By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Why your relationship won’t turn out the way you thought.

We humans have lots of relationships and no relationship is more important than the primary sexual, love relationship.  So many people enter into this relationship with great, wonderful hopes for how well it will turn out.  The truth is the majority, more than half of all marriages end in divorce.

For those who choose to live together without the benefit of marriage or who produce children even before they’ve gotten into the relationship, the chances of staying together are even lower.  How come everyone thinks their relationship will be different?  There are a few reasons why most relationships are full of surprises.

Some things will not “just work out.” Love will not conquer all.

The common premise is that we’re so in love our relationship will be better than other people’s.  The truth is some relationships just will not work out.  A great many of these relationships end in the first five years.  The early ending relationships usually were not good from the beginning.  There was an attraction but not much more.  Often these relationships were conflicted, with verbal and physical fights.  With that much conflict, no amount of love can overcome the difficulties.

What used to be cute will become annoying.

People who decide to work on their relationship, try to fix things, often come to marriage counseling with a long list of things about their partner they find upsetting.  It’s common for those things that are upsetting to be the very things that attracted the two people in the first place.

He was exciting, but after a few months, that exciting becomes irresponsible.  She was stable with a level head on her shoulders, that stability becomes a stick-in-the-mud who never wants to do anything fun or take any chances.

Your partner will not change the way you want.

There is an old saying, men choose women and hope they will never change, women always pick men and hope they will change.  Getting into relationships expecting that once together your partner will change in some particular way is a recipe for failure.  While your partner likely will change, it is likely to be in any direction other than the one you hope for.

They will change in ways you wish they hadn’t.

Lots of the change your partner will undergo will be in directions you didn’t expect.  The partner who used to buy things for you will become the one who doesn’t want to spend any money.

That guy they used to be so much fun and joked with you is likely to turn into the one that flirts with every other girl.

Fifty-Fifty relationships do not work. It will be more like 80-80.

Couples who expect their relationships to be 50/50 are usually in for a shock.  Both partners in a relationship typically think that they’re doing far more than the other partner.  Someone estimated that successful relationships are more like 80 – 80.

There will be a lot more pain, trauma, and grief than you expected.

The one thing you can expect for sure is the unexpected.  Movies and fairy tales always end with a wedding.  What they don’t show are the hard times, the times when things go in the wrong direction.

The real world of relationships involves pain.  There may well be, losses and grief.  That happiness ever after quickly turns to after.

Your partner will do and say things you don’t expect.

The first rush of getting together you thought you knew each other so well.  Once the initial attraction wears off you’ll be surprised at the things your partner does and says that you never would have expected.

Your partner won’t see “obvious” things.

Even when you think both of you come from the same culture, you will find that you are mistaken.  Each of you came from a family and that family had traditions, ways of doing things which may well seem strange to their partner. The things that are obvious to you, things that need to be done, things that shouldn’t be done, may come as a great surprise to your partner.

Your partner will shapeshift. Prince charming is really a troll.

Remember the end of the movie, after what you see on-screen comes real life.  The princess doesn’t look so royal six months pregnant with a cold, runny nose and dirt all over her.  Somehow that man you thought was prince charming, a few months later will begin to look like he was really that troll from under the bridge.

You will have to put more in than you take out.

Lots of people get into relationships expecting to get their needs met.  Relationships are kind of like bank accounts. If all you ever do is take out and never put in, that account gets overdrawn.  You will find that over time you put a lot more work into this relationship than you ever imagined when you began it.

Relationships need maintenance.

After the relationship comes life.  Jobs come.  You have work responsibilities.  One or both of you may try to further your education.  Very often, way before anyone is ready, there are children.  It’s easy to neglect a relationship in the process of all the other things that happen in life.  Couples who fail to maintain the relationship wake up one day, look at each other and wonder why they ever stayed together

It is hard for the “US” to coexist with the “ME.”

In the early days of a relationship, it is all about us, us, us.  Eventually one of you starts to wonder, now that there is an “us” is there still a me?  Where before you used to want to spend every possible minute together, now you begin to wish for time to do the things you used to do before you were part of a couple.

Your finished relationship house won’t look like the blueprints.

The beginning of a relationship is kind of like planning that dream house, it all looks great in your head.  Once you get that dream house built you may well find out that there are lots of features that didn’t work out the way they looked on paper.

You can find more on this topic under Relationships.

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

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