It’s in our nature to disagree, more than we agree on things. Every individual is different, every person has their own point of views on life and how to live it, and when two people get into a relationship they start sharing a life together, and that’s when the fights slowly start to happen. It’s perfectly normal to fight your significant other, but the fights should not get out of hand and should be controlled by one of the two. I’m going to mention some of the most common relationship fights, because these fights can often lead to harsh breakups (I’ve seen them happen and also been through a few). The point of this article is to prepare you guys for the negativities that come with every relationship and I’ll try my best to teach you how to deal with those negativities. Let’s begin.

7. Fights pertaining to money

“Money” is one of the strongest evils of the world, we all need it, some of us have a lot of it, some of us don’t have enough to lead a normal life, some of us have more than enough but we still want more. Every person is different in this aspect and money is something that can literally cause a lot of damage to any relationship if it’s not properly dealt with. My ex, for example, always expected me to spend on her even when I didn’t have enough, this made me feel bad about myself and greatly lowered my self-esteem and made me apply for small-time jobs just to make her needs meet. Eventually, I started believing that the relationship was fueled with money, which shouldn’t be the case in any relationship because money is a very temporary luxury, so even though I started earning a lot of money, I left her. I’ve seen even the richest of friends go poor over one stupid decision. The girl I’m with now, who I mentioned in my previous article – “10 Ways to really make her happy“, is an amazing person. She knows I spend a lot on myself and on her, she keeps asking me to lower my expenses and to save more for our future. It’s not unhealthy to sit and talk about money if it’s going in a positive direction, try and understand what your partner means, try to grasp where they are coming from. Don’t shun the idea of saving. But if it seems like a relationship where money is discussed more than it should be, you’re with the wrong person.

6. Fights about In-laws

It is bound to happen at one point. When you find your significant other, you need to be prepared to be okay with their family. The fights happen because you naturally can’t love their family like your own no matter how hard you try, but you still have to keep trying. You can’t be happy with your partner if you don’t respect their family, because your partner expects that from you and they understand that you don’t see eye to eye with them but they will still love you for smiling at the awkward dinners and just being nice around them. My in-laws are a blessing on me because they didn’t make things difficult for me, but I’ve known a few friends who’ve had major fights over this point. A friend of mine chose to just stay quiet in front of his in-laws because he just didn’t like them, I told him that’s not the way but he didn’t listen. Eventually, the inevitable fight happened and it was caused because his girlfriend was sad about him not respecting her family. You have to be very selfless here, look at it through your partner’s eyes and you’ll get it.

5. Fights caused by jealousy

Jealousy is another natural element of everyone’s life, it happens and it can easily be controlled, it’s all in your head and the insecurities caused by jealousy can be very fatal for a relationship. We often get jealous of our partners, but it’s okay as long as it’s the sweet sort of jealousy. My girlfriend knows her limits with her friends and she knows I’ll never bound her from anything, so she doesn’t give me a reason to be jealous of anything. One easy way to deal with jealousy is to get a strong grip over your insecurities and to end them. If you’re insecure about yourself, you’ll always be insecure about your relationship which causes jealousy to appear in the mix in a way it really shouldn’t.

4. Fights about “Nothing”

This might seem funny to most people in new relationships, but people who’ve been together for a couple of years know what I’m talking about. Fights over “nothing” are very common in couples who know and love each other for too long. These fights are so trivial that both sides have no idea how the fight started in the first place. These fights are caused by other tensions that are left unsolved in the past, these little tensions slowly develop into a fight that leads nowhere and the couple starts being normal with each other after a while. To avoid such fights, make sure you speak your heart out with each other all the time. Don’t think that you shouldn’t tell them something if it’s bothering you just because it would lead to an argument, have that argument to save yourselves from a bigger argument later. Speak your mind, be free.

3. Fights over bad habits

I used to smoke cigarettes, and a lot of them per day. My ex didn’t mind because she herself used to smoke. But my girlfriend now, the amazing woman that she is, doesn’t smoke or do anything of the sort. She told me to stop smoking, not because she didn’t like it, but because she wanted me to be a healthier person. As long as she was clear about it, I had literally no second thoughts about leaving that habit. So we didn’t fight over my bad habit. Fights over bad habits occur when your partner wants you to refrain from something but give little or no reason or justification for it. They need to understand that they need to tell you “why” your bad habit is “bad” for you, just saying something like “stop it because I don’t like it” isn’t a strong enough way to make you leave something. Leaving a bad habit is a very hard process and having an open-minded partner helps by a mile.

2. Fighting because of friends

Ah friends, they’re important aren’t they? We all have a very close group of friends who we call our best friends, we listen to them, we help them out, we love them for who they are, we want to spend more and more time with them, but friends are also often the reason for couples to fight. I’ve noticed this more with girls than with guys, because I have a personal example for this. My guy friends are all very cool with my girlfriend, they like her and they hang out with us without asking me to “make her stay out of our guy time”. But one fine day, my girlfriend was pretty upset, because one of her girls told her some very mean lies about me, she didn’t believe what she said but she was just upset over the fact that one of her close friends isn’t okay with me. I tried my best to make her friend like me but I’m not required to so I stopped after a while, a while later my girlfriend discovered that her “close friend” wanted to make her hate me because she was, and I quote, “too tired of seeing us so happy”. Yeah, I know it sounds pretty psychotic, but it happened. So natually, my girlfriend stopped talking to her to avoid any more of said issues. Try not to let your friends get too involved in your relationship, don’t let them judge you for your decisions (true friends never do, anyway) it is bound to cause a lot of problems later.

1. Fights over the past

Some people have a harder time letting go of the past than others. Some people linger on to it and want to keep something to themselves for leverage, it shouldn’t be like that because it’s not healthy but that’s how it is. If your significant other musters up the courage and strength to tell you everything about their past, even their most embarrassing of mistakes, please don’t use those things against them in the past. Accept them completely for who they were and for who they are, do NOT linger on to the past.