Relationships fail every day of every week of every year and because humans are human that is what they will continue to do. The question is "Why?". Why do so many of us keep getting it wrong? We can all probably make a long list of reasons that start with 'he this' or 'she that', but the reality is we are all flawed, we all have hormones that over rule our common sense, and we rarely learn from our mistakes.
You meet the man or woman of your dreams. Your hormones surge, you dance the dance that is a new relationship and with hormones at an all time high you experience the love, the passion, and the pure delight of a new bonding with this partner. What you don't really look at during the hormonal flood is the flaws in your partner. Should you notice them you are willing to overlook them or even completely ignore them in order to enjoy the things about them that you so adore and so very much want to be the whole of them. Mistake number one has already been made! You have been tricked by nature, your hormones, and theirs, have set you up for a coupling, to do what nature intended and lead you down the pathway to procreation, and you dear person are not in the driver's seat of your relationship at all. You don't ask the hard questions, you don't face the reality of who each other is, you simply love and overlook. If you talk you talk about the beautiful dreams, the unreal future. You don't talk about who puts out the garbage or where he drops his underwear every morning now do you? Nature is self centered and has a sense of humor and at this point it is getting all the laughs. If we humans could pull ourselves up by the bootlaces and engage our brains at this point potential disaster could be avoided. We don't though, we like good little puppets of nature fall headlong into romance just as Mother Nature intended us to do.
Your relationship, should it last past this stage, experiences a gradual waning of the hormonal flood. You begin to notice more of the flaws, some of which may even amuse you at this stage because, lets face it, you are still in the flush of new love even though you may have been together as a couple for a year or so by now. If you have already moved in together or married you are still in the honeymoon phase and really, from your perspective, his constant tapping or her lipsticks all around the bathroom sink are really just quirks and you can live with them. More and more flaws begin to become obvious and to slowly irritate you as the honeymoon period wanes, but hey, you love each other so it doesn't really matter now does it? Mistake number two usually occurs around about now. This is where you should be talking these things through, sorting them out amicably while you still can, but no, nature does not intend you to deal with reality just yet. In fact, nature actually didn't incorporate a 'reality check' into her procreation program so the chances are, you and your partner will probably try to overlook each other's little foibles for just a while longer. Neither of you will be inclined to burst the bubble because neither of you want to be the adult who takes on the emotional responsible role of making you both face up to, and deal with, the reality of what you both have done by pairing up. Another evil trick by nature, we may be adults but in the early stages of a relationship we don't want to put on the 'mama and papa shoes' and act like grown ups should.
Eventually in any relationship the honeymoon period and the hormones required to keep it simply fade away. Another of nature's evil plots has succeeded as by now you've had great sex on a regular basis and by rights, without the intervention of modern birth control, any procreation would have already occurred. Nature's job is done so she simply quits right about now and leaves you two to wonder what the hell you've done to be coupled with him or her. Not only do you now have doubts you have downright misgivings. The agonising begins, the questions run through your mind. "Can I put up with this?", "Why did I marry this?", "What the heck was I thinking?". You now express yourself with outright hostile statements such as "I don't like.." or "I can't stand.." The fighting begins. If you are lucky, one or both of you is now willing and able to step up to the mark and take some emotional responsibility for actually building a relationship that can take you both happily into the future. If you are unlucky, the wheels fall off big time and the seeds of disaster continue to grow.
Being 'lucky' enough to have the emotional maturity 'gene' will depend an awful lot on your nature, and your nurturing in childhood. Good relationships are built on both being able to recognize there is a problem and also being able to do something about it. Doing something about it involves taking action, talking , discussing, and listening. It may also involve getting outside help. Getting mad or getting even, yelling and screaming, is useless and destructive to any relationship. You yourself may have what it takes here but your partner may not. In this case, unless you can convince your partner to attend counseling then the relationship is still going to head down the disaster channel.
Essentially, no matter how a relationship starts, it will fail if there is poor communication between the two of you and communication is all about you both hearing what the other person has to say. If you want it to work then you will hone your listening skills and you will communicate your own wants and desires. Once both of you have talked and both of you have listened, only then do you have a chance to make the changes and compromises needed to make a relationship work. Nature may have abandoned you once the procreating fun waned but it's still adding to the difficulties as by nature humans are ego centered and their world is about their own individual happiness, their own desires need to be satisfied above someone else's. It takes time and effort to stand in your partner's shoes and see what the world looks like through their eyes and how your actions make them hurt or happy. The world is a very busy place and lives are rushed, people do not make the time for this much needed essential communication without which, eventually, all relationships will fail.