16 Common Relationship Tips that Ruin Your Love Life

Relationship tips are great for romance. But not all the time! Here are 16 common relationship tips that can do more harm than good to your love life!

It’s been said that love gets better with experience.

It’s true, but it’s not always the case.

Sometimes, you don’t need all the experience in the world to be a good lover.

All you need is the willingness to see things from your partner’s perspective.

If a surprise can cheer you up, won’t it cheer your partner up too?

If their undivided attention can make you feel special, won’t they feel the same way when you give them your undivided attention?

Learn to see your own love life through the eyes of your partner, and you’ll realize just how easy it can be to understand each other and please each other.

[Read: 12 real reasons why most couples drift apart from each other!]

Friends, experiences and relationship tips

Almost always, the first few people we ask relationship advice from are our closest friends.

And these friends, as good as their intentions may be, can’t always help you because they fail to see the issue from your perspective.

Their relationship tips and advice are the ones that they’ve learnt through their own experiences. And they may not always have the best advice for you. [Read: 13 signs your friends are ruining your relationship for you!]

The good and bad sides of relationship tips

The easiest way to learn from the relationship tips you hear so often is by understanding the essence of the idea, and infusing it into your own love life, in a manner that you see fit.

When you fall in love, you need to see yourself and your partner as two individuals who bring their lives together. You don’t necessarily have to share the same likes and dislikes, nor do you have to be polar opposites to make the relationship work.

Learn about the matters of the heart from your friends, your own family and everyone around you. But don’t blindly follow everything you see or hear. After all, a few relationship tips are completely accepted as the absolute truth only because they’ve been repeated so many times by so many people!

[Read: 23 must-know successful relationship tips for women]

[Read: 23 foolproof relationship tips and advice for men]

16 common relationship tips that ruin your love life

Here are 16 relationship tips that you may have heard more than just once from people around you. But contrary to popular belief, thinking along these lines or believing in these relationship tips won’t help you. In fact, they could make your relationship worse than ever!

#1 You need a lover to feel complete in your life. Have you ever that that line, ‘…you complete me!’? Well, as much as people tell you that having a partner in your life is the only way to feel complete, it’s not entirely true. You don’t need to get into a desperate relationship with someone just to feel complete. You may end up feeling worse than ever if you get into a relationship believing that it’s your purpose in life. [Confession: I want to break up with my guy and be single again!]

#2 You won’t find anyone else attractive when you’re in love. Many people will sincerely try to convince you that you can’t find anyone else sexually attractive if you’re truly in love with someone. And if you do think someone walking past you on the street is sexy, you’re supposed to feel guilty about it because you’re mentally cheating on your lover!

But seriously, what’s physical attractiveness got to do with love? It’s completely acceptable to find someone attractive *pursuing the person or having an affair is an entirely different story*, just as long as you understand that the same rules apply to your partner too. [Read: The 12 real signs of true love in any relationship]

#3 Space in a relationship separates lovers. Some people believe that lovers need to completely depend on each other to actually experience happiness and togetherness. Truth be told, a good relationship does need dependability and together time, but it also needs a significant amount of space away from each other! [Read: 10 tips to love your partner without smothering them with affection!]

In a happy relationship, both partners need to love each other and yet grow as individuals at the same time. Fail to do that, and at some point of time, you’d end up getting annoyed with your partner who seems to be depending on you to do everything for them. [Read: How giving space in a relationship can bring both of you closer]

#4 Unconditional love always pays off. It’s been said that even the worst of lovers would turn into good lovers when you love them unconditionally and give them time to change. But not all people change over time. A serial cheater who was cheating on you even when both of you were completely happy may always go looking for opportunities to cheat on you no matter how much you love them or try to stop them from straying.

Most people can’t change their personality because it’s who they are as an individual. And if your partner can’t change for you today, chances are, they may never ever change no matter how unconditionally you love them.

#5 Perfect relationships are effortless. This is the biggest lie you’ll hear. Relationships don’t magically work themselves up to perfection, like the way it’s shown in the movies. You have to make the effort to understand each other and communicate with each other. Don’t take it easy and expect things to just work itself out in the end because, as with everything else in life, good things don’t happen accidentally! [Read: 25 must-follow relationship rules for successful love]

#6 Having a child together will keep your relationship intact. Having a child together won’t keep you together or bring you happiness. Your efforts will. By bringing a child into your lives, you’re not clearing the emotional mess, you’re only adding to it by sweeping your troubles under a blanket and distracting yourselves with something that needs a lot of responsibility. Try to work on your relationship and make it better before having a baby, or both of you would be bound together, not by love, but by a baby and both your frustrations.

#7 Arguments in a relationship is unhealthy. Fights and angry arguments are stressful and can hurt both of you. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad thing. There may be a few couples who get along perfectly without any arguments because they’re more considerate or tolerant. On the other hand, there are many couples who hold their feelings in and explode at each other now and then. [Read: 10 tips to fight fair and make up the right way in love]

Fights can help partners understand each other and come closer, just as long as both partners learn from the argument and change for each other. [Read: How to give a lover the silent treatment the right way]

#8 True passion always stays alive. Passion, just like our bodies, needs the fuel to keep it up and running. Assuming that passion would stay alive by itself is the biggest mistake that new couples make. If you and your partner have sex spontaneously a few times a week, that’s great for you.

But if both of you are like most couples who are too busy in their lives, you need to understand that sexual intimacy rarely builds itself out of the blue. Try something new every few weeks so you can break the monotony of missionary sex, and sex will start to feel just as exciting as it did when both of you first hooked up. [Read: Top 50 kinky sex ideas that are worth trying at least once in your lives]

#9 You don’t need to change for someone else. When two individuals fall in love, they bring two lives together. And almost always, as perfect as both of them may be, they may not fit into each other’s lives like a perfect jigsaw puzzle.

Don’t change yourself completely for your lover. But at the same time, you need to be willing to make a few compromises now and then for each other. After all, relationships are all about compromises in little ways, be it about your favorite food, the places you go to, or the way you save money.

#10 If someone loves you, they’ll know what you want. Your partner isn’t telepathic. The only way your partner can ever understand you is if you communicate clearly with them and let them know how you feel about something.

Have you ever met a few couples who seem so perfect for each other? They understand each other’s minds perfectly *even without talking to each other about something* and never ever argue. Well, they may seem like they can read each other’s minds because they’re so in love, but in reality, it’s only because they communicate well with each other and understand each other completely. [Read: 12 tips to be a happy couple that’s envied by all other couples]

#11 Jealousy is a true sign of love. It’s true, jealousy can definitely be a sign of love. But it can also be a sign of selfish and malicious behavior too. If your partner gets jealous when you’re ignoring them and flirting with someone else, that’s acceptable behavior. But if your partner doesn’t like you talking to anyone of the opposite sex or hates it when you hang out with your friends instead of spending time with them, chances are, they’re subtly trying to control and manipulate you. [Read: 15 subtle and yet shocking signs of a controlling lover]

#12 Romantic moments just happen. Yes, it does. And that’s in the movies. In real life, there’s a lot of effort that goes into a simple moment like breakfast in bed. Cherished moments in love needs a bit of effort, because chance encounters rarely ever happen in real life. People may say that romance is all around us, and all we need to do is keep our eyes open. But as a relationship grows, you need to make the effort to create new romantic moments and memories or both of you may just end up taking each other for granted. [Read: 25 really romantic ideas to make your lover melt]

#13 Relationship counseling is a sign of a broken relationship. A relationship counselor can help you and your spouse better the relationship and understand each other better. But that doesn’t mean visiting a relationship counselor is a sign that your relationship is facing a breakdown. Looking at it in negative light will only ensure that you set yourself up for failure. Only a breakup or a failure to try and make up are signs of a broken relationship, and nothing else.

#14 There’s something wrong with you. Have your friends or family ever told you that there must be something wrong with you because you’re not able to hold on to a relationship? Or have they told you that you should be able to deal with your partner’s manipulative or abusive ways by now because both of you have been together for so long?

No matter what someone says, don’t believe it when they say that it’s all your fault. Perhaps, you may have a part to play in the failure of the relationship. But that doesn’t mean you should be solely blamed for a relationship’s failure even if you were being abused! Change yourself if you must, but do it because you want to, not because others see flaws in you. [Read: Am I in an abusive relationship? – 17 questions to ask yourself]

#15 Things will sort itself out soon. Don’t hold on to a relationship or a partner in the hope that they’ll change. If they aren’t changing today, even after repeated requests, what makes you think they’ll change tomorrow?

You may convince yourself that things will change soon, or that you’ll get used to your partner’s habits someday. But you’re not fixing anything by doing that, you’re only turning yourself into a martyr. And you’ll lead the rest of your life feeling miserable, hoping for something that may never happen. [Read: The 20 kinds of lovers in the world today]

#16 Sex is overrated. It definitely isn’t! And anyone who tells you that sex doesn’t matter for a successful relationship is lying to you, and is lying to themselves! Sexual intimacy and passion plays a big role in romantic relationships, and it’s one of the things that make a romantic relationship feel like one. If your partner and you aren’t having sex anymore or your sex life is on the decline, fix it quickly before sex starts to feel like an awkward problem that you’d rather not discuss with your lover! [Read: 20 sexual problems in a relationship you can definitely avoid]

Good relationship tips can help a relationship get better with time. But if you follow any of these 16 relationship tips, you may end up doing more harm than good for your romance!