In today's world dating is hard and relationships are even harder. There are many reasons why most relationships fail and I have written an entire book detailing parts of the story. To get a larger picture please read Alternate Reality - The Mostly True Story of How I Became a Sociopath or a Comical Look at My Messed Up Life by B. Steve Ross. For time and space purposes I am only going to touch the surface of the top 3.
#1 - Most People are Horrible People
It is not that most people are bad people. I honestly believe that most people are good. I am simply stating that most people although being good people, are horrible at being good people. Somehow over the past 40 years it seems as if the human race has forgotten how to be good people. To be kind to others no matter what the circumstance. To be respectful to others even when disagreeing with them. We have become an uncivilized civilization. Now compound that lack of respect and kindness with someone you are living with or seeing in a relationship. Now imagine having to live with someone who has no comprehension of how to show kindness and respect to someone they love and want to have a relationship with. It doesn't work and leaves incredibly deep wounds that last forever.
#2 - Emotional Baggage
Everyone who has ever had a relationship end has emotional baggage. Yours might be a small carry-on or a dump truck full of over-sized luggage, but we all have it. This emotional baggage is typically the demise of even the good relationship. I will use my last as an example. I was just months into my separation from a thirty year marriage to a narcississtic cheater who used me as her personal money slave.
My girlfriend was 1 year free of her eight year relationship with a physically abusive cheating sociopath (one of the bad ones) and had hopped directly into that relationship after ending her 20 year marriage because of her husband cheating. It was wonderful to finally find the female version of me and she always remarked on how we should have met when we were younger. We were in love and extremely happy which triggered her baggage and she started digging for proof that I was cheating on her like her last 2 relationships even to the point of hacking all of my accounts and reading every email and every DM ever sent on Facebook. This turned into extreme jealousy of every female who would look at me and even girls I coached in soccer for years. This was a huge strain on the relationship and eventually would begin to trigger my baggage when I noticed her doing things that my ex-wife would do or say which made me look at her as my ex-wife version 2.0. Both of our baggage issues became larger and larger until it finally ended the relationship after 19 months. Eventually our emotional scars killed our happiness.
#3 - Lack of Knowledge of the Opposite Sex
This one is a more recent/modern problem. For the past three decades we have been preached at that women and men are the same and can equally do everything at a high level of competence. Of course this is wrong. Obviously there are things women tend to be better at than men and other things men tend to be better at than women. There is a mountain of scientific proof that we are totally different beings with overlapping skills and abilities, but in the end we are different (especially in the way we think). Try this: Sit down with your partner and discuss what the word "love" means to each of you. You will find some similarities and you will find some aspects of love your partner has that sound totally ridiculous to you and vise versa. If not understood, these differences in how we think eventually cause strife and disengagement between a couple. This is one area where Alternate Realities come into play. When you think that your husband doesn't love you anymore because he checked out the neighbor's ass, or you think your wife doesn't love you because her affection seems to be tied to something you think is unrelated to love.
"You must love me exactly as I love you." Old Gregg
It would take much more than a simple blog to unravel just these 3 big ticket items, but I hope these have struck a chord of truth in your heart and begins a road of improvement and understanding in these 3 areas that can end in at least 1 couple having a happy and fruitful long relationship. My book Alternate Reality goes into extreme detail on these subjects and is a great starting point on learing about emotional baggage, coping mechanisms, and relationships.
By Steve Ross