I say something over and over again (because it is so important!): To be able to truly love yourself and love someone else, you must drop the ego. This is absolutely essential to finding an amazing relationship. It's equally critical to maintaining and continually improving a relationship once you're already in it.

Nothing will kill a relationship -- even the best of relationships -- more quickly than ego. Here are five ways your ego can ruin your relationship, and how to avoid letting it happen.

1. Your ego is on guard duty. Resist the temptation to defend yourself. Think about the number of times you've fought with a significant other, and whenever things get a little heated you start to defend yourself. All you hear is yourself being attacked, and you immediately go into "defending yourself" mode. Do you know that when you defend yourself in a fight, what's really happening is your ego is defending itself?

It also means that you've stopped listening to the other person. If your partner 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.

2. Your ego is stuck to you. To love yourself and someone else completely, you must separate 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 ego-driven to some extent or another, so let's acknowledge it and embrace that we need to detach the ego to cultivate and maintain a truly amazing relationship with someone.

3. Your ego hates feedback. 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.

Let's say your significant other is frustrated with you in one way or another and really needs to express something about that to you. How do you respond? If you let your ego get involved and you defend yourself, it means that you're not listening to your partner. In order to really listen to somebody, it's uncomfortable. Sometimes your significant other has things to say about you that you would rather not hear. To maintain a great relationship, however, you can't let your ego keep you from truly listening.

4. Your ego is always active. You have to be willing to drop the ego and learn to have a healthy relationship. If you want to get deep with someone and take your relationship to a higher level, you must take your ego out of the equation. Your significant other is going to do things that you don't recognize. It may be voices, patterns, communication styles, or other traits with which you aren't familiar. You need to be open and willing to learn these things about your partner, and your ego will keep you from doing this every time. Most importantly, you need to learn your partner's communication style, because many times it will be very different from your own.

Dropping the ego doesn't mean you need to change who you are. It can take a lot for you to drop your ego, to really listen to your significant other, and to realize that they need you to say something in a different way. A lot of people misunderstand these kinds of requests as being their partner's attempt to change them. It's not. They're not trying to change you; they are trying to improve the way you communicate with each other. Don't let your ego get in the way. Embrace this!

5. Your ego launches low blows. Do you get frustrated when you're having an argument with your significant other? Of course, we all do. When that happens, though, sometimes the ego will cause you to hurl hurtful comments at the other person.

You're feeling hurt, so you lash out and say something you know will make the other person hurt, too. It was not only hurtful, but inevitably something stupid. By listening to your partner rather than lashing out from your ego, you can get through an argument without these low blows, and arguments will be much more constructive -- not destructive -- to your relationship.

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 yourself to really listen, then you need to take a step back. Listen carefully to what's really being said, and use it to create the most amazing relationship.