The consequences of getting too comfortable
Are you and your partner struggling to connect? It may be time to admit that you’re getting too comfortable in your relationship.
by: E.B. Johnson
As emotional and social creatures, we value our relationships — especially those which are intimate or romantic in nature. For many, this is a crucial part of a happy life. But that all changes when those partnerships become ill fitting or fraught with hardship and dysfunction. Have you settled for someone who is a bad fit? Have you chosen comfort over a love that matched your needs? Comfortable relationships are dangerous, and their danger increases as we ignore the rut we’re in.
Comfortable is a dangerous place to be.
The world we live in is a chaotic one, with a lot of moving pieces and a lot of challenges for us to overcome. When we make it past one hardship, it feels like there’s always another one there to greet us. Staying happy is hard and staying focused is even harder. In such a world, it’s no wonder we opt for a comfortable relationship, but choosing comfort over truth will only lead to greater adversity later down the road.
Love and comfort aren’t always the same thing. Becoming too comfortable in your romantic relationships can be dangerous, and it can create a lot of compromise and a lot of unhappiness on both sides of the equation.
You have to stop choosing comfortable relationships over partnerships which provide you with genuine love and support. Beyond that, you have to pull yourself out of the comfort rut and find ways to bring back the joy to a partnership that’s been put on autopilot. While comfort is nice, we’re not meant to dwell there. We should be striving for new experiences and connecting with passion throughout our lives.
The consequences of getting too comfortable.
While feeling comfortable within our relationships is an absolute must, getting too comfortable can cause some serious problems. When we’re too comfy with the people that we love, we tend to check out and put ourselves on autopilot. That leads to disconnection and an erosion of self and trust that is hard if not impossible to overcome.
Romanticizing another life
One of the most common side effects of an overly comfortable relationship is the fantasizing and romanticizing of a different life. Do you find yourself always thinking about what was? Are your eyes beginning to wander? Or are you imagining a different life or a different partner? While this can be normal to a certain point, when it gets in the way of your current intimacy levels — it can become a serious problem.
Classic infidelity
Infidelity is rarely something that happens randomly without previous problems already established in the relationship. Being too comfortable in our partnerships can be one of the reasons that feeds our tendency to cheat or stray outside of our relationships. When we stop looking after ourselves (and one another), it can create serious emotional and intimate deficits that are hard to replenish as a team.
Endless compromising
Did your partner hold the upper hand when you decided to build a life with them? Maybe they had a great career or fabulous connections that made it possible for you to go to school, or move out of bad living situation. This kind of material comfort can be a toxic temptation. When you settle for that type of partnership, you can discover that they were never the person you wanted. In its own way — without love — this is taking advantage of the other person and their affection.
Stilted intimacy
Has the intimacy in your relationship become stilted or awkward? Maybe you’ve gained a lot of weight recently, and you’ve become uncomfortable with your body. Maybe the two of you have gotten so busy focusing on your careers that you just don’t think about your time together at all. This is a toxic trap to fall into and one that can leave us resentful and hurt in the long run. Intimacy is often important in maintaining bonds and a sense of spontaneity and excitement.
Unstable power dynamics
Settling into an overly comfortable relationship can create some seriously off-balance power dynamics, especially where the “settler” is concerned. If you find yourself dying of boredom in your relationship, you can become resentful and see yourself as settling down. When this happens, you don’t really see one another as equals. You know that you’ve settled and you think your partner should be grateful, so you demand a higher seat at the table (which only leads to greater chaos and imbalance later on).
Crumbling self-care
One of the most common (and toxic) side effects of heightened relationship comfort is a crumbling loss of self-care. Even when we fall in love with someone else, we still have to love and care for ourselves just as much. If one or both of you have stopped taking care of yourselves, it can very often be because you’ve gotten so comfortable that you no longer thing it matters to look or feel your best.
The best ways to deal with an overly comfortable relationship.
If you want to pull yourself out of the comfort rut, then you have to look inward and get focused on your needs and your ability to meet them. You have to be honest about what you want and active about getting it. Life isn’t a spectator sport. If we want to be happy in our relationships, we have to get our hands dirty and do the work it takes to claw ourselves out of the comfort rut.
1. Be brave enough to embrace your needs
We get caught up in comfort because we don’t take the time to honestly assess our needs, and we certainly don’t take the time to communicate those needs to the world. Shifting beyond the comfort rut is a tricky thing to do, and it requires a lot of brutal and radical honesty with ourselves, as well as a willingness to analyze and accept our live (and our partners) for what they really are.
Be brave enough to admit what you truly want and need from your relationship. So many of us settle for someone who can’t give us what we want because we never stop long enough to question those ideals and standards for ourselves. It’s a hard ask. The answers we find sometimes don’t agree with where we’re at.
There’s no getting around your emotional and physical needs, and you shouldn’t have to. We all have a right to have the things that make us happy. Be honest. When you imagine the ideal partner, what do they look like? How do they treat you? Is the person sitting beside you giving you that affection and that intimacy that you need? Your needs aren’t dictated by their level of effort. They come from within.
2. Find the strength to stand beside them
It’s not enough to simply identify your needs, you need to protect them in the outside world and communicate them to others. This isn’t easy. It takes a lot of strength to let others know that the comfort we’re drowning in is ruining our lives. If we want to find future horizons that bring us real opportunity, though, that’s exactly what we have to do. Open up and stand up for your needs and the things you really want in life and your relationships.
Like it or not, you’ve got to be strong enough to stand beside your own needs no matter what the world throws at you. You have to set boundaries and you have to protect them. This requires creating consequences and removing yourself from the presence of people who don’t respect who you are.
You also need to communicate these needs and expectations to those around you. Let your loved ones know that things are changing and be clear about where your new boundaries lie. You can expect them to respect your new path back to joy and excitement if you don’t explain it to them. Explain how you feel and explain your need to build a better future for yourself. Those who understand will get out of your way.
3. Understand your right to a fulfilling life
When you don’t love yourself and you don’t see that you deserve joy, then you can find yourself settling for relationships and opportunities that are not fulfilling. We’ll sail right into a nest of comfort and never think twice about all the excitement and belonging we’re denying ourselves. Finding our true meaning requires that we embrace a life that’s authentically ours, rather than settling for the easiest source of comfort we can find.
Until you understand that you have a right to lead a fulfilling life (defined on your own terms), you’ll keep chasing the wrong opportunities and the wrong people right into upset and heartache. You have to embrace this right and actively live by the principle that you deserve and effortless happiness that comes as a result of the positive environment you build for yourself.
You don’t have to struggle to prove your value to someone. You don’t have to suffer or sacrifice who you are. Instead, you have a right to lead your existence in the way that suits you best. That means pursuing the career and social opportunities that make you happy, and engaging with authentic passions that provide you with the rewarding experience of self-confidence and a true alignment with your deeper values and skills.
4. Accurately prioritize your relationships
Although we don’t like to acknowledge it, very often we find ourselves comfortable in a relationship that’s entirely the wrong fit for us. That’s because bad partnerships aren’t always traumatic. Sometimes we rush into things before fully considering them, and that can bring us into serious commitments with people who don’t quite have what we want or what we need in love, life, or the bedroom.
Romantic relationships are not the be-all and end-all in this life. Maybe you’re someone who settled for a partnership that doesn’t make you happy, because you thought this was the only way you would get the love you see. It won’t. If you’re not happy outside of a relationship, you won’t be any happier inside of one.
Start prioritizing your relationship appropriately. Get out of your comfort rut by waking yourself up and accepting that you need more in your life than romantic love. Lean into your independence and build a world for yourself outside of your partnership. When your life becomes more full and whole, you can often rediscover new sides of your relationship — or the strength to take the movement and the action that’s necessary to find real love.
5. Follow your passions and new experiences
Perhaps the best way to avoid the comfort trap is to ensure that your life and your relationships are always filled with passions and new experiences. Life was meant to be actively lived and — much like ourselves — is constantly in a state of change. We have to tune ourselves into that change and incorporate that excitement and electricity into our partnerships and the deeper connections we seek.
Mix things up and shake up your routine. Don’t allow yourself to get caught up in another rut. Always be on the lookout for new things that interest you and find out how you can get involved in them (even in the digital space).
The same goes for your established relationships. If you want to get out of the comfort zone and back to better horizons, then you need to spice things up and reinvigorate the bond that you two share. Do new things together, break up your routine by trying new skills and experiences together. This allows you to be comfortably uncomfortable together, putting you on the same page and reminding you why you fell for one another in the first place.
Putting it all together…
While it’s easy to get comfortable in our relationships, that’s an extremely dangerous place to be. When we get too comfortable, it can lead to major problems and disconnects that rip our lives apart. In order to be happy in love, we have to first be happy in ourselves. We have to embrace our needs and our right to live a life that is both fulfilling and active on a personal level.
You have to be brave enough to acknowledge your needs and brave enough to accept them for what they are. We all require different things from our relationships, and that’s okay. Rather than settling for someone who doesn’t have what you need, be honest with yourself. Stand beside those needs and build boundaries around them that allow you to protect your wellbeing. You have a right to a relationship that is fulfilling and rewarding in every respect. Re-prioritize your relationships and make them a part of your happiness, instead of making it the most important thing in your life. Over-prioritizing romantic love will only lead to a likely settling. Follow your passions and seek out new experiences. Down this path, you will find the people and the opportunities that bring love, support, and a sense of excitement and meaning.
