In today’s post, I outline five losing strategies couples use toward each other that can eventually kill their relationship. These five strategies come from Relational Life Therapy (Terry Real).

Most long-term couples aren't actually arguing about twenty different topics — they're having the same one or two arguments in different costumes. The specific trigger changes (money, in-laws, chores, tone of voice), but the underlying pattern repeats: one person pursues and the other withdraws, or both dig in and neither backs down, or the same unresolved hurt from years ago gets reactivated every time.

This quandary rarely announces itself with a crisis. It arrives quietly, through years of full calendars, tired evenings, and the assumption that the relationship will simply take care of itself while attention goes elsewhere — work, kids, ministry, the next deadline. Then one day someone looks up and realizes they're coexisting rather than truly knowing each other.

Recently, a rather smart, beautiful young lady contacted me about her fiancé’s family business. Her future father-in-law – who owns the business – is overbearing and treats his son – her fiancé – poorly, failing to compensate him and not following through on promises to relinquish control. Even though the father has gifted significant numbers of non-voting shares to his three sons and one daughter, the other three siblings have long since left the business because they can’t get along with their dad.