If you think about your relationship with your mate, you might notice that you and/or your mate is really good at criticizing. And, if you are good at criticizing the prognosis for your relationship really stinks. You are going to kill the relationship because criticism is continually toxic; it actually robs the relationship of its foundation. If you want to pretend that you are helping instead of actually criticizing you might want to adjust your perspective on things. A relationship with continual criticism in it will actually die. So replace the criticism with all that reinforcement that you did during courtship. When you do that, you are building a foundation and you can repair things.