Why love isn’t enough

Love is all you need, right? Wrong. No matter who you are, you will encounter challenges in relationships that love alone cannot fix. This happens to all of us. It’s not necessarily the challenges themselves that cause significant issues – but rather how we respond to them.

Meet Teresa and John, a couple in a long term relationship who are attending Tony Robbins’ Date with Destiny event. In this episode, we learn about their struggles with infidelity and communication over the course of their relationship. While they have made significant progress since their issues first appeared, they are still having issues syncing up their communication styles.

Lately, they have been slipping back into old habits: making excuses for their behaviors and not taking responsibility for their own actions. Tony can see that these two are deeply in love and coaches them to a better way of communicating. He teaches them that establishing a foundation of effective communication and self-awareness goes a long way in making a relationship work.

One of the biggest issues in Teresa and John’s relationship is a communication issue that so many of us also face. Often, when we feel pain or disappointment, we want to place the blame on someone else — usually our partner.

We criticize the way they respond to us and to situations. We start to ignore their needs and avoid the situation. It becomes a game of who is wrong and who is right, instead of a situation where we work together to solve the issue and move forward.

This blame game is not helpful. While it may make us feel as though we are in control, the opposite is actually true. The blame takes away our power and gives us excuses to continue hurting each other.

To move forward in a happy and healthy relationship, you need to combine your love with communication and self-awareness. You need to be honest with yourself and your partner, while also taking responsibility for your own faults and actions.

You can not build an extraordinary relationship by focusing on what you’re not getting from your partner. You need to tear up the rules, hold yourself accountable for your experience and build a relationship based on open, honest communication.

Love is an important part of your relationship but self-awareness and communication is what makes it work.

This episode of the Tony Robbins podcast is part of a breakthrough series that offers an inside view of events like Date with Destiny, Unleash the Power Within and Business Mastery. Throughout this series, listeners will get to listen as Tony coaches event attendees to life-changing transformations.