Reasons a good relationship will slip out of your hands 

We are meant for relationships just as fish is meant for water. According to PLOS Medicine, in a study done by Julianne Holt-Lunstad in 2010, strong relationships provide us with 50 percent of an increased possibility of survival.

Strong relationships also have health benefits such as boosting our immune systems, good heart health, less pain, depression, stress, and anxiety, and lower blood pressure. It therefore stands to reason that we should care to make and sustain relationships for our own benefit. 

However, some people seem to lose relationships faster than they make them. It does not matter if they are romantic, family or friendships. Here are some of the top 10 reasons why:

Mistrust

 Any relationship must have, at its basic, trust; trust that you have my best interests at heart, trust that you will keep your word, trust that you will trust me. Where there is mistrust, there is fear, which locks up people from freely expressing themselves and people will be looking for a way out of such a relationship.  

Poor or lack of communication

Consider your best friend in primary school. If you met them after 20 years, would you still have the same feelings and rapport you had with them when you were still very close? I can bet my bottom dollar, you will relate as strangers. Also consider a friend or lover who does not express their feelings but bottles them up expecting their partner to read their mind. That behaviour will create an emotional distance between the two of you.  If communication is poor or lacking, a relationship will inevitably break. 

Self-centredness

Relationships are “give and take”. If a relationship is only about taking, then it is one- sided and will break sooner than later. In fact, American sociologist George Homans, in 1958 in an article, Social Behaviour as Exchange, suggested that two people come into relationship based on cost-benefit analysis. If someone is not getting as much out of a relationship as they are putting in, they will most likely leave.       

Pride

 Failure to recognise that other people have a contribution to make or are as important will strain and invariably break any relationship. Proud people play ducks and drakes with others sometimes inadvertently or intentionally. They do not care a hoot about other’s people’s feelings and thoughts, they do not listen, they do not express gratitude, and they have contempt for others. A good, healthy relationship, however, must have in itself an element of humility toward others. Humility says “I need you to survive”, “I do not know it all so I need your input”, “If I am wrong, I apologise”…because we are each limited in some way but together lifted to achieve.  

A critical, judgmental spirit

 If you are always allotting criticism for people for their choices and mistakes, you will not have many friends hanging around you. We all make mistakes and people need to know they are covered when they blow it. This is not to compromise the truth but within the truth to find space to be gracious to people. I remember a friend who was always critical of everything I did and said that I wondered if he was covering up for his own insecurities. I ended that relationship right off the bat. 

Competition and comparisons

Relationships that break are often characterised by competition emanating out of comparisons. Unless you were created exactly the same, you should never compare oranges and apples. We can share some attributes but we are never the same. We are uniquely distinct. Healthy relationships should challenge one another to be the best they can be in an atmosphere of peace but competition is unhealthy. Look at a football team; each player has their part to play according to their gifting and position for the collective good of the team, so should it be with any relationship. 

Money

 Disagreements about money is one of the commonest causes of divorce. Money determines associations. Money has come to define relationships that the absence or presence of it is startlingly tied to how long some relationships will last. People will tell you stories of how friends abandoned them when they had no money.  Money can be so personal that people get so attached to it as a value and metric through which many things are determined. 

Incompatibility

 Have you ever tried to be friends with this person but for some reason you just don’t connect at all? Or you date someone for a while and discover you cannot take the relationship further? It could be you do not share values or are naturally incompatible. People often break up after discovering they will never get along in a relationship if it is for the future. And this is normal.      

Unrealistic expectations

 Loving people involves accepting them for who they are and laying no burden on them to be what you think they should be. You can love someone without having a relationship with them but you cannot have a relationship with someone without loving them. Relationships fail because of the pressure exerted on them by those in and those around them to conform to a certain standard. We all desire rewarding, long-lasting, healthy relationships.