Top 6 Behaviors That Ruin Romantic Love

Healthy marriages and relationships require constant work, effort and maintenance. Part of that work is deciphering and eliminating anything threatening to the union. Through years of counseling couples, Psychologist Dr. Willard Harley found 6 factors that are most destructive:

1) Selfish Demands: These are orders given to your spouse without regard for how they feel about them. Even something as simple as "come here now" can be a destructive demand. If "no" isn't acceptable, and there is some threat or punishment if the demand isn't met, it's selfish.

2) Disrespectful Judgements: This is imposing your way of thinking onto someone else. It's trying to force values, beliefs or perspectives onto a loved one. This is a disrespectful judgement because it implies they are inferior and must be fixed, corrected or straightened out.

3) Angry Outbursts: These are sudden episodes of physical or emotional lashing out without regard for the well being of the other person. It can range from sarcasm to domestic violence. Allowing anger to take over derails productive discussions in any relationship.

4) Dishonesty: People lie in relationships in order to protect the other person, to make themselves look good or to avoid negative consequences. However, dishonesty breaks trust and doesn't allow the relationship to progress because it hides what is really going on.

5) Annoying Habits: Over time, tiny but undesirable behaviors done repeatedly can lead to a loss of love. These can be innocent things like leaving a toilet seat up, tardiness, not returning calls/texts - almost anything that is done without regard for the other's feelings.

6) Independent Behavior: Any activity done, decision made or action taken without any consideration for the other person can derail a relationship. It can be physical and/or emotional distance or any part of life that is disconnected from the other person in the relationship.

What all of these actions have in common is they put one's own needs, wants and feelings over those of their loved one. This is a surefire way to make the other person feel disrespected, ignored, demeaned, lonely and often leads to break ups or divorce.

However, these can all be replaced with healthy habits. Replace demands with thoughtful requests, judgements with kind persuasion, anger with mindfulness, dishonesty with vulnerability, annoying habits with pleasing ones and independence with interdependence.

Identifying and eliminating the behaviors that are draining the most love from your relationship is a difficult process, but Dr. Willard Harley's book Love Busters explains precisely how to do so and offers guidance for replacing these habits with those that build romantic love.