By Katie & Gay Hendricks
Have you ever caught yourself saying statements like these to your partner:
You never listen to me.
I’m always doing everything around here.
Why do you always have to pick a fight?
You never touch me unless you want to get me in bed.
You’ll notice that they have these two words in common: “never” and “always.”
These two words are detrimental to your relationship, and they don’t get you the change you want. In fact, they are completely counterproductive to what you’re trying to accomplish.
How do you feel when you hear the words “you always” and “you never” from your mate?
We don’t have to take a guess, because we’ve experienced the negative effects of these words early on in our own marriage.
Chances are, you feel cornered, blamed, and hopeless. Or, you might feel negated. The conversation either shuts down, or escalates and goes nowhere.
That’s because the second you utter the words “you always” and “you never,” you are blaming your partner as a villain. And you’re the victim.
The victim is always wronged, and the villain is perpetuating the problem.
You get stuck in an endless loop of blame and criticism, and the problem never gets resolved.
Sadly, most of us have only learned blame and criticism as a way of getting our needs met.
It’s what we witness in our childhoods. It’s often all we know.
And because it’s all we know, we don’t even realize how destructive it is. We keep perpetuating the same problems because we use the same approaches that just don’t work.
Not only do they not work. They are the enemies of love and connection.
They create a dangerous cycle of more blame and criticism that will repeat over and over again.
To avoid this cycle, you need a new roadmap to love: a proven system of tools that helps you prevent fighting, loneliness and missed opportunities for connection.
Our free expert love advice newsletter will give you those tools.
In it, we’ll teach you all we’ve learned in over four decades counseling singles and couples on how to create genuine, lasting love.
We’ve helped thousands of people create more intimacy, connection and fulfillment in their relationships, and we can help you too. So if you want to know what makes love last forever, subscribe now.