I know you talk a lot about how men love a happy woman, but I’m having a really hard time being happy with my relationship as is. I always feel like I need to figure out why my boyfriend is acting a certain way, and I can’t help but worry that he’ll leave me for someone else.
I also get really frustrated when he doesn’t do things I ask him to do, like basic chores and stuff. I don’t want to be needy or a nag, but things like that make me feel loved and cared for. I want to enjoy the relationship and bring happiness to it, but it’s hard for me to get there when I feel like he doesn’t care most of the time. I don’t want my relationship to be a constant struggle.
So my question is, how can I fix my relationship and stop it from falling apart?
If you want true love, you have to stop caring about it. On a similar note, if you want him to do chores, you have to stop caring about it. Although (and this is something I say a lot), when I’m talking about caring here, I’m actually talking about stressing about it….
I care very much about my family… I love them – my parents, siblings, extended family – they are the center of my world and I do everything I can to help them. I care about them, but I don’t stress over them. True caring is just simple – it doesn’t involve stressing over the person/people you care about.
And worrying and stressing over the state of your relationship never serves a positive function. It doesn’t solve problems, it just creates them.
I just wanted to point that out before I say the next part…
In order to be a happy person in a relationship, you have to realize that happiness is something you bring to the table… not something you extract from situations when the conditions are to your liking (and get angry and pouty about when they’re not).
Society has it wrong – most of society believes that you get happiness when you get what you want (like it’s a little reward or something). So, like a pouty child, they hold their breath until they get what they want… they whine about it, cry, scream, throw tantrums, etc. until they get what they want… then, once they do, they might be at peace for a few moments, but then quickly move on to the next thing they want and repeat this insane cycle.
This isn’t a cycle that leads to happiness – it’s simply a cycle of causing one’s self to suffer 99 percent of the time and allowing one’s self 1 percent of the time to experience relief to that self-induced suffering.
It’s insane… but it’s incredibly normal and common for people to do this in today’s day and age.
Quiz: Are You Accidentally Destroying Your Relationship?
So if any of this sounds remotely familiar in any part of your life, get out of that cycle… for the sake of your happiness and your relationship!
The key to breaking free of the cycle is to no longer view happiness like it’s something you get as a “payoff” when your outside circumstances happen to line up with some set of criteria in your head.
Instead, view yourself and your purpose in life as someone who brings happiness and awareness into every moment. Not just when you’re in front of people, but within the privacy of your own mind.
Our challenge in life (and the way to unlock all of life’s greatest rewards) is to master the ability to bring happiness and awareness into how you relate to every moment.
Thoughts come and go… but you do really have a choice as to whether or not you’d like to participate in that line of thinking or not. If you participate in a line of thinking that feels negative (whether it’s sad, angry, hateful, jealous, resentful, hostile, etc.), then I guarantee you it will lead to suffering… suffering you wish you were without.
And you can be without it. Stop participating in negative lines of thought as if there’s something positive to be gained from it somehow… drop it immediately. Drop it immediately.
MORE: How to Stop Stressing Over Your Relationship
When I am looking at things in a way where I perceive that I could lose something, then I feel that fear of loss feeling and I start to stress over it. That stress feeling can take a situation that normally would have had me feeling slightly bothered and send me into a full-blown, long-lasting depression.
I can tell you that I have suffered tremendously with battling depression over many long periods of my life. So if you want to talk about pain, sadness, and anxiety, you’re reading something written by a member of the depression all-star team. In a way, though, it was good I went through that much pain because it gave me an understanding of it… and an understanding of how to get out of it and bring love and happiness into my life… and then, to write about it.
One of the biggest differences between people who are successful in an area of life and those who aren’t is that the unsuccessful people take on a perspective that causes them to stress over that area of life, whereas the successful people don’t take on a perspective that stresses them out.
MORE: 10 things Confident People Do Differently In Relationships
There is no such thing as happiness in the future. If you’re not happy right now, you need a perspective change in your life before your love life will improve. Your own peace and happiness leads your love life success.
When you’re happy, enjoying the moment and at ease, you are allowing the process to just flow naturally. When you start thinking in a way that feels negative, you destroy your vibe and you block the process from unfolding.
In essence, all you’re doing in a relationship is enjoying being around the other person.
Nothing to think about. Nothing to plan. Nothing to “make happen.”
When two people are incredibly compatible, they instinctually want to get closer and be with each other more. It’s taken care of.
However, nature has also programmed humans (men and women) to want to get away from someone who has a negative vibe. Even if they’re compatible – having a bad vibe is the most repulsive, most unattractive condition on the planet… even if you’re a young, fit supermodel with fame and fortune.
A bad vibe (created by a negative mood, which is created by continually participating in negative thoughts) repels everyone. If you are constantly thinking about the ways in which he isn’t making you happy, and what you wish he was doing differently, then you are transmitting a negative vibe. You may not even realize it, but engaging with this negative line of thinking will come across.
The reason is that you don’t extract happiness from a relationship (or a life circumstance in general). Happiness is something we bring to every moment….
It can seem like certain situations and circumstances bring a person happiness, but that’s more often us identifying relief (from the negative thinking they’re constantly indulging in) as actual happiness.
Actual happiness is pure, simple, and right in the moment – nothing is making you happy, you’re actually bringing it to the moment.
The reason that believing a relationship … (continued – Click to keep reading Ask a Guy: How To Fix My Relationship)
Written by Eric Charles
