What to do when you’re feeling stuck in your relationship

Has your relationship hit a rough patch? Have things grown stale? This is what to do when you and your partner have gotten stuck.

by: E.B. Johnson

Our relationships add a lot of value and joy to our lives, but they also go through a series of ups and downs that can challenge and test us as a couple. Life isn’t perfect, and that means our relationships aren’t perfect either. Things go wrong, we face setbacks, and we can find ourselves stuck in ruts that are hard to break out of.

Creating partnerships that are capable of rebuilding and refreshing themselves requires that both partners come to the table as equals, ready to work. We have to re-infuse our love with a burst of excitement and consciously and intentionally make time for one another and the future we are piecing together. Do you need to break your relationship out of the hole that it’s stuck in? Take action before it’s too late.

All relationships hit a rut eventually.

If you are someone who is working on a long-term partnership, then you have to face the fact that your relationship will one day hit a rut. Life is challenging. Outside of our relationships, we’re all dealing with an array of responsibilities and pressures which tax us and change who we are. We have to work through this together and look mindfully for ways that allow us to reconnect and re-align the things we want from our lives and one another.

Instead of settling for the stagnant place your relationship has settled, you both have to be proactive in order to preserve your love. Are you avoiding one another? Are you emotionally disconnected or physically distanced to the point that you feel like strangers?

All of these are common signs that you’ve both become frozen in the place where you’re at. Your relationship can’t forever withstand the pressure of never moving forward. Love needs to move. It needs excitement and fire in order for it to grow in to the bond we crave so badly. Break out of the cycle and break out of the rut. Get back on track with one another and your love together — the right way.

Common signs your relationship has hit a wall.

Feeling stuck in a relationship — or as though you and your partner have hit a wall — is no easy thing to manage. Before we can get ourselves back on track, however, we have to honestly accept where we’re at and all the ways this inability to move forward is impacting us (and our partnerships).

Avoiding one another

How much time do you and your partner spend together doing anything? Time together is important, but when we get stuck, we have a tendency to fall into patterns of avoidance. Maybe you don’t try to spend time with one another. In fact, maybe you avoid one another rather than getting close or enjoying physical time and space with one another. When we get stuck, we often freeze up inside, or develop a sense of contempt that drives us away.

Leaning on others

A major part of being a partner is being a source of support for your spouse or other half. This support is not all-encompassing, but it is extensive. We should want to take our good news and our bad news to our partners before anyone else. We should want to celebrate with them and go to them for support. Being unable (or unwilling) to do that, we start to look to everyone but our partners for support and compassion.

Failing physical intimacy

Physical intimacy is a crucial component in most intimate relationships. When we get stuck in a rut, however, this is one of the first things that tends to go. As we slide into autopilot, we pull away physically and avoid important time that we should enjoy sharing. What is the physical intimacy like in your relationship? Do things feel stale, stagnant, or non-existent? There’s always a reason behind it that deserves investigating.

Constant comparisons

Comparisons are toxic, especially when utilized within our relationships. It’s one thing to look to the relationships of others for ideas, it’s another thing to hold your own relationship up to the same scrutiny. No one has a “perfect” relationship, because no perfect person or life exists. It’s impossible. We all mess up and we all face hardships outside of our control. In order to get out of the rut or the funk that we’re in, we have to drop the comparisons.

Lack of future plans

Making plans together as a couple is important. It keeps us focused on the future and helps us to keep our goals and future aims aligned. Have you and your partner stopped making plans together? Have you stopped looking forward to the future with excitement? If you’re not looking forward together, then it’s going to be hard to stay connected throughout the inevitable conflict that life will present. Overcoming hardship requires that we’re working toward the same goals as a couple.

Total emotional disconnect

Emotional connection is at the core of what we share as a couple. When we don’t feel emotionally connected, our hearts and our minds begin to wander. We drift apart and look for greener pastures; we can even find that we create divides for ourselves that are too big to be overcome. If you and your partner aren’t investing time and effort into one another anymore, it could be a sign of an emotional break somewhere down the line.

Going on autopilot

Do you feel as though you (or your partner) are on autopilot? Do you just go through the motions in your relationship without putting any real thought or feeling behind it? Do you say, “I love you,” and doubt if you really mean it? If any of these sound like your partnership, then it’s time to question whether or not you have gotten yourselves stuck in a place you don’t need to be. It’s time for your relationship to move on, and that’s a challenge you can both tackle together.

How to break the cycle and get out of the rut (together).

You don’t have to allow yourselves to remain stuck and unhappy forever. You can reconnect and get back on track with one another, but it’s going to take conscious and mindful action on both parts. Pinpoint your pitfalls and then be proactive about bringing back that spark and reinvigorating who you are.

1. Spot the pitfalls first

Before you can successfully work toward a better, closer relationship, you first have to consider what parts need the most “fixing”. This takes some brutal honesty from both partners, but it also takes some time and some careful introspection to get to. Not all of our issues are visible at first glance. Sometimes, our relationship troubles run deeper than that.

Take some time on your own to step back from the relationship and look at it as a whole. What is your partnership, really? Where are your weak points? Do you struggle with consistent and clear communication? Is your trust lacking, or your excitement shriveled away?

What places do you want to see your relationship improve? Once you’ve got your perspective, consider your partner’s too. What do they need from you in order to feel as though the partnership is moving in the right direction again? Spot your pitfalls and identify them honestly, and you can both find a more genuine and effective path forward.

2. Commit to working together

Relationships don’t work when only one person is putting in a serious effort. In order for our partnerships to thrive, mutual work and mutual understanding are required. You have to communicate with one another and make a conscious effort to be compassionate and mindful of one another. It’s not an easy process, but it is a rewarding one that brings life back into our the bonds we share.

Commit to working together and commit to building up a relationship that is both a worthy and an accurate reflection of who you both are. Once you know where your weak points are, sit down and talk to one another. Figure out how to overcome them and try to look for effective ways to match one another’s mutual emotional and physical needs.

Your words are no good if they aren’t followed up by action, however. After setting out a plan, take steps to make it happen. Move toward one another — not away from one another. Do it consciously and do it with compassion and understanding in your heart. When you commit to working together, the transformations you can make to your relationship are endless.

3. Intentionally generate excitement

When we get stuck in a rut in our relationships, we often feel a lack of excitement that creates small divides in the connections we share. Relationships need joy and exhilaration. As humans, we are always changing and moving on to new and better ideas. Our relationships need to follow that course. We can keep them (and ourselves) interesting by re-infusing some excitement into our partnerships.

Intentionally generate excitement in your relationship. Make space for the two of you to do new things. Make space for you to try new adventures and experiences together. The more excited you are about your lives, the easier it becomes to be excited about one another.

This excitement runs far deeper, however. More than giving us something to look forward to new and fun experiences make it easier for us to reconnect and re-open to one another. Our partnerships need vulnerability, and we need to know it’s safe to trust one another and hold faith. These things can be encouraged by having fun experiences that make us comfortable with one another.

4. Create a bucket list together

A creative way to realign and start rebuilding your plans together is by constructing a bucket list. These lists are basically composed of all the things you want to experience or accomplish as a couple. The sky is the limit here, but you have to remember to temper it with reality too. Bucket lists should make us excited and they should inspire us and motivate us to keep going when things get stale or challenging.

Find a comfortable and relaxing space where you can both communicate without being interrupted. Make it a part of a fun night. Loosen up with one another previously and have some gun getting calm and in a good place. When you’re ready, start talking about the things you want to do. Start small and then work up to the big stuff.

What are some trips you want to take together? What experiences do you want to share? Don’t hesitate to list anything and everything that would bring fun, excitement, or value into your shared lives with one another. Look around your home — what projects do you want to tackle? What are your family milestone plans? Make your bucket list a reflection of everything you want your relationship to be.

5. Build fulfilling inner lives

A major problem that many of us encounter within a long-term relationship is a total loss of self. We get so focused on our partners and the lives we’re building with them, that we get sidetracked when it comes to our own inner lives. It’s understandable. When we love someone we gravitate toward them in most things. We cannot build happy relationships, though, if we ourselves do not have fulfilling inner lives.

Don’t only focus on building your relationship or your bond with your partner. You need to have an exciting, meaningful life of your own. The happier you are in you as a person, the happier you will be as a partner in your relationship. Look inward. Nourish yourself, and your soul, with the passions and pastimes that you love.

Good relationships don’t require that we lose ourselves. Good relationships don’t require that we become shadows of our partners. You need to have your own life, and you have a right to it. Lean into your support networks. Cultivate your interests and pursue the things which set you on fire from the inside out. The greater your spark within, the greater your spark will become with your relationship.

Putting it all together…

Although we expect our relationships to be good forever, they regularly fall into lulls that drive us apart or drive us into irritation. Don’t allow your partnerships to collapse. Be honest when you’re stuck in a rut and be brutally honest about how it’s affecting you. Then, you can both take action to get your love back on track.

Spot the pitfalls in your partnership and be honest about where the flaws lie. Until you’re honest, neither one of you is going to be able to fix anything effectively. Once you know where the work needs to be put in, sit down and communicate with one another honestly and openly. Share what you need, share what you expect. Then get yourselves back on course to make things exciting and good again. Both of you need to put in effort and having fun is a good place to start. Re-infuse your partnership with regular bouts of joy. Build a bucket list together and start looking at the future again. Above all else, though, build fulfilling inner lives that help you improve on an individual level. The happier you are as a person, the better you’ll be as a partner.