Photo by Zdeněk Macháček on Unsplash

Relationship Problems Don’t Cause Breakups

Couples tend to break up when the good is no longer good enough to be worth it.

I admit that my job has made me biased.

I’m aware that I tend to make outrageous proclamations on the socials and in my writing, like good relationships are 5 percent finding the right person and 95 percent what you co-create.

No, I didn’t do a meta-analysis of 43 longitudinal studies and come up with that number. Based on my personal and professional experience, it feels about in the ballpark.

I post stuff like this if I think it’s helpful. That one, about finding the perfect person vs. crafting the ideal relationship, has enabled various people to:

• break the habit of dismissively saying “I picked the wrong person again,”
• open up to learning and practicing better relationship habits,
• maybe work things through with the person they’re with,
• confront their own emotional struggles and relationship blocks,
• see a therapist if needed,
• start to dismantle patterns of blame…

Most importantly it’s helped them stop thinking of relationships as a search optimization problem, and start treating it…