The common warning signs that your relationship is heading for failure
Not all relationships are built to stand the test of time. This is how to cope with a relationship that’s floundering.
by: E.B. Johnson
No matter how badly we want our relationships to work, not every partnership we find ourselves in is meant for success. People change, and with them change the things they want from life and the surrounding experiences. Part of learning how to create happy and stable lives for ourselves is knowing when to cut the cord on relationships that are going nowhere fast.
Admitting that your relationship is failing isn’t easy, but it is necessary. Only when you learn to accept things for what they are, can you take the required steps forward to start your healing process. Letting go of a partnership that is going nowhere is a powerful part of learning how to build our happiness. Don’t waste your time chasing a partnership that was never meant to bloom. Accept that your relationship was always meant to fail and use that knowledge to proactively become a part of your future.
Seeing our relationships in a whole new light.
Relationships can be an important part of our journey, but they can also be a huge emotional hurdle and distraction — especially when things go wrong. A relationship on the rocks sucks up all our focus, and pulls us away from a sea of potential opportunities that might otherwise provide us security, stability and fulfillment. Clinging to relationships, for the sake of having a relationship, is a dangerous trap to fall into; and yet many of us fall into it every single day.
We have to start seeing our relationships in a whole new light. Only when we illuminate our partners and ourselves with the truth of reality, can we see the holes and realize the things we need to reach our joy.Holding on to someone who wasn’t meant for you leaves no room for the right love to come in.
The space in our lives is finite. The time we have on this planet is finite. Stop cluttering your life with things that bring you only frustration, aggravation, danger or distress. Take a step back and start looking at your partnership for what it really is. Our emotions are important and they are meant to protect us from those things in our life which would otherwise cause displeasure. Protect yourself, and start taking a stand for the future that you want. Don’t cling to something that wasn’t made for you. Accept your relationship for what it is and see your partner in a whole new light.
The hard-to-deny signs that your relationship is heading for failure.
Whether you want to admit it or not, your relationship may not be made to last forever. If your partnership is on the rocks, these are the hard-to-deny signs that it might be doomed for failure.
No care left to fight
Though we think of fighting as a negative in our relationships, it can actually help us grow together and work out our differences. While some fighting crosses the line, no fighting at all is something that both parties should be concerned a bout. When you both stop fighting, it means you’ve both stopped caring about one another and your partnership. Couples who don’t even care enough to stand up for themselves (or their relationships) are couples who are not destined for long-term greatness.
All-out disregard
Loving someone means caring for them, and that inherently comes with a responsibility to look after their feelings (within reason). Partners who disregard one another, or who act and behave without consideration for the other person, are not couples who can create a relationship with any kind of healthy longevity. Belittlement, dismissal and even demeaning behavior can all be warning signs that your relationship has come to a close.
Zero plans
Happy couples make plans together, and partners who want the same futures create blueprints of those futures that they can follow hand-in-hand. Failing to make serious plans with your partner is a sign that you aren’t considering your futures together. Relationships that stand the test of time are those in which the engaged parties are working toward the same goals. Without that focus, it’s hard to overcome the inevitable hardship that life throws our way.
No time for one another
Feel like you and your partner just can’t ever find the time for one another? Whether you’re both working a lot — or you just have a conflict of priorities — a couple who never makes time for each other is a couple that cannot thrive. You don’t always have to be in the same physical space, but you do both have to commit to being emotionally present with one another. It’s hard to connect without that presence. If you don’t have time for each other now, it’s hard to imagine you making more time in the future.
Failing intimacy
Intimacy is one of the cornerstones of every relationship, and it comprises both physical and emotional intimacy. The intimacy we share with our partners is critical, but it’s one of the first things that begins to disintegrate when our relationships run awry. Have you and your partner stopped sleeping together? Stopped sharing confidences? Or crying on one another’s shoulders? Then your intimacy has left, and you have to be prepared for the fact that it may never return.
Lack of trust
Like intimacy, our partnerships cannot thrive without deep and impenetrable levels of trust. Trusting our partners means knowing, inherently, that they will never go out of their way to cause us harm. It’s feeling secure in their presence and stable in their love, and it’s a true gift and a boon for those of us who reach it. Failing to trust your partner, however? That’s something that happens through insecurities and violations of boundaries, time and time again. And once it does, it’s hard to ever gain a foothold in our partner’s hearts again.
Abuse and jealousy
Many of us mask our toxic relationships with a label of “passion” and make allowances that we would never make in our normal lives. Abusive jealousy, or controlling behavior that leads to big explosions and major upsets isn’t normal, and it’s no way to live. You can’t maintain an equitable, honest or open relationship under volatile or otherwise emotionally or physically violent conditions. If your partner is abusive, violently jealous, or otherwise abusive — your relationship isn’t meant for the long term.
Contempt and resentment
Whether we choose to address a failing relationship or not, our subconscious behaviors have a way of outing us and exposing our truths. Being dismissed by your partner, or disconnected from them in a deep way may lead to feelings of both contempt and resentment. You’ll become more agitated the longer you stick around in a partnership that doesn’t fit, and you’ll find yourself turning that aggravation outward on your partner and even your work and your friendships.
The best ways to cope with a failing relationship.
If you know your partnership is on the way out, you can take steps to protect yourself and embrace your new independence. Don’t cling to something that isn’t bringing you happiness any more. Cut the cord and learn how to nurture your acceptance, honesty and hope for a better tomorrow.
1. Nurture your acceptance
The first step in the ending of any relationship — be it long or short term — is coming to an acceptance of your emotions and the way things are. No one likes to think that the thing they’ve built isn’t workable. It’s hard to accept that our partners aren’t the people we thought they were, or that we weren’t able to fix something that was important to us. These mishaps and endings are a part of of life, however, and the sooner we accept that the sooner we can find our way back to happiness.
Get real about where you’re at and get real about how you’re feeling. Take some time away from your partner and use it to investigate the reality of your partnership and what you need to do next. Our partners aren’t always who we want them to be. The things we need from a partnership can change.
Detach, and look at your relationship from a removed, third-party place. If this were your best friend, or a parent, or a sibling — what would you tell them to do? Nurture a radical feeling of acceptance and let your life fill with the idea that life is a culmination of both the good and bad experiences. This relationship didn’t work out. That’s okay. The next one might. It’s never too late to get what you want — but you have to get realistic and you have to embrace reality for what it is.
2. Perform a partnership autopsy
One of the most powerful skills we can cultivate in our personal lives is that of becoming a life mortician. Being a life mortician means being able to look back at the various experiences of your life, and analyze them and break them down. Performing these types of hindsight autopsies allows us to unlock powerful lessons that can transform the way we see ourselves and the world around us. If your relationship has come to an end, perform a partnership autopsy and get real about the reasons things went wrong.
Brace yourself, and dig into the history of your relationship. Take a hard and brutally honest look at what went wrong, and what part you and your partner played in the failure. Don’t shy away from your role, and likewise don’t take it easy on your partner either. Relationships fail because both parties fail to bring what they need to the table. It takes two to tango, but it also takes two to tear down the life you’ve built.
Identify the lessons that you’ve learned from your relationship and focus on translating those lessons across your next romantic endeavor. No matter how poorly a relationship ends, there is always a silver-lining lesson to be gleamed. Don’t allow one shut door to close your mind to the opportunities that are still waiting. Failure is the threshold by which we find things better suited to our needs, but we have to take the lesson to heart and move forward with changes in mind.
3. Embrace your emotions
Emotions are complex, and they can also be extremely nuanced and uncomfortable. The human subconscious oftenbecomes aware of our emotional hardships or discomforts before we do, putting us into strange states or “funks” that can make it hard to sort through our feelings or addresses our relationships. In order to gain the courage you need to move past your failing relationship, you have to start embracing your emotions and the inevitable conclusions they lead you to.
Your life was not meant to be lived in fear, or in pain, or in sadness. Our lives were meant to be fulfilled, and full of experiences and growth — but that requires us to ensure our feet are on the right path and pointing in the right direction. Start spending time with your thoughts. Begin with a mindful journalling practice.
Focus on instances or moments in your past when your emotions got the better of you or were particularly sad, angry, lonely or otherwise hopeless. Dig down into the root of your emotions, and question where they come from. Are you really mad at your partner? Or do you just see that you’re repeating a pattern in them that you saw a parent repeat over-and-over again with no success? When we question our feelings, we resolve them, but we also expose the strange traumas and insecurities which feed them.
4. Widen the divide
If you’re in a failing relationship, then odds are there’s already a great deal of space that exists between you and your partner. Whether this space is physical or emotional, it can be a great gift when you know how to use it. Space allows us to reconnect with yourself and refocus on the things that matter to us. Don’t run away from the divide that’s growing between you and your partner. Lean into it and allow it to soften the blow of the ending.
You shouldn’t need to force space if your relationship has already hit the rocks, but it might be necessary to make it more consistent. If you’ve made the decision to leave, then create as much space as possible between you and the person that you once shared a life with. Use this growing space to get to know who you are, and use it to focus on the person that you want to become.
Lean into the feeling of being independent again. Don’t cross any lines — out of respect — but start chasing your passions again and allow yourself to reconnect with life. The world can seem a scary place, but it’s beautiful and transformative in its own special way. Avoid leaping into any hasty decisions, but allow yourself to lean into the increasing space that’s growing in your failing relationship. Find comfort in it, and the slow slide back into independence that you’ve been waiting for.
5. Practice some radical honesty
Accepting your feelings is a great start, but you have to extend that honesty into the rest of your transformation. Radical honesty requires that we commit to it with unflinching bravery, and this means accepting the role we’ve played in the failure — as well as the decisions that we made to find ourselves in such a partnership. Radical honesty has nothing to do with blame, and everything to do with finding your personal accountability.
Before you cut your ties and call it quits, try embracing a little honesty. You’ve come to the end of the line, and things are over. Was there anything you could have done differently from the beginning? Were there any warning signs you overlooked?
Extend that honesty to your partner. Take this opportunity to open up a dialogue with them and share your thoughts candidly as well as what you’ve taken away or what you’ve enjoyed from their partnership. Parting doesn’t have to be sour, but it should be honest. There’s no use in hiding or holding a grudge when you’re only looking to move on anyway. Be honest with yourself and be honest with your partner. Don’t hold back when there’s nothing left to lose.
6. Tap into your inner power
Finding the courage to end a failing relationship is difficult, and it’s not (usually) something that comes to us overnight. If you’re looking for the strength to tell the other person that you officially want to call it quits — you’ve got to call on your inner power. No one else can help you draw that line in the sand, and no one should have to. You got into your partnership, and you’re responsible for getting out of it when your heart’s no longer in the game.
Start tapping into your inner power and allow it to hurdle you toward the endings and the closure that you need. Know that you are the only person on this planet who can provide happiness and fulfillment to yourself. We’re responsible for our own journeys here. No matter how long you stay with this person, they (alone) will never give you the joy you’re chasing.
Get back in touch with your meaning. Reconnect with your passions. Figure out who you are again, and then identify the strengths you have. Revel in those strengths and allow them to bolster your courage and your self-esteem. Think back to the hardest moments in your life so far. You survived then, and you will survive now. You are capable and worthy of a life and a partnership that allow you to tap into your contentment. Don’t settle for less. Empower yourself to thrive.
7. Forgive, forgive, forgive
Forgiveness can seem like a strange concept to embrace in the wake of a failing relationship, but it’s something we should never lose sight of…no matter what stage of partnership-breakdown we’re in. You have to forgive yourself for mistakes you’ve made, and you have to forgive the other person too. Some people just aren’t meant to be together, and that’s no one’s fault. Forgive if you want to move on the right way.
Be mindful and reconnect with that inner empathy and compassion that’s natural. Understand that, as a human, we’re all fragile and we’re all prone to mistakes of hope and ego. Don’t sell yourself short just because you chose the wrong person. Don’t resent your partner forever just because they made a mistake.
Accept your relationship for what it is and give yourself (and your partner a break) once you’ve come to the end. There’s no use in screaming and fighting and calling one another names. If the relationship has failed, it’s failed, and there’s little more that can be improved by emotional displays of virtue-signaling or revenge-seeking. Leave things where they lie and forgive things where you can. Everything else is baggage that has to be resolved on your own.
8. Severe ties
With all of this knowledge and these personal revelations to hand, it’s time to cut the cord and let go of the relationship that’s holding you both back from better things. Don’t waste more time in a place you know you don’t belong. Don’t waste more of your partner or your spouse’s time in something that you know has no hope of ever bringing happiness. Cut the cord.
Relationships are not the end-all and be-all to life. They are a beautiful benefit when we approach them with the right mindset, and the right intentions. Let go of this entity in your life that’s becoming a drain. Focusyourself on hope and let go of that shadow that’s taking up space in your life.
To know a relationship has no hope of moving forward — while clinging to it as though everything is normal — is insanity. Do yourself and your partner a favor and walk away with kindness and the best of intentions. Have the conversation face to face and do it in a private place where you can both be comfortable to express your emotions and say whatever it is you need to say. Allow yourself to be raw; allow yourselves to speak and exist in the moment with feeling. Once it’s over, the wounds can start to heal.
Putting it all together…
It’s not easy to accept that you’re a part of a failing relationship, but it’s necessary in order to forge a path back to joy. We want our partnerships to end fireworks and picket fences, but that’s not always the case. There are several signs that can indicate that we’re in a relationship that was never meant to thrive, but it’s our responsibility to step and make the corrections that safeguard our ultimate wellbeing.
Nurture your sense of acceptance and ease into seeing your relationship and partner for what they are. What you had once is not promised for forever. Perform a relationship autopsy and use some brutal personal honesty to gain a new perspective. What went wrong in your relationship? What went right? Use this answers to focus on who you are and what you want to build. Embrace your emotions and protect yourself by widening the divide. If things are over, there’s no use dragging things out. Open up to your partner and let them know you’re at. Ease into the increasing space. Stay honest with yourself, and tap into your inner power. You know what want and you’re strong enough to get it. Forgive yourself and your partner for past mistakes. There’s no use continuing the battle if things truly are at an end. Separate as civil acquaintances if you can’t separate as friends. Stop holding onto a passion that’s no longer meant for you. Make room in your life for true love to come in.
