http://www.care2.com/greenliving/is-your-relationship-ending.html
Is Your Relationship Ending?
Adapted from Coming Apart, by Daphne Rose Kingma (Conari Press, 2000).
Is your relationship really ending or is it just going through some growing pains? These guideposts can help you decide, or, if your relationship has already ended, they may help you clarify the reasons why it did.
Relationships should enhance our lives, and although every relationship includes unpleasant experiences, when the majority of the experiences are unpleasant, then questions about the viability of the relationship need to be raised.
Here are some of the classic signs that a relationship is truly ending:
1. Fights.
If the relationship has become a battleground, the only experience you’re truly sharing is conflict. Fighting can be a positive thing within a flourishing relationship, but repetitive, purposeless fighting more often indicates that a relationship is ending. In a healthy relationship, although there may be several repetitions of a given conflict, eventually some insight occurs or some new information is revealed so that the partners know more about each other, feel closer to each other, and will conduct their relationship differently in the future because of the insight that has occurred. When fighting is indicative of the end of relationship, however, it is essentially nonproductive. Instead of feeling closer after the fight, they finish it feeling estranged from each other and totally hopeless about their situation.
2. Boredom.
Feelings of disconnection and depression could indicate that the essential vitality in your relationship is gone. This can mean that you’re not having enough ongoing transactions that have meaning or provide sufficient nourishment for your relationship to be alive and well. Although depression and boredom don’t necessarily signal the end of a relationship, when you are feeling bored and frustrated about your life, your partner will serve as a refuge from those awful feelings; your relationship will be a healing and comforting place. When the relationship itself isn’t working, you find yourself turning away from your partner. You find that all your significant nourishment is coming from other sources. Divining whether it’s your relationship or life itself that is causing your boredom takes a certain amount of research. Check out all the other external factors that may be causing your feelings. There is an important difference between boredom and familiarity, comfort and security where you value your daily involvement with the other person, viewing your partner as a resource and ally. When your partner is no longer seen as a resource or ally, or when your partner is no longer interesting to you, then you are genuinely bored.
3. Emotional Distance.
Emotional distance occurs when you come to the place in your own consciousness where, for whatever reasons, you have moved away from your relationship. You are, in a sense, holding back your emotions and expending them elsewhere. You’ve decided to limit the depth of your contact with your partner. Deep emotional distance is often an indicator that there is no turning back in a relationship, that on an unconscious level both partners have already created an alternate private reality based on their differing values.
4. Affairs.
Affairs are classic indicators that something isn’t right with a relationship. Sexual bonding is one of the ways we define primary relationships so it generally does have a corrosive and divisive effect when we dilute our commitment by having sex outside of our primary relationship. Sometimes, when we are trying to end a relationship but don’t know how, we often engage in an affair. Unconsciously we know that the affair will communicate our real intentions, which we’re afraid to express in a more direct way.
The marriage that is constantly punctuated by affairs is not a marriage or an intimate relationship, it is a circumstantial arrangement and will survive only as long as both partners are content to have a marriage of convenience.
People who indulge in affairs may indeed be selfish, self-indulgent, and inconsiderate. But what is also and more importantly true is that affairs may not be so much a statement about individual character as they are about the quality of the relationships upon which they inevitably impinge.
Robyn
Melissa
Deepak
Eric
Dave
Dr. Brent
Isha
Susan
Delia
Michelle
Wendy
Megan
Hilary
Ann
Judi
Ronnie
Kelly
Lily
Terri
Betsy
Cait
Andrew
Jana
Annie B.
Veronica
7 comments
add your comment »Hi Karina, I know what you're going thru. Yet again mine has pulled away from me, but he swears he just needs to be alone with his thoughts sometimes. I know its the holidays and not being with his kids. But if he "needs" me so much, why the distance? Why not be with me? I guess all we can do is pray and hope for the best and know when enough is enough :(
send green star
why is this inappropriate?
Giselle- I'm the same. He won't ever ask me if I'M ok, and then after silences, when I start to question what's wrong, he get's huffy asking why I question everything....he won't hold my hand in public anymore, and I can never talk to him about anything. I've recently been depressed, and he just thinks im being a moody cow..I can't connect with him anymore, and every little thing turns into a fight...and somehow..it's ALWAYS my fault...even when it blatently isn't. :( I love him so much, but I can't help but wonder if it would be healthier if we just..weren't together anymore.....but then I just can't do it?
send green star
why is this inappropriate?
I'm in the same boat too, everytime he faces a problem in life he pulls away from me, has very little contact and like no affection or love nothing. He keeps away from me. Till I wonder if its about me, he wont communicate his feelings even tho i try to get him to. Sometimes he communicates fine. I just don't get men. Isnt beign part of a couple means you work through things together? I'm beginning to wonder if he's thinking of moving on. I love him so deeply though, we have shared so very much and gotten so close in our 7 months. He says he'll always needs me, but then why wont he be wtih me if that was so???
send green star
why is this inappropriate?
O believe in trying anything and everything before taking the decision of ending up a relationship. Sometimes, that's all you need for a new, clean start...and at least try to fall in love everyday...with the same person! Doesn't work everytime, but at least u gave it a shot!
send green star
why is this inappropriate?
I agree with Tim too. I feel that my boyfriend and I won't be together much longer. We have been together for over 3 years and it seems now he just talks to me less and less. He always has some excuse for not calling me, ie. studying, sick, some church thing. I don't believe that its true because I wonder how can he not take 5 mins to call me. I feel like I always call him and doing all the work. I'm tired of this!
send green star
why is this inappropriate?
I feel that my girlfriend and i are not going to be together much longer but i want to know if there are any ways that i can tell if she is nolonger interested in dating me and if there are any ways that i can change the way she feels?
send green star
why is this inappropriate?
I am feeling lost at this point. I feel that we are coming apart. He never expresses feelings for me. I always express mine. He doesn't talk about things until he is ready to explode. I like to talk about things before that happens, but he seems annoyed by my asking to talk. We've been together for 1 1/2 years now and it was so much better in the beginning. He says we need to work on a good self esteem of ourselves before the other can feel positive about the other. That sounds true. We have both been through a lot and have low opinions of our own selves. That we bring each other down. Can this be fixed? I don't want to lose him. Can we rekindle what we started with?
send green star
why is this inappropriate?
Facebook account: