disaster. 

Yet, we still did it anyway.

4. Guarantees for secret keeping

Keeping secrets is dumb. 

No one needs to tell you that, especially as we all know the risks associated with a secret coming out when you don't want it to. 

But there is something even worse than keeping secrets; believing this is the right approach with your partner.

There are always harmless secrets, by the way. When my husband proposed, he kept all the planning a secret. That's not what I'm talking about in this scenario.

I'm referring to deliberate secret-keeping that your partner should know. This could be anything if I'm being honest.

There shouldn't be anything you don't talk to your partner about. 

It could be anything from being demoted at work to a family member passing away.

Lying even about the smallest things count; you forgot to buy the pasta they asked you to buy. But you don't tell them and make up some story about being busy at work.

You know honesty would help your relationship, but choose the other path. And yet for some reason, you think everything will be ok with the secrets between you.

5. Assuming silence is golden

I don't know why romance novels and Hollywood have us believe the right way to have a relationship is to hide your feelings. 

And never say what you're thinking or feeling. Or if they don't say this is the right way, they imply this is what couples do.

It's when one partner reads their partner's body language and figures everything out. It all sorts itself out like magic, even though there was zero communication between the couple.

We know this isn't true. 

And real life doesn't work like that. If only we could stay silent and still have a meaningful relationship with our other half.

Staying silent forms one of the biggest relationship mistakes you can make. 

The only way for a relationship to survive is through communication. You know that. I know that. But for some reason, we keep silent when we're fuming on the inside. 

Go figure.

6. Relationship exams 

How much does my partner love? Let's find out.

I don't need anyone else's disaster story to know this is a bad idea, and that it can only backfire on me. I could:

• Find out my partner doesn't love me
• Push the relationship to the breaking point
• Cause distrust between me and my partner, as they don't agree with me testing them
• Break my own heart when what I was testing them over turned out to be true, but only because I tested them in the first place

Despite knowing all the risks, we test the strength of our relationship like it's some sort of scientific experiment. Life is testing enough. We don't need to make it harder for ourselves.

It doesn't stop us from doing it, though. 

We all push our partners at some point and walk away, shocked when it doesn't pan out.

This goes for cheating too. It's another way we test the trust of our relationship. Testing, cheating, secret-keeping, and lying, it's all risky behaviour.

What this risky behaviour indicates is a concerning subtext for the relationship you think you're committed to. 

It means you view the relationships as being something worth losing. If you value the relationship, you wouldn't do anything to jeopardise losing it.

7. Lazy, lazy, lazy….

Relationships take effort. We can add that to the list of things everyone knows about a relationship, as well.

You get what you put into it, too. The more love and effort you inject, the more you get out of it.

This simple equation doesn't seem to stop us from being lazy in our relationships, though. In fact, we seem to get lazier when we know we need to work harder.

And we know the consequences of laziness. 

We could end up losing our relationship, or push it into a situation where we have to work hard to keep it. It's an exercise in pushing the boundaries of our relationship energy. 

It would be far simpler if we maintained a constant amount of effort.

Yet, we get lazy.

Why do we do these things? 

I have no idea.

As I've admitted, I'm a culprit for making deliberate relationship mistakes. I have put my hand into the proverbial fire thinking it was the right thing to do. Or perhaps I knew it wasn't right, and I still did it, anyway.

But why?

The only conclusion I can come up with is that sometimes we want to sabotage our relationships. 

We want to get it wrong. We want to stuff it up.

• Sometimes it's because we hope we're getting it right. 
• Or perhaps we haven't truly learned our lesson from last time. 
• Or perhaps it is our way of figuring out how much this relationship means to us. 

If we are willing to push it too far, how do we feel about the outcome?

No matter the reason, we're all human. And we all make mistakes. We need to realise, though, that we aren't always going to have our partner forgive us for our mistakes.

We can keep making them and keep poking the relationship. But the consequences will never go away.