9. you never fight

　　a good argument is essential, every now and then. in part, arguing helps bring out the little stuff before it becomes major, but also, fighting expresses anger which is a perfectly normal part of a human’s emotional make-up. your relationship has to be strong enough to hold all of who you are, not just the sunny stuff.

　　one reason couples don’t fight is that they fear conflict — which reflects a lack of trust and a foundation of fear. that’s bad. another reason couples avoid arguments is that they’ve learned that anger is unreasonable and unproductive. they’ve learned that arguing represents a breakdown rather than a natural part of a relationship’s development. while an argument isn’t pleasant, it can help both partners to articulate issues they may not have even known they had — and help keep them from simmering until you cross a line you can’t come back from.

　　10. you expect it to be easy/you expect it to be hard

　　there are two deeply problematic attitudes about relationships i hear often. one is that a relationship should be easy, that if you really love each other and are meant to be together, it will work itself out. the other is that anything worth having is going to be hard — and that therefore if it’s hard, it must be worth having.

　　the outcome of both views is that you don’t work at your relationship. you don’t work because it’s supposed to be easy and therefore not need any work, or you don’t work because it’s supposed to be hard and it wouldn’t be hard if you worked at it. in both cases, you quickly get burnt out — either because the problems you’re ignoring really don’t go away just because you think they should. or because the problems you’re cultivating are a constant drag on your energy. a relationship that’s too much work might be suffering from one of the attitudes above, but a relationship that doesn’t seem to need any work isn’t any better.

　　your choices

　　there isn’t any one answer to any of the problems above. there are choices though: you can either seek out an answer, something that addresses why you are hurting your relationship, or you can resign yourself to the failure of your relationship (and maybe the next one, and the next one, and…). failure doesn’t always mean you break up — many people aren’t that lucky. but people can live quite unhappily in failed relationships for years and even decades because they’re afraid they won’t find anything better, or worse, they’re afraid they deserve it. don’t you be one of them — if you suffer from any of these problems, figure out how to fix it, whether that means therapy, a solo mountain retreat, or just talking to your partner and committing yourselves to change.