“Garbage in, garbage out”: If you think inaccurate, distorted thoughts, your emotional reactions will be painfully exaggerated.  Here are five common cognitive distortions that can greatly impact your relationship:

1. Tunnel vision: Filtering out important parts of the picture, usually the good part (i.e. you focus almost exclusively on the parts of the relationship that feel hurtful or deficient).
2. Assumed intent: Mind-reading; making assumptions about the motives, desires and feelings of your partner.  (You form negative assumptions to explain why your partner acts the way he or she does).
3. Magnification: Exaggerating; making things worse than they are; overgeneralizing with words such as all, every, always, none, nobody, everyone.
4. Global labeling: Pinning a negative identity tag on your partner—stupid, lazy, crazy, selfish, etc. It’s a damning form of overgeneralization.

5. Black and white thinking:  Your partner’s behavior is good or bad, wrong or right (and nothing in-between).  Good-                meets your needs; Bad- doesn’t.  Right- your partner is generous; Wrong-  self-focused.

Reference: Couple Skills: Making Your Relationship Work- By Matthew McKay, Patrick Fanning, Kim Paleg