Discover 5 reasons people have superficial relationships and learn how to avoid them to form deeper bonds and more fulfilling relationships.
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| Photo by Yuris Alhumaydy on Unsplash |
That’s all you want. You want to have great relationships. When you’re in a happy and healthy relationship, you feel content and positive.
Because the quality of your life is a reflection of the quality of your relationships not just with your romantic partner but with people around you.
“The quality of your life is the quality of your relationships.” -Tony Robbins
That’s why we all crave quality, deep, and healthy relationships. But most of the time, most people get in the way and sabotage the success of their own relationships. And at the end of the day, they cast blames on whatever they like for the misfortunes of their relationships.
But unless they address and fix their personal problems, issues, and behaviors, they’ll forever wallow in mediocre, shallow, and superficial relationships.
That said, let’s take a look at five reasons most people will always have mediocre and superficial relationships:
They usually suck at communicating.
If your relationships often seem shallow and superficial, it has everything to do with the level of your communication. Usually, when you don’t know how to communicate effectively with your partner(s), your relationships suffer.
Poor communication usually becomes apparent when people fail to understand their partners love language. It might also be obvious if people expect their partners to read their minds. When people don’t listen to their partners. When people don’t empathize with their partners, and so on.
I once heard a story of a man who always showers his woman with gifts whereas all she ever wanted was quality time with him. That’s her love language. My ex-girlfriend always refuses to speak up whenever she’s upset leaving me to figure things out myself… But people who enjoy deep, intimate, and satisfying relationships, know how their partners want to be loved, never bottle up what’s upsetting them, in fact, they are good listeners and are even considerate.
Once you learn to communicate effectively with your partner(s), you’ll easily develop a strong bond with them. You’ll avoid most serious love language disconnects like the man who showers his woman with gifts instead of spending quality time with her.
And your relationships will be free of unnecessary drama and conflicts. By prioritizing effective communication, you can build relationships that thrive on authentic connection and avoid the pitfalls of shallow and superficial relationships.
Further reading: 7 Subtle Differences Between Truly Happy Couples, and The Rest
They’re unhealthily critical.
People often portray themselves as “honest people” but end up destroying others with their comments that are rather critical than commentative. Extraordinary relationships are free of unnecessary and unhealthy criticism.
Most people who are negative and insecure, criticize other people to validate their insecurities and reaffirm their negative beliefs about themselves and the world. Some of them only view and judge the world through the lens of their own life experiences and hence, project their fears and failures on other people via their critical comments. Nobody wants either of the unhealthy personalities in a partner.
That’s why people enjoying great and meaningful relationships don’t lambaste their partner’s choice of style, friends, jobs or career, appearance, etc.
Loving partners don’t drain their significant others’ confidence and self-esteem. They don’t make them wallow in depression. Neither do they make them feel worthless?
The bottom line?
If you’re so bent on spelling out people’s weaknesses and always looking for flaws in whatever other people do, sparing no one even your partners, you’ll forever have a litany of mediocre or superficial relationships.
Related: The Subtle Differences Between Successful Long-Term Relationships, And Short-lived Ones
They’ll never make the first move.
Making the first move has always been a pride thing. And so many marriages and relationship breakups are attributed to it.
In this day and time, making the first move is a daunting task as no one would want to appear desperate, weak, silly, and immature. But on the contrary, deep maturity has to do with swallowing up pride and making the first move especially in strained relationships.
Waiting for the other person to always make the first move — to apologize, initiate conversations, send the first texts, etc, will only feed your pride but hurt your relationships. Allowing pride to hinder your willingness to make the first move can lead to superficial relationships.
That’s why you shouldn’t let your pride get in the way. Try to make the first move even if you don’t want to, even when it should be them. Be the first to organize a hangout, apologize and ask for forgiveness, thank them, or say you love them.
Because if you apologize, they’ll likely apologize too. If you always suggest meeting up, they might someday do the same. And if you thank them or tell them you love them, they’ll also do the same.
And at the end of the day, your relationships will be everything but superficial or mediocre.
You may also like: 5 Of The Easiest Ways To Be Unhappy In A Good Relationship
They are good at playing the blame game.
In general, people who enjoy great relationships are emotionally mature enough to take responsibility for their actions. And not blame others for everything, even their own actions like the emotionally immature ones who always end up in superficial and mediocre relationships.
The people who tend to constantly blame their significant others for no just reason are nothing but emotionally abusive.
They forcefully make people feel like they aren’t good enough. Like they’re always wrong, and worse, they make them feel guilty always.
Whereas, in healthy relationships, emotional maturity, responsibility, and respect rules. But some people will always end up in mediocre and shitty relationships because their huge egos and need to be controlling makes them blame others for everything that goes wrong.
And If you so desire to enjoy deep and meaningful relationships, you need to learn to be empathetic and not judgmental. Learn to take your own responsibility for everything that goes wrong because you’re 50% responsible for everything that happens to you. And learn to accept things as they are, move on, keep soaring and smiling.
Check out: 5 Main Pillars Of Successful Relationships
They’re always selfish and self-centered.
People in healthy and extraordinary relationships aren’t self-absorbed, self-centered, or selfish. They don’t go out of their way to make everything all about them.
I don’t deem it fit to always talk about myself and my interests and I don’t think it’s even right to control and make my girlfriend seem like my puppet. Because that’ll make me selfish.
Being a selfish partner will only make the relationship overly frustrating for the other party. As you’ll turn out to be inconsiderate, ungrateful, and worse, you’ll turn out to be someone who doesn’t contribute anything to the betterment of the relationship. In essence, you will be the architect of the downfall of your relationships.
But unless you learn to be selfless, you’ll never stand a chance in hell of enjoying satisfying and extraordinary relationships. In other words, to avoid superficial relationships, you must learn to be a giver — giver of time, attention, love, and energy to make your relationships thrive.
Also read: 5 Truths About Relationships That Will Change The Way You Think About Love
But does this mean that there’s such thing as a perfect relationship? Of course not, but there are relationships where deep understanding and mutual respect for each other’s individuality exist.
Cultivating strong, intimate, and healthy relationships is never an easy task. Because they happen through hard, loving work. But taking the inversion approach might be the easiest way to achieve them.
By this I mean, instead of trying to figure out how to build healthy and extraordinary relationships, one might try to avoid mediocre relationships when he stops doing things that drive people into such relationships.
