Things that are more harmful to your relationship than cheating

Cheating is often considered the big bad of the dating world.

You can brush off the forgotten anniversary, you can forgive the best-friend ex who was just ‘too much of their old life’ to give up but it when it comes to cheating, there’s something that compels us to walk away.

But is it really the worst thing?

Users on anonymous forum Reddit say no and in a thread that has skyrocketed since it was posted, it seems as though there are many things one can do to doom a relationship.

We’ve collated some of our favourite responses below:

Hiding Who You Really Are

User wastingtigers said: 

"I found out my ex had been lying to me for the entire relationship about multiple major issues. It makes you feel like you were tricked into loving someone. Its disgusting, just looking at her face makes my skin crawl now. I wasted the best years of my life with a person who doesn't even exist..."

Hiding Addictions 

User KMApok said:
"Lying and hiding things."

"I hid some drinking from my ex-wife because she had a dad that died from alcoholism. She hid smoking from me because I had a mother that smoked constantly during pregnancy and after, and most likely caused my respiratory issues.

"Our reasons for lying were both to protect the other, but both caused relationship problems instead."

Money

User NZT-48Rules said: 

“An inability to manage money. If one partner can't control their spending, runs up debts, spends impulsively, won't save for joint goals this spells doom for the relationship. I've seen a lot of break ups over that.”

Withholding Affection

User Darth_Corleone said: 

"Withholding affection. Some people NEED it. Others don't function well without it."

Slow-burning Resentment:

User VoxMeretricis said:

"Resentment is the number one killer of relationships, as far as I'm concerned. It festers underneath the skin in a way that other problems don't - by the time resentment is expressed, the damage is already done. It's insidious, because it often starts so slowly: she gradually takes on more and more of the cleaning while he plays video games until one day she wakes up screaming and enraged that his socks are on the floor. He slowly loses his hobbies, his video games, his identity to his wife until one day he wakes up and rips the TV apart with his bare hands rather than watch The Notebook."

Housework:

User kissedbyfire9 said:

"Yup. I honestly don't know how I can tell my husband in a different way, "please do your share of work and take initiative to do it, I don't like asking you" to get him to understand. I have lowered the bar, I have swapped responsibilities, I have done everything I possibly can until this week where I basically just said, "I can't believe your laziness is more important than this marriage. I can't believe that you'd rather have me serve you divorce papers then get off your ass for ten minutes a day and help with the house."

I think he got it now."

And when another user agreed and asked how the original poster had achieved such a resolution, they replied:

"Honestly, it's been 8 years. We've had the same conversation over and over, with the same promise of change over and over. I've stopped trusting his word, I feel like to him it's more important to shut me up and get me off his back than to preserve trust and do what's right for the relationship. I want to trust that this time he's going to change, but even if he does, it hurts to know that he only changed because I literally said I'd divorce him otherwise and I'm starting to fall out of love with him. Why couldn't just doing the right thing be enough? So I don't have any advice, but if you want to vent, I'm here and I understand fully."

User flylesbianseagull said:

"This is so important, and once you've done it, you've set a deadly precedent you can't really come back from. Name calling shows a lack of respect. The intent is solely to hurt your partner. It's a verbal expression of spite.

My partner has never called me a name in anger, and I've never done it to him. It's all about respect. We will disagree and argue and have problems like everyone else, but there is no situation that would justify him calling me a bitch, or me calling him an asshole, etc."

Watch as the team at MM discuss the moments they knew it was over with their partner.