7 Ways To Ruin Your Relationship Without Realizing You’re Doing It

Relationships are a pretty difficult thing to wrap your head around. It’s almost too easy to scare a woman off sometimes. Fortunately, we’re here to help. Here are seven ways you can ruin your relationship without realizing you’re doing it.

7. Shower Her With Gifts

Women love getting gifts almost more than they love frozen yogurt and Vera Bradley. There shouldn’t really be an issue if you keep getting her gifts, right? Let’s just say that if assumptions were cobras you’d already be foaming at the mouth and going into muscle spasms. By showering her with gifts early on, you are setting an unattainable standard. In other words, you can’t possibly keep getting your partner presents forever.

You might not even have to wait for this pitfall to become, well… a pitfall. Consistently and persistently getting her gifts might lead her to assume you are atoning for or hiding something. Suspicion breeds animosity… which we hear really decreases your chances of getting some.

6. Sharing Personal Details Too Soon

Many jokes are made on the banality of small talk. Talking about the weather or your hometown has become so clichéd that clichés don’t even let it party with them anymore. But there’s a reason that the dull and unoriginal are standards for first dates — because they’re safe. Dropping intimate and personal bombshells early on could separate the keepers from the flakes… but it could also drive everyone away. We’re looking at you Mrs. Sadomasochistic Ex-Groupie Born-Again-Jehovah’s-Witness.

5. Never Have An Opinion

Women love guys that are easygoing. Some scientists even purport that “going with the flow” is at the root of all “coolness”. It’s complicated stuff that we won’t delve into too much right now. Be careful though — don’t let your easygoing personality become an insouciant tumor that forces her to milk every decision out of the relationship. It’s not her job to interrogate you or to make all the choices. Plus, the imagery of someone milking a tumor is gross. Just because you have a “better half” doesn’t mean your opinions are worth squat. So man up and have some, or you could literally ruin your relationship by doing nothing at all.

4. Let Your Friends Fight

Much is made of partners meeting the parents and relatives. Most of the time this endeavor doesn’t even involve flaming gazebos or Robert De Niro. In reality, meeting her friends is much more important because many relationships don’t even make it to the parent stage.

You’ll put up with her lesbian friend with the ear studs (the one who she says is hilarious) — but your friends won’t. If you don’t diffuse the powder keg of warring friend groups or get new friends then be prepared for your sweetheart to pick sides. You’ll be amazed at how quickly she doesn’t pick yours. You’re sowing the destruction of your relationship years in advance, just by having friends.

3. Complain To Her

Let her help you with things — it will allow her to become more involved in your life. Remember to do the same for her. If she gets you coffee, then help her move her futon. Just don’t complain to her about all your problems. Not only will that make her not want to help you, it will make you seem immature. Then she’ll start talking to her personal trainer with the impressive musculature and before you know it they’re dating. Soon enough they’re sending you their Christmas card every year from their lovely home in West Palm. All because you kept complaining to her about pointless crap. They even have a pool. And a dog that looks like ‘Wishbone’.

2. Always Initiate Sex

Eventually there comes a time in a relationship when both of you are going to decide that you’d like the others fluids. She’ll pretend to like it and you’ll both be out of breath but somehow you’ll let your partner know that it was good and worth doing again. Don’t let this acknowledgment lure you into a false sense of security or an even worse, a cycle where you always initiate sex. She’ll grow tired of it and eventually feel that sex is all you want. If you want more sex, it is imperative that you don’t let on how much more sex you want. Let’s be honest, to a guy sex never really sounds like a bad idea. Unless you have the flu. That sucks big time.

1. Saying ‘I Love You’ Too Early or Often

Women fear commitment too. Even though every girl dreams of getting married on a pony made out of Easy-Bake Ovens, that doesn’t mean that they’ll fall head over heels for any guy that takes the ultimate emotional risk. Saying “I love you” too soon can easily backfire.

Remember, while women may seem to do strange and unfathomable things, in many ways they are much like us. They are largely carbon based. They breathe air. They must eat food to survive (although they consume chocolate covered pretzels at a much higher ratio). They even need emotional space and time to mature in a relationship. So while you’re pondering the truly weird things about women, like why she doesn’t “hold her period in,” you can at least take solace in the common ground that she is as afraid of commitment as you are.