::10 Mistakes that can kill your Relationship::

No relationship is perfect. However, there are several serious pitfalls that will end a relationship very quickly if you don't try to avoid them. The 10 items below are some of the most common and serious mistakes than can keep you from having the lasting relationship you want.

1. Cheating.
Being unfaithful is the number one way to end a relationship. If you want to see someone else, be responsible enough to end your relationship first. Anything else is just being dishonest and cowardly.

2. Hanging on to Your Ex.
While it's very important to remember your past mistakes, it's also important to move on. If you're still hung up on your ex, perhaps it's too early to start a new relationship. Even when you think you have no feelings left, if you're stuck in a pattern of bringing up your ex all the time when you talk with your new partner, you should do some serious thinking about where you've been and where you're heading. Your current partner deserves your full attention. It's only fair.

3. Rushing Things.
Relationships develop at their own pace. Some move quickly, others move slowly and steadily. If you push your partner too much, you risk pushing them away. Two prime examples of this are the timing of physical intimacy and saying "I love you." Both of these things are best when they happen naturally. You'll both know when the time is right and the relationship won't be strained.

4. Being Ruled by Jealousy.
Often feelings of intense jealousy are caused by past relationships. If your partner is open and honest, you shouldn't feel threatened by incidental contact with someone else. Conversation and interaction is normal. Trust is also important. If you become jealous with your partner without real cause, it can seriously harm your relationship.

5. Focusing too Much on the Future. When relationships are new, it's not the time to dwell too much on the future. Live for the day. The flush of excitement of a new relationship only happens once. Instead of worrying about what's coming next, enjoy what you have now. Often when one partner is too concerned about the future, the other partner is scared away thinking that they are too serious. Again, live for the moment and enjoy where you are.

6. Failure to Balance Friendships With the Relationship.
It's important for each of you to have friends. People often take things very personally when someone talks badly about a friend. Because of these two things, it's critical to allow your partner time with and for their friends while avoiding talking badly about them. No one is perfect - most of our friends have quirks. Just remember that your friends can be a little strange, too. Finally, don't feel threatened when your partner wants to do something with their friends.

7. Failure to Communicate.
Open honest communication is one of the most important things in a healthy relationship. When you keep secrets or even feel too embarrassed to discuss your thoughts, it can build walls between you and your partner. Yes, there is a risk that your feelings or thoughts might end up causing problems in the relationship. However, if there's a break-up because you're not compatible, that's OK. In fact it's far better to find that out than to pretend you're something you're not.

8. Forcing your Partner to Change.
This is the flip-side of #7. If you can't accept who your partner is, you probably should find someone else. When you force your partner to change, there is often resentment and the changes rarely last. Even when a partner has a real problem, we can't "fix" them. We can encourage, but if they don't commit to the change on their own, it just won't happen.

9. Blaming Your Partner.
A relationship takes two people. So do relationship problems. It can be very difficult and often painful to admit our part in relationship problems, but an honest look at our actions is critical. If you expect your partner to face the blame for a problem all alone, don't be surprised when they don't want to do anything else with your either.

10. Staying After the Feeling is Gone.
If you're just going through the motions in a relationship, your partner knows it. If the relationship is worth saving, you both need to talk and find a way to reignite the spark If not, you should be honest enough to admit that the relationship is over. Often we're stuck in these ruts because the uncomfortable "known" seems better than the scary "unknown." In reality, a flat relationship will not last, and will often lead to serious conflict.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Doug_M._Johnson

:: Doom? ::

I saw this on Nic's blog and thought this is intersting. (Sometimes it does feel sick to be doing the same thing as others)
Tue, Dec 09, 2008
The Sunday Times
It's all doom and groom by Teo Cheng Wee

That's it. I'm not going to get married. Not the way weddings are going today.

This being the year-end wedding season, I've gone to a couple of them and I'm constantly reminded that each one needs to be more special than the last.

I guess it's only natural for couples to want to outdo others at the altar. It's a big day and nobody wants to have 'just another wedding'.

So I've gone to gardens, beaches and bungalows for weddings. I've even boarded a cruise ship that sailed around Singapore's Southern Islands, which I thought was hard to top.

But that was challenged by a wedding I attended recently where the couple shot and edited their own video, and the bride surprised the groom by secretly learning to play the guitar - no easy thing to hide when they are planning a wedding together - and singing a song to him on stage. The groom then surprised her by playing the keyboard.

Phew.

By the time it's my turn, if I'm going to do something that no one else has done before, I would have to eat fire on stage - no, make that eat fire on stage while rollerblading - then throw knives blindfolded at my wife, who will catch them with her mouth.

Then - what the heck, since I have already put in so much effort - a trained polar bear can pass me my wedding rings.

Oh and of course, we'll quit our jobs two years before the big day to train for this.

It didn't seem that long ago that weddings were much simpler affairs. These days, everyone claims that their wedding is also 'a simple affair', but underneath that so-called simplicity is a whole lot of thought and attempt to stake a claim at uniqueness.

Think of the little creative activities I've been asked to do at different weddings: Use the marker pens we've provided and decorate the cards on your dinner table with your wishes. Sign our pop art canvas portrait. Take a polaroid picture with us and save it as a keepsake.

I haven't been around long enough to track the complete history of Singaporean weddings, but my take is that they evolve every decade or so.

There will be a period of stability, some kind of wedding norm that everyone sticks to for a period of time.

Then a group of smart alecks will decide that it's too stale and come up with a fancy new idea, triggering a quantum leap to another level. Everyone follows suit, another period of stability sets in, and so on.

Allow me to illustrate.

In the 1980s, as many of you will remember, weddings were straightforward affairs, held in some Chinese restaurant in Chinatown or Pasir Panjang.

Depending on your taste, you will enter the restaurant to the blaring sounds of Europe's Final Countdown or George Lam and Sally Yeh's Xuan Ze (Choice).

Fast forward a decade or so to the 1990s, and weddings were no longer deemed grand enough if you held them at Chinese restaurants, so everyone looked for their favourite five-star hotel ballroom in Orchard Road.

If you have taste, you will enter the ballroom to anything but Europe's Final Countdown or George Lam and Sally Yeh's Xuan Ze (Choice).

Another decade flies by and ballrooms have become passe. You should now hold your wedding on a beach in Bali.

Regardless of your taste, you will make your grand entrance to some song by a bossa nova singer no one has heard of.

Somewhere down the road, I can imagine this conversation taking place with my significant other.

Me: Why don't we fake a walk-in with music and smoke, but then burst out of the wedding cake?Fiancee: I heard a friend of Jane's has already done that.
Me: How about we step into a box and appear on stage the next second?
Fiancee: Oh, John and Michelle did that at their wedding. He sawed her in half and put her back also.
Me: Okay. Why don't we call off the wedding?
Fiancee: I don't mind, but Paul and Peggy have already cancelled theirs first.

There are two ways to go forward for me. Use this as a convenient excuse if I don't get hitched. Or if you know a smart, funny woman who doesn't mind having knives thrown at her on her big day, give me a call.

I will take her to the zoo to see the polar bears.

This article was first published in The Sunday Times on Dec 7, 2008.