Common Mistakes People Make in Relationships but Blame Their Partner for Them
There are a number of common relationship mistakes people do, but wholeheartedly think it’s other people’s flaw or blame. These are some of them – I may have missed a few. This might make a rough bit of reading.
Assuming the other person WANTS a relationship with you
This is probably the biggest mistake people make in relationships. They assume, for whatever reason, that this person wants a relationship (of some description) with you. These people often act over-confidently with new people and are very proactive in building the relationship. They often also go a long way into the relationship, because they make the start of the relationship VERY EASY on the other person, who only needs to pick up the phone or answer a text. MOST people answer calls and invitations just to be polite, without actually being actively invested in the relationship at all. It is easier and nicer to just say yes, rather than come up with polite excuses to not go or talk to a new person.
Assume = ass + u + me
You may be co-workers and you assume that everyone wants to be friends with their co-workers, for instance, and you’ll find it odd that the other person keeps dodging your invites for “beers later”. That’s just one example. There are TONS of possible situations where you assume the other person wants to get to know you better when they would rather spend time with someone they’re more interested in.
You may also think you’re admirable to that person for some reason, and assume they would, without question, want to be friends with you. Normally, you’d think this is a celebrity thinking any regular person would kill to be a friend to them, but in reality it’s more likely that a well-adjusted normal person would think any “non-standard” individual (punk, rocker, gay, black/foreign, handicapped, etc.) would LOVE to be accepted with the normal people and thus act completely presumptuously toward them. “Popular” kids at school may also assume that any “non-popular” kid would want to be friends with them and act accordingly, making an ass out of themselves. Also, (particularly beautiful) women tend to be presumptuous about being always wanted by everybody, particularly men.
They turn aggressive or disrespectful, and you think they’re to blame
If you act this way toward a person, their attitude toward you may bewilder you. They eventually start acting hostile and/or disrespectful toward you because you automatically ASSUME they think of you as a “gift from god”. They may have tried to drop polite hints of disinterest in your friendship, but you’ve ignored the clues for long enough for them to start to get a little short with you. The shortness may escalate to a downright war with you if you’re not getting the message. Usually, this attitude backfires very, very badly in relationships, and it’s ALL YOUR OWN FAULT for being presumptuous.
Investing a lot of energy in the relationship ASSUMING the other person (will) appreciate(s) it
Very much related to the above, you may invest a lot of time and energy into a relationship thinking the other person will learn to love you as a result. This is often an attempt to a romantic relationship that only you want, but it can also be a friendship or another type of a relationship. You may even feel you’re doing the other person a bit of a favor by taking them seriously as a partner or a potential friend, but they may truly not like you at all.
Don’t invest energy in people with a higher IQ than yours. They won’t thank you.
This often happens when a person with a normal IQ (this would be the ‘you’ in this equation) sees ‘potential’ in another person who to you seems ‘non-standard’ or ‘rough around the edges when truly, their possibly unkempt look or lifestyle is a side product of a busy mind and high IQ, not inability to take care of those things. High IQ people may be so busy doing something they deem more important than grooming or cleaning (for the time being) that you think it’s INABILITY when it is simply a question of PRIORITIES. Not only are you likely to INSULT that person by assuming they’re incapable, you are more than likely also hindering their progress in whatever they’re trying to achieve and neglecting the mundane aspects of their lives for. In other words, your inability to recognize high IQ is making their life harder, and you expect to be thanked for it.
It is surprisingly easy for a median IQ person to mistake high IQ people for low IQ people. They have a lot in common on the surface (such as proneness for substance abuse), but their motivations for the same actions are VERY different. You should never assume a high IQ person would be too interested in a relationship of any kind with a person of a moderate let alone a low IQ unless they happen to be high at the time and feeling drug-induced universal love toward everybody at the time… Or practice a religion or philosophy that incentivizes them to attempt to love the mediocre people. (I strongly advise intelligent people against partaking in such philosophies.)
You’ve made the investment without the other party’s consent, but you act as they owe you
Every relationship is a matter of CONSENT. You cannot decide to be a friend or a partner to another person without them agreeing to give you the honor of their friendship. No matter who you are in relation to another person, a relationship to them is always to be earned, not simply to put a hand up for it and assume they’ll fall in line with you.
Surely, sometimes we put in energy into a relationship that won’t work out in the end, sometimes we take risks in investing in a person who might or might not want you in the end, but if you don’t REALIZE it’s a risk you should be taking knowingly, rather than expect the other person to just be OK with it, you’re making an ass out of yourself, and you think they are being ungrateful or unappreciative of you. And yeah. They may be, but you tried to buy love from a lion by feeding it grass – your problem, not the lions.
Making promises to yourself on someone else’s behalf
Another way to get disappointed in others is by making promises to yourself (or someone else) on the behalf of another person. Imagine a grandmother who wants to give grandson Alex an opportunity to impress her friends by asking Alex to show up and mow their lawns for free. Alex decides to blow the gig or does it but is visibly angry toward grandmother, who feels offended or humiliated as a result. And still, it’s gramma’s fault for thinking Alex would be thankful for an opportunity to do free work without being asked to. Alex might have a lot of other stuff on his plate, and grandma simply assumed he’d drop everything to help her friends. Rude!
When did you become an item, exactly?
You may also make promises of fidelity in a romantic relationship to yourself before the other person is even fully aware you HAVE an exclusive relationship. When they “cheat” on you, you get angry at someone who didn’t even know you thought of them as a girlfriend or a boyfriend.
People interpret the signs of an exclusive relationship starting very differently. A lot of people don’t want to tie you down too early on before you’ve actually even told them you’re INTERESTED in a relationship, but if you think a few dates or having had sex make you a couple, you might blame them for infidelity when they didn’t even know you considered you two exclusive. Especially if your relationship started as what could be a one-night-stand, it would be very naive indeed to think that means exclusivity to the other person, automatically.
This is not to say seeming one-night-stands don’t lead to real relationships at times, it’s just that you can’t tell whether this person sleeps with a lot of people or just you. If they are “busy” a lot, they DO NEED a heads up to let them know you want them for an exclusive partner. No telling what they’ll say to it, they might be more than happy to drop everyone else for you, but you can’t make too many assumptions if you sleep with someone soon after meeting them.
Wives and Whores
Lots of people also see the parameters of a relationship differently. Some men, truly, feel they’ll be doing their wife a favor by taking their sexual needs elsewhere, to some woman they love and respect less than their wife. So they have a mistress on the side, often before they even marry, to ensure they CAN fulfill their sexual needs on another woman before making an honest woman out of another one. Some men literally try to date two women at the same time; to secure one for a mistress and the other for a wife, and believe this is the done thing. Some women wholly agree.
Mind you, some women DO take this setting as a given or as a compliment, too. When they marry a man who doesn’t have a mistress, they may feel sexually objectified and pressured, but wish to be respected and liberated from sexual expectations. There are also women who are glad to be the other woman, as they feel the wife is simply a prop that he uses to keep his life looking the right way. She may feel shocked he actually loves his wife but takes his ‘dirty’ needs to the mistress. Some men, again, do exactly that; they have a genuine love relationship with the other woman and keep a wife to appease their family or boss and feel nothing for her at all.
Make no assumptions on what people have ‘promised’ you as a partner, friend, or relative.
Testing a relationship thinking the other person wants you in their life in the first place
This is the definition of a toxic relationship and you’re the cause of it if you keep testing the other person on whether they love you enough or are loyal enough, or are devoted enough, or mature enough or whatever, assuming they want to have a relationship with you in the first place. You expect them to pass the test, and then you will grant them their reward of your devotion to them. HOWEVER.
If the person keeps telling you that they don’t love you, they don’t consider you a friend or a partner, this is not a cry for you to help them become your friend or partner, or to love you, it is to try and wake you up to reality: they don’t want you in the first place and you’re testing a person who has no intent to pass your test… EVER, and even if they did, they’d dump you on the spot and find someone they actually want!
There is a surprising number of people who completely blindly test other people thinking they want the relationship when that person couldn’t be less interested if they tried.
Trying to help someone be more like you when they consider themselves the superior
This is typical for a parent who assumes without question that their child wants nothing more than to please their parent. Then, the parent goes out of their way to ‘help’ their child to be more to their liking, and think the child is truly struggling with something when they fail to please the parent. This is a MASSIVE presumption on the parent’s part, many children simply want to live their own life; to grow up, and test their own wings and talents, and wish to have nothing to do with the parent’s desires for an amazing child. We all have parents, and we don’t all get the right types of parents, and that’s the risk you take when you become a parent. You don’t always get what you wish for and you still have to love you child and let them grow up to become what they were meant to be… By the Universe, if you will, not by you.
Another symptom of the same is the attempt to help a person you know some to CHANGE so you could be friends. This is another very toxic situation, when you’re potentially forcing change on someone who doesn’t want to be anything like you, doesn’t want to be a friend to you, and doesn’t think you’re anything to admire at all. If you fail to recognize this person doesn’t think too highly about you at all, and you’re trying to ‘help them’ be more like you, you can easily wind up in the slammer for being abusive toward another person. Kid you not.
And whose fault will that be?
Thinking “being good at relationships” means to “not be the one who gets dominated”
One of the WORST mistakes people make in relationships is to think that relationships are a battle over dominance and control, and who abuses who. This is the sign of a person who hasn’t got the foggiest idea of how relationships are supposed to work and what they are there for and prides themselves for being an absolute ass about it all.
I’m not even going to get into detail, this is one of those “not going to dignify that with a fucking answer, you insufferable morons”.
Blaming everything on the other person; never considering one’s own flaws
This is a very common relationship mistake ESPECIALLY women tend to make. If you think “men are bad at relationships”, you are more than likely the very woman who gets this wrong every time. Men are not bad at relationships, often, they are brilliant in relationships compared to women. Men are better socialized and more capable of adjusting to different types of people because they are very USED TO functioning with very different types of people. Women are not. Women can have a very closed, small idea of what people are like and how relationships work, because of our reincarnational history of being locked in our home, in our own family culture and habits. Many women may know how to adjust to one type of a man (her soulmate) and think every other man is a weirdo who doesn’t know his ass from his elbow.
Men learn to adjust, and they’re often very humble about learning new relationships rules, and they are much more capable of looking in the mirror and finding flaws in themselves. This opens them for abuse in relationships way too easily – and they need to learn to protect themselves from this kind of situations while trying to not over-correct.
Women DO make mistakes in relationships, too. Women are not automatic authorities in relationships. Relationships take two people, and both partner’s needs matter, not only hers.
Men can make this mistake, too, don’t get me wrong, but women are currently MUCH MORE LIKELY to think women define the way the relationship works and men adjust to the rules of the woman. Male or female, you have a problem in the relationship if only one of you is the one who adjusts to the rules of the other.
This type of person also may have trouble letting go of a relationship where both partners’ needs can’t be met because of incompatible needs. Even though both partners can’t be satisfied, a person like this may try their hardest to either submit or dominate, rather than let go and find someone more compatible to their own needs and wants.
FEARING you do some of the above, over-correct, and screw up the relationship
And just to throw another curveball into the mix, there’s the situation where you’re very aware of all the above mistakes or at least a good chunk of them, and FEAR you’re the perpetrator of the mistake.
Very often people may assume “women chase” or “men chase”, depending on your own gender. (I understand there are non-binary variants to this same thing, but I can’t name them all.) When you assume something is a gender thing, but it’s truly about the desirability of that other person in comparison to you, you’ll be likely to misinterpret their fear of coming off presumptuous, clingy, or needy, or perhaps unfeminine or unmasculine as a sign of disinterest. As a result, neither one of you may not be active enough in chasing the relationship just to show enough INTEREST let alone be anywhere near to being overly presumptuous.
You might have been overly cautious, but blame the other for having rejected you or not being interested in a serious relationship with you, when truly, they were.
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*) Term changed after this post was originally written. Fractions of old terms may exist elsewhere in the post. Read about term updates.
**) Narcissists are Young Souls left alone to survive and they're doing their best. Their emotional age ranges from 3 to 17 -year old. The younger, the more severe the narcissism.
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