There was one time when I came across a quote that changed my perspective a bit, quoting, “To be able to truly love yourself and to truly be able to love someone else, you must drop the ego.” And ever since I read those words, I couldn’t get them out and I’ve used it in my daily, everyday life.

This is absolutely fundamental to finding an astonishing relationship, but it’s equally crucial to preserving and continually enhancing a relationship once you’re already in it.

Nothing will wreak a relationship (even the best of relationships) faster than ego.

Here are ways that ego can definitely destroy the relationship and how you you can steer clear of down-falling your relationship.

1. Prevent The Seduction To Protect Yourself: Think about the number of times you’ve engaged with your partner, and whenever things get a little boiled up you start to protect yourself. All you hear is you being attacked, and you immediately go into “self defense” mode. Ego has a wicked way of making you perfect- not in your partner’s eyes, not in the world’s eyes but in your eyes alone. If you see yourself as ”Mr perfect” or “Miss perfect” then you would never have a successful relationship, and ego would wickedly make you think you are perfect. Do you know that when you defend yourself in a fight, what’s really happening is your ego is defending itself?

It also indicates that you’ve started to block the other person. You’ve temporarily stopped listening to the other person.  If someone tells you that they don’t like the way you’ve been acting lately, why not hear them out instead of defending yourself? It will almost always create a MUCH better outcome. Communication is key in every relationship.

2. To Love Yourself And Someone Else Completely You Must Disconnect The Ego: In order to truly love someone, you must separate your ego from yourself. This is also true if you want to be able to totally love yourself. Now, I know that in a perfect world, we would never be ego-driven. This is not a perfect world of course, so let’s get real. We are all driven by our egos to some extent or another, so let’s acknowledge it and embrace that we need to separate the ego to maintain a truly outstanding relationship/friendship with someone.

3. Accept and give importance to others: it is one of the biggest challenges that we see in relationships. As every human is different from others and their opinions are also differ. It is very difficult to accept the point of views of other and make a compromise on them. If you don’t do so, it kills the relationships. Self-respect is very important for all, if you give importance to others, properly attend them and show affection, they notice it and such things matter a lot for others. This attitude strangers your relationship.

We should have the ability to listen to others effectively besides only speaking. Listening and understanding is the most important part of the successful interaction. We should value the other’s thinking if they right then accept them and if they are wrong then correct them.

4. Your Ego Can Ruin Any Conversation: You must have the ability to communicate others and to attend others in your conversation. So that people properly attend you, listen to you effectively and don’t make assumptions without listening. Most often, we let our pride or ego to take over the conversation. We think that we are already smart enough to even listen to other people. We think that we are better than other people and feel we have nothing more to learn from them. When we close ourselves and stop listening to other people, we are doomed because we stop learning. To eliminate this listening barrier, you have to be more open-minded to listen and learn from other people. Remember that you do not have to agree with everything, but it is helpful if you at least, listen to what they have to say. Effective communication skills have a great impact on your personality. The truth is that no matter how much you prepare, plan and hope for a good conversation with your significant other, your ego is the one thing that will consistently ruin any conversation you’re about to have if you let it.

Giving time to people is a huge gift, in a world where time is the essence; mostly we have no time to give to our loved ones, being present in time you give time to people is a great blessing.

When you truly attend someone not thinking about the past, not worrying about the future, just focus on someone, such connection makes strong relationships.

Everyone has ego; I have ego, you have ego, we all have ego; it’s a natural instinct that’s placed in all humans. Ego isn’t bad per say but the degree of your ego is what can kill your relationship.

Gaining control of your ego is the best thing that you can do for yourself or else it will continue getting in the way of your relationships, your career, and your life.

In order to fully listen to somebody, it’s uncomfortable.  Sometimes your friend/partner has things that are really bothering them or they can’t really express how they truly feel about which they want to talk to you, but which you would rather not hear. To maintain a great relationship, however, you can’t let your ego keep you from really listening.

So the next time you see your ego getting involved in your relationship, get rid of it! If you find yourself defending yourself or not allowing you to really listen, then you need to take a step back. Take a deep breath and pause for a little and start thinking and listening. Listen carefully to what’s really being said, and use it to create such a cherished relationship/friendship.