Healthy couple relationships are, of course, based on love, but alongside this are respect, loyalty, honesty and trust. It happens that in almost every couple there are certain delicate issues, difficult to bring up and difficult to manage once the cards have been put on the table, but which can more often than not develop negatively for the couple and lead to unhappiness or even break-up if ignored. These are the 5 most common awkward issues affecting couples.
5 uncomfortable issues that should be discussed in any couple when they exist
As just mentioned, these problems are related to sensitive topics and solving them requires first of all the acceptance of the existence of these problems and further on the involvement of both partners, which requires certain sacrifices from both of them. This is why these situations are difficult, as they can touch on vulnerabilities and areas of life which, however painful, must be resolved and overcome for the good of the relationship in the future.
Addictions
Some of these addictions seem harmless and do not have a direct impact on the couple’s behaviour, but others have visible and very negative effects on life together.
We already know that smoking affects long-term health and fertility, alcohol leads to undesirable behavioural disorders in couples and other relationships, food addictions or tics or other repetitive problems can have an impact on relational, social or even personal life.
When these addictions bother the other partner in a more or less obvious way, or the couple’s life in general, it is advisable for the couple to talk about them, however uncomfortable the subject may be. It is important that the two find a solution that they can put into practice, step by step or all at once, so as to eliminate this inconvenience.
Often in dealing with addictions, external help is needed from a specialist or even a team of specialists to deal with the problem.
The wounds of the past
It is the past that forms us, based on it we are… as we are in the present, but it is very important to try not to let the past influence us negatively, but on the contrary, to extract from it the lessons that needed to be learnt and further change with each experience into a better version of ourselves.
The theory sounds nice, but the practice is quite difficult. It happens that we often bring various negative emotions from the past and learned behaviours into our current relationships as a pattern, without realising that we have better options that lead us to the outcomes we want.
Some behaviours in relationships can even be taken from our parents, just as we can take fears from them in childhood and develop them later in adult life. Injuries from old relationships can also cause us to make mistakes in our current relationship.
It is important to identify these negative elements from the past and try to resolve them. Often we don’t even realise they exist, but if we have a partner who is open and honest with us, they will certainly tell us that some of our behaviours are disturbing. And the same should apply.
So partners should also have related discussions about their past hurts, to get assurance of trust in the current relationship from each other and to be able to be understood and more easily understood when they make some mistakes.
Mental and mood disorders
If in the pandemic these changes in people’s behaviour have become much more obvious, represented in particular by depression and bouts of anxiety, well such situations intervene in our daily lives even in those good times.
These disorders can be caused by overwork, by certain pathologies that occur during life, such as endocrine or cardiovascular diseases, by negative experiences that leave an emotional mark on us, and so on.
It is very important that when we feel this or we notice this kind of behaviour in our partner, we do not pretend not to see it, pretending that it does not exist, thinking that it will somehow pass. It is best to discuss these emotions and behaviours and try to resolve them either as a couple or with a specialist.
Discussions about the couple’s future
There are situations where couples are facing infertility or one partner wants children and the other does not. If the vision of family has not been worked out from the beginning of the relationship, it is good to have these discussions as early as possible when the couple has already strengthened.
Such situations are difficult to control, especially when the two people have quite different visions of family. The differences may not necessarily be about having children or not, perhaps one partner really wants to emigrate, perhaps one partner would like to have pets or study in another city or country.
All of these future projections must be accepted by both partners and also assumed, down to the smallest details, in order for things to work as well as possible.