If something is going to break the deal, it should happen sooner rather than later. The longer you wait for it to break the deal, the longer the relationship is, the further the relationship goes, the more painful it is when the deal breaks. Pitfall #8 is when you do not jump out of a relationship when you should. What happens is that the deal breaks long after it should have because something that should have been seen as a deal-breaker was ignored or brushed under the rug as a preference. Everyone has seen bad divorces. How many of those do you think saw warning signs before they got married? Many people who have been through a divorce, if they are honest, will tell you that they saw warning signs of a deal breaker before they got married. Sometimes people try to solve the problems in their relationship with marriage or with children. Will the preference become a deal-breaker? We each must dig deep and ask ourselves if something will break the deal. It can be easy in a relationship to simply avoid the areas where the deal-breakers are, but once married, those areas are bound to be crossed. Do not avoid the difficult topics until they come up in marriage. We cannot allow ourselves to be naive about things that will become deal-breakers. We also should examine how we perceive our self worth and not allow ourselves to convince ourselves that we deserve someone who has deal-breakers. It helps to listen to what the people who love you have to say about your relationship because they can often see when you are trying to minimize a deal-breaker. It is also helpful to ask the Lord if you should get out of the relationship, but you must be willing to do so if prompted to. This pitfall becomes even worse when children become involved. This pitfall is difficult to balance with the idea of allowing people to change. When should we allow for people to change after a deal-breaker is found? This will be discussed with pitfall #9.