How to Ruin Your Relationship or Marriage — and Fast!

SATIRE Use these handy tips if you’re trying to ruin anything from a blossoming relationship to a long-term marriage now!

We now have longitudinal, evidence-based research on what makes a relationship healthy, satisfying, and lasting. That’s why it’s the perfect time to ignore what these “experts” say, and instead, blindly jump straight from our family of origin into serial monogamy, bringing a unique set of behaviors, which we subconsciously absorbed from those who raised us, into a relationship and thinking it will magically work itself out. While we’re basically set up to fail from the beginning, with little societal supports, knowledge-sharing, or modeling of long-term healthy relationships, there are many great ways to speed up that process.

Research has shown that the first four minutes a couple spends reunited after time apart (think, one coming home to the other after a day at work) has more influence in setting the tone for the next several hours to come than anything that happens at any other time. That’s why it’s important to greet your partner at the end of a long day or week with a list of your current worries, complaints, and anxieties, especially those that involve them or are additions to their to-do list. Don’t focus on the present and expressing your love for each other, especially via preferred love languages, during your first connection of the day — life is knocking at the door and you must answer immediately!

In addition to this daily practice, take up a longer-term habit of determining how every single thing wrong in your life is your partner’s fault. Rainy Monday? He shouldn’t have joked about the weather. Feeling tired? She shouldn’t have pushed you to go on a walk with her. Stock market crashing? If only your father-in-law hadn’t given you investment advice. Look at your partner. Study them closely. Isn’t it so obvious how everything that’s going wrong is because of something they did? If that doesn’t resonate with you today, foster irrational resentments until it does. They know how to push your buttons. They made you like this!!!

You can imagine that holding these misguided feelings of contempt, anger, or resentment might work to dim the fires in the bedroom. Perfect! And here are several other ways to ensure you achieve the goal of every monogamous American (especially heterosexual) marriage: Stop having (recreational, non-procreative) sex (at least with each other).

• Since your partner can read your mind, don’t tell them what you like, want, or need in bed. If you finally do decide to advocate for what you know will bring you pleasure, do it in a way that elicits shame in your partner for “being bad at” sex or not being sexual or attractive enough.
• Believe that everything will stay exactly like it was in the beginning when you each had an insane cocktail of early-love hormones pumping through your bloodstream at all time. It can especially stay exactly the same without any communication or effort! You should be shocked if a partner expresses interest in a new sex act or related activity…people’s tastes just don’t change! Be sure to shame your partner over what they want to explore. You can’t try anything new! Too scary.
• Never, ever, ever communicate. Here are some of the worst questions you could ask on say, a monthly basis. Why would you talk about this so often??? “Am I meeting your needs/doing things that give you pleasure?”
  “What else can I do to make you feel sexy/attractive?”
  “Is there anything about our sex life you’ve been hesitant to share or bring up? Let’s talk about it.”
  We do not live in a sex-positive society, but in a sex-negative culture, which is good, as that is where human beings are known to thrive. Therefore, you shouldn’t even use the few resources that do exist for couples like: 36 questions to ask, quiz that matches your interests confidentially, plus endless books and Googled resources on sex and intimacy.

When people make sex go wrong, but still want to be having it, that’s when “cheating” comes into play. I think “cheating” is actually a cop out/too easy (not to mention boring, cliche, and trite) way to ruin your relationship. But the theory behind it is something important to embrace. Your partner is not to whom you go to solve problems with your partner. Seek solutions in the relationship outside the relationship. This theory, whether it manifests in cheating or other dysfunction, works every time.

If you are someone who does try to problem-solve with your partner within the relationship, then here’s a tip for use in all fights, arguments, or even just conversations. First, mentally document your partner’s Reverse Résumé. If a résumé documents someone’s background, skills, and accomplishments — to make them look good, then the reverse résumé is a log of everything negative they’ve ever done, how you feel they’ve wronged you, and distasteful or unfortunate events — to make them look bad.

Once you get into a relationship, you never need their actual résumé ever again; only reference and update the reverse résumé. Drum up this document, which only exists in your mind, at every possible opportunity, and definitely trot it out during major arguments. Referencing items on the reverse résumé that have the least to do with the current situation is highly recommended.

You can imagine that on the flip side of your partner’s reverse résumé is the list of traits you want them to have and expectations you want them to meet, which they currently aren’t. And that is my final piece of advice to you on how to ruin your marriage, or really any relationship: Focus on the person you want them to be, not the person they are today, standing or sitting right in front of you. Even if you truly do love them unconditionally, throw in as many little comments as possible, remarks about their body, how they deal with with personal problems, or anything else that will send a message that your love is conditional. This works well because most people grew up with a lack of unconditional love and felt that even their parents’ love was conditional (and in many cases it is). Constantly reigniting old traumas under the guise of wanting them to be a better person should set the tone you’re looking for. I mean, after all, why should you focus on how best to meet the needs and boost the happiness of the person you chose to be with — and teach them how to meet your needs in return — when you could put your efforts into the much more fun and glamorous task of using them as the raw material from which to create the person you think you want to be with?

Photo by Alex Green from Pexels
H/T last paragraph concept: Judge Faith Jenkins