Everyone knows relationships are hard work. Everyone knows that relationships hit roadblocks and whatever the fuck else. Fucking why. What’s the point? Be with a person that you mostly tolerate most of the days that you exist? And even then, they still might betray you in a horrible way. I’ve dealt with a lot of pain and stress and loss in my life, and when the happy shit gets sour, I just don’t fucking get it. Why not just live my life fucking off and dying eventually.
Can you explain what exactly people should improve on? I had a relationship with someone I really liked not work out and as much as I reflect back on it I don’t really know what I should have done differently.
There is no one answer.
I could list out all the qualities that are ideal in a partner, but I would just be stating the obvious.
The answer you need will be different than the answer someone else needs. It is up to you to be self-aware enough to be able to see what you need to work on and go from there. If you can’t see your own problems, then starting on working on your self-awareness is where you should start.
Part of the self-evaluation process is unfortunately having a break-up conversation so you can understand why the relationship didn’t work out. That can be a rough conversation, especially if the two of you didn’t have the best communication skills and they can convey to you effectively what the issues were and you can ask the right questions in the right way to get a useful answer. Ideally you would have great communication in the relationship and can have honest conversations about the issues one another is having before the issues become problems that end the relationship.
Adding into the issue of communication is accepting criticism and being able to determine valid criticism from false criticism. An example of this is someone breaking up with you because you don’t spend money on them. Is that a valid criticism? Through effective communication you can make that determination. Are you the problem because you don’t take them to dinner on Valentine’s Day because you just replaced a good TV with a bigger one and don’t have money for a V-Date or are they the problem because they expect you to buy them random luxury goods when you live paycheck to paycheck?
Is it valid criticism to break up because you don’t do anything around the house? Are you the problem because you don’t do anything around the house after work or are they the problem because they don’t work and don’t do anything around the house except watch anime and play videogames and expect you to pay the bills, do the shopping, cook, and clean?
So valid criticisms are genuine problems that you create in not meeting reasonable expectations your partner has. Understanding if your or their expectations are reasonable is sometimes hard. Having a couple’s therapist to talk to can really help in that matter. A less than ideal second place option is AI. If you and your partner can explain the problem to an AI, the AI may be able to provide useful feedback and it is up to the both of you to accept the outcome of either therapy or AI opinion and begin working on the issue.
So your keys to the kingdom are self-awareness, ability to accept criticism, and communication. If you can develop those skills, then every other issue you have can be determined and then it becomes a matter of figuring out improvements to make you a better you with or without the help of a therapist.