There are a lot of articles written about how to tell if you’re in the right relationship or not.
However, a lot of women will base this idea on simply their feelings in the present moment. This isn’t exactly the best strategy for finding long-lasting love.
After all, your emotions probably change day in and day out (and sometimes from moment to moment).
False positives can show up in your relationships every day, in just the little habits you’ve built around each other.
But these are not reasons to stay in a relationship.
Here are three potentially ‘false positive’ signs that make you stay in a bad relationship:
1. You have great chemistry
It’s great when you and your guy just “click,” but this isn’t a sign that the two of you are meant to be or that your relationship will be great. Chemistry is actually just a feeling of connection and rapport that you have with another person. That’s it.
Believe it or not, it’s a skill that you can learn, so you can have chemistry with anyone if you take the time to get to know him/her.
The problem is that so many people have bad communication and conversation skills that they rarely feel that connection. After all, just because you get along with someone doesn’t mean you have romantic chemistry.
2. You have great sex
Great sex is an amazing component of a great relationship, but it’s not the only one. All it means is that the two of you are good at sex. But that’s it.
Sex is also a skill, which means that it’s learned by both of you.
Sure, sex feels good, and I hope you have a lot of great sex with whoever you choose to settle down with, but it doesn’t mean that the two of you are fated.
3. You’ve been together for a long time
Just because the two of you have been together forever doesn’t mean that you are the ideal couple. Time is not the main contributing factor to your perfect relationship.
Surely you’ve seen older couples, married for decades, who don’t particularly like one another, right? There’s no joy or affection, but neither one of them is willing to actually leave the relationship. It’s just a sort of complacency that’s taken them over. Clearly if simply being together for a long time was an indicator of a great relationship, these people would be the happiest couples out there.
It takes more than rapport, sex, or time to make a great relationship, so should build great relationships on more stable things like trust and commitment.
Don’t get me wrong though, what we’ve talked about in this article aren’t bad things. They just don’t signal that you’ve arrived at relationship nirvana.
Take them as perks, but don’t look at them as the core foundation of your relationship.
Clay Andrews is a relationship coach and founder of Attract the One. He specializes in helping people repair, save and build relationships.
