10. Comparing your relationship to others.
To compare is to despair, be grateful for what you’ve got, build, grow and invest in your relationship daily and don’t think the ‘grass is greener.’
11. Needing a relationship for their street credibility.
Nobody wants to be the last of their friends to be single, for fear of what it might say about them. The more you feel that fear, the more inclined you will be to accept anyone who more or less fits your peer group’s standards. This may well mean that you focus primarily on appearances. Not the best basis for lasting happiness. And that’s another one of many mistakes people make in their first relationship and why such a relationship may never last.
12. Seeing the other person as your improvement project.
You tell yourself that you absolutely love them; all they need is a little tweaking and changing to be absolutely perfect – and you’re the person to do that tweaking and changing. People don’t take kindly to being tweaked and changed. It gives them the message that they are not good enough as they are. That’s when the Law of Reciprocity swings into play: if you find fault with them, they’ll find fault with you. That’s not good, and it’s one of the dangerous mistakes people make in their first relationship.
13. Emotional baggage overload.
People fondly imagine that a first relationship has magic healing powers, so they only have to bring all their past hurts and trauma to the relationship and it will all be burned away in the cleansing fire of love. If only! In reality what happens is that all of this emotional baggage acts like a fire hose which will extinguish the fire of love. You need to deal with your own problems before you get into a relationship. Unless you can both show up in the relationship as mature, happy adults you can’t have a mature, happy relationship.
