Anyone who has read me knows that there is something I say over and over again (because it is so important!): To be able to truly love yourself and to truly be able to love someone else, you must drop the ego. This is absolutely essential to finding an amazing relationship, but it’s equally critical to maintaining and continually improving a relationship once you’re already in it.
Nothing will kill a relationship (even the best of relationships) more quickly than ego. Here are 6 ways your ego can kill your relationship, and how to avoid having your ego ruin your relationship.
- Resist The Temptation To Defend Yourself: Think about the number of times you’ve fought with a significant other, and whenever things get a little heated you start to defend yourself. All you hear is you being attacked, and you immediately go into “defending yourself” mode. Do you know that when you defend yourself in a fight, what’s really happening is your ego is defending itself.
It also means that you’ve stopped listening to the other person. If someone tells you that they don’t like the way you’ve been acting lately, why not hear them out instead of defending yourself? It will almost always create a MUCH better outcome.
- To Love Yourself And Someone Else Completely You Must Separate The Ego: In order to truly love someone, you must separate your ego from yourself. This is also true if you want to be able to totally love yourself. Now, I know that in a perfect world, we would never be ego-driven. This is not a perfect world of course, so let’s get real. We are all ego-driven to some extent or another, so let’s acknowledge it and embrace that we need to separate the ego to cultivate and maintain a truly amazing relationship with someone.
- Your Ego Can Ruin Any Conversation: The truth is that no matter how much you prepare, plan and hope for a good conversation with your significant other, your ego is the one thing that will consistently ruin any conversation you’re about to have if you let it.
Let’s say your significant other is frustrated with you in one way or another and really needs to express something about that to you. How do you respond? If you let your ego get involved and you defend yourself, it means that you’re not listening to them.
In order to really listen to somebody, it’s uncomfortable. Sometimes your significant other has things that are really bothering them about which they want to talk to you, but which you would rather not hear. To maintain a great relationship, however, you can’t let your ego keep you from really listening.
- You Have To Be Willing To Drop The Ego And Learn To Have A Healthy Relationship: If you want to really be able to get deep with someone and take your relationship to a deep level, then you need to be able to take your ego out of the equation. You will always attract somebody who is just like yourself, because you really attract who you are as a person. Also, your significant other is going to do things that you don’t recognize. It may be voices, patterns, communication styles or other things with which you aren’t familiar.
You need to be open and able to learn these things about your significant other, and your ego will keep you from doing this every time. All of us need to learn things about our significant other every single day. We need to learn our significant other’s communication style, because many times your communication styles will be very different.
- Dropping The Ego Doesn’t Mean You Need To Change Who You Are: It can take a lot for you to drop the ego, really listen to your significant other and realize that they need you say something in a different way or understand how the way you communicate may make them feel a certain way. A lot of people misunderstand these kind of requests as being their significant other’s attempt to change them. It’s not.
They’re not trying to change you, they are trying to improve the way you communicate with each other. They are trying to get the two of you to be able to communicate better than you ever have in the past. Don’t let your ego get in the way. Embrace this!
- Ego Causes Those “Low Blowers” Which Are The Biggest Relationship Killers: Do you get frustrated when you’re having an argument with a significant other? Of course, we all do. When that happens, though, sometimes the ego will cause you to hurl what I call “low blowers” at the other person.
You’re feeling hurt, so you lash out and say something you know will make the other person hurt too. It was not only hurtful, but inevitably something stupid. By listening to your significant other, instead of lashing out from your ego, you can get through an argument without these low blows and they will be much more constructive (and not destructive to your relationship).
So the next time you see your ego getting involved in your relationship, get rid of it! If you find yourself defending yourself or not allowing you to really listen, then you need to take a step back. Listen carefully to what’s really being said, and use it to create the most amazing relationship.
