Top 10 signs you’re about to be dumped:

7. She stops criticizing you. This one may sound counterintuitive, but, as Py Kim Conant says, “if she stops complaining about you leaving the toilet seat up, it may mean that she’s given up on the relationship and has no energy to put into further criticism of you. In fact, she may not even notice the toilet seat any longer, since her focus is no longer on perfecting you.”

I was reading this article online, and this jumped out at me, because out of the list of 10 things, #7 is the *for-sure* sign that I’m about to dump you.

I like improvement. I like improving. I don’t expect perfection and I don’t expect overnight improvement, but if you’re not moving forwards, you’re moving backwards, and to me, that’s a relationship deal-breaker.

I feel a little sorry for Lone that he has to put up with my constant ‘criticizing’ on his minor flaws (I don’t really criticize, I just remind him to improve a little every day), but the really wonderful thing is that he realizes that when I ‘criticize’ him, it means I love him, and he always knows that it’s for both our benefits for both of us to improve every day.

The interesting thing is that for a couple of my exes before Lone, the tell-tale sign that the relationship was over was when I stopped criticizing them. I spent months nagging and nagging, and in some cases crying, screaming and throwing things (ok, not really, but it sounds satisfyingly dramatic, doesn’t it?), and sometimes things will improve for a while, and then they’d go back to doing what they’ve always done before.

Then one day I'd just had enough. You think I like to keep on nagging and screaming at you, hey? I don’t enjoy having to do it any more than you enjoy me doing it.

So I stopped doing it, because I realized that they were never going to improve anyway, and I was just wasting my breath. And the moment you realize that nothing’s ever going to improve in your relationship, that’s the moment that you know the relationship is doomed.

So I’m glad Lone appreciates it from me, he really does! He tells me constantly that he appreciates me helping him improve (and vice versa from me to him as well), and that his ultimate goal is to be such an amazing husband that I’d have nothing to criticize about him. ;-)

How did I ever get so lucky? =)

Disclaimer: I don’t really like using the word ‘criticize’ here, because I believe the word ‘nag’ would be a lot more accurate. For the sake of keeping to the article though, I’ve used ‘criticize’ but I really mean ‘nag’. =P