Is Your Relationship Ending?

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.

Read more: Spirit, Guidance, Self-Help, relationships

Adapted from Coming Apart, by Daphne Rose Kingma (Conari Press, 2000). Copyright (c) 2000 by Daphne Rose Kingma. Reprinted by permission of Conari Press.
Adapted from Coming Apart, by Daphne Rose Kingma (Conari Press, 2000).

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of
Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

Cyrille D.

12:41PM PST on Feb 12, 2012

Wow. I recognize my relationship in 3 out of the 4 (not the "affair" one) of the points you're enlightening. Especially the 1st one : fights. I realize that when something doesn't feel right, it's probably not right. But, I've heard so many people saying the "When you know, you know !" thing who ended up seperated or divorced. So, what is right and what is wrong ? When it's wrong, is it hopeless too ? Or do we have it in ourselves to makes things change, with time and good will ? Isn't it a little too easy to say : "Okay, it doesn't work, so, I'm out !" ? Aren't we suppose to earn it, too ? I don't believe in fairy-tales, even for the lucky soulmates. So, is a bad relationship/dysfunctionnal relationship really worthless or can something good ever come out of it ?

send a green star

Chad A.

9:15PM PST on Jan 13, 2012

Love is so hard and there are always so many things going on at once. Beyond any signs that things are over there is the willingness or unwillingess of both parties to work on the relationship. When both people are not trying, or are making things worse, it is just a matter of time.

Linking L.

6:46AM PDT on Aug 2, 2011

I hate the "how to fix a relashionship" tips cos there is NO such thing. When it's over its over just like death... Well, i will go now and have a walk with my new Handbags NJ on my shoulder.

Sarah H.

10:24AM PDT on Jun 2, 2011

There would always be problems in a relationship that you would want to end it the soonest time possible. Jealousy in relationships might be one big problem that you just want to let go; but I tell you, being in a relationship requires an exact amount of love,patience and understanding for you to overcome problems together. If you feel your at the edge of everything, just get strength from the happy good memories you have with your partner before. Don't easily give up. Lots and lots of things are still waiting to happen and we should be prepared for it.

how to fix a relationship

10:21AM PDT on Jun 2, 2011

how to fix a relationship

Bon L.

4:37AM PST on Jan 11, 2011

Thanks for the info.

Past Member .

6:33PM PDT on Aug 26, 2010

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?

Wedding Planning Bay Area

Hortense B.

12:06PM PDT on Jun 15, 2010

To most of the posters: since you're not married, leave. Don't waste 15 years on someone you hope will change. Too many mind games, too many hurt feelings and life is too short!

Moriah M.

8:57AM PST on Feb 12, 2010

I'm so confused and frustrated right now. I don't know if my boyfriend wants from me anymore. I feel its like more of a friendship then a relationship at this point. He rarely kisses me anymore, if anything i kiss him. He stopped saying cute things to me. i dont know what i did wrong, i love him very much and this is the person i want to be with for the rest of my life. Although he says he wants the same thing. i dont know anymore. Sex has become not special anymore. im going crazy. i dont want to lose him, i just want things to be how they were before. do you think we have hope?

Giselle J.

9:25AM PST on Dec 14, 2009

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 :(