It is very common for people who are in a failing relationship, or who have left a failing relationship, to blame it on “growing apart”. They say this as if it were some unavoidable fate, something they had no control over. It’s fairly likely that they even believe it to be that way.
Growing apart doesn’t just happen. It is the cumulative effect of actions, and choices, over time. That is why I call it relationship suicide… you are killing your own relationship. Relationship suicide is more a build-up of small things than it is big things, because big things tend to be more (to use a similar analogy) relationship murder, being caused by someone else (your partner).
If your relationship is on the downward slope, but not yet dead, you can often turn it around by becoming aware of what it is that is killing it. Once you start trying to be aware, you’re likely to find that it is easy to see what actions are causing the most problems in the relationship. That gives you a good place to start.
It is good to read this list with your partner, but if you read it separately be aware that if you tell your partner what it says you should do there can be an instant defensive reaction to being told that they are doing something that is killing their relationship. The reaction is to deny it, and to semi-consciously KEEP doing those things, as sort of a “You can’t tell me what to do!” response. That can actually be more harmful to the relationship than continuing the way you were, because at that point they know what they are doing, and are doing it consciously, and may feel either resentful to you for pointing out where they were failing, or guilty for doing it.
If you are in a good relationship, or looking to start one, use this list to educate yourself about what to avoid… the things on the list are small things that add up over time and eventually result in relationship suicide.
* Note: These are from my personal observations, and even previous personal experience, but they ARE NOT from my relationship with my wife.
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Discuss Your Partner’s Faults Regularly
Discussing your partner’s faults is a double-edged sword, and both sides cut at your relationship. I’m quite certain you can see how continuously discussing your partner’s faults with your partner could lead to a nasty confrontation. Doing so with someone else has negative consequences on multiple levels, as well… you lower the other person’s opinion of your partner and word may get back to your partner, hitting several defensive reactions. And ANY time you start going off about your partner’s faults, you are reminding yourself of them, paying them more attention, focusing more on them, and various other things that all lead to them weighing more heavily in your mind… if you ONLY talk about what is wrong with your partner, and never what is good about them, your relationship suicide may not even be all that slow.
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Verbally “Snipe” At Each Other
Verbal sniping refers to the little things that people who have been together for a while say to each other with the intention of getting under the other person’s skin. It may be a comment about their driving, or the way they do (or don’t do) something around the house, or anything else, as long as it’s just intended to irritate them a little bit, not provoke an upfront confrontation. I have seen quite a few different couples do this, and it really takes a toll, especially on emotional intimacy. And you might be surprised how much emotional intimacy has to do with sexual intimacy.
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Let Your Partner Slide Down Your Priority List
This is one of the easiest things on this list to do without noticing. You get busy with some project or other, and so you push your partner slightly aside in your mind. When you’re done with that project, or even before you are done with it, another project comes up. This time, you don’t have to push your partner aside, they’re already there. When the next one comes up, you end up needing to push your partner just a LITTLE more to the side. Once you’re to this point, your partner is no longer at the top of your priority list, and takes less to move them from #2 to #3 than from #1 to #2, and it’s a downhill slope from there. The worst part is that this particular thing is a lot of the time, probably even most of the time, subconscious… you don’t consciously choose to push them to the side, your subconscious does it for something you are focused on right then. That makes it hard to fix, too, because first you have to become aware of it, and then you actually have to admit that you did it (most people don’t like to admit it, even to themselves, because they feel guilty for it…. to which I might respond “There’s a reason why you feel guilty about it.”).
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Neglect Quality One On One Time
One on one time is important… but quantity is not the same as quality. It doesn’t matter if you spend twenty-three and a half hours together each day, if only fifteen minutes of it is quality time your relationship is going to suffer. In fact, one on one time in quantity without quality is probably even worse than not having the time in the first place because quantity without quality can leave you sick of it.
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Stop Showing Appreciation
This is one of a few items on this list that all fit into the subheading of “Taking Your Partner For Granted”… but they are different enough to merit more depth than that. When you stop showing appreciation for the things that your partner does, even the small things, they lose much of the incentive to do those very things. That might not seem like that big of a deal on the surface, but what happens when you stop showing appreciation for, and they stop doing, things like washing the dishes, giving massages, saying I love you, taking you out on a date… you get the idea. It’s the small things that bind you together in the spaces between the big things.
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Stop Being Impressed
Like the one above, this item fits into “Taking Your Partner For Granted”, but in a different way. It is easy to become accustomed to your partner, and stop noticing when they do things that are above average. For instance, if your partner is a good cook, it becomes easy to take for granted the good meals they cook. You forget to be impressed by how much better than normal they are. If you stop noticing the things about them that stand out above the crowd, then you start thinking about them less highly, which is a mighty fine way to start “growing apart”, and eventually achieve relationship suicide.
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Stop Having Deep Conversations
Communication is important. You know that, you’ve heard it a million times. What the people telling you that often fail to mention, however, is that it isn’t just about quantity, it’s about quality (like the one on one time above). The depth, and therefor strength, of your relationship is directly related to how deeply you know each other. Since people are constantly changing, that means that you need deep conversations on a regular basis, so that you can learn what things have changed, and make sure that you still know who they ARE, not just who they were.
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Start Focusing On Other People
This ties into letting your partner slip down you list of priorities, but it’s not the same. If you and your partner are around other people, and you focus on those others to the point of even partial exclusion of your partner, it communicates to your partner that they are less important than the other people. This is even more so if it’s someone that your partner sees themselves as competing with, such as another woman (if you’re a man), or someone else who is a rival in some field that your partner considers themselves good at, such as your partner being a chef, and you focus on another chef.
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Compare Your Partner To Others
This is a bad idea when your partner comes out worse in the comparison, and often bad even if your partner comse out ahead. That is because any comparison communicates to your partner that you are considering their value relative to that of someone else, and indicating that the person you are comparing them to is a rival for them in whatever area you are comparing. This is made far worse if the person you are comparing them to is someone that you spend a lot of time around, and even worse than that if you compare them to an ex-partner.
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Blame Your Partner For Things You Don’t Like About Yourself
This is a well-known thing in psychology, where they refer to it as projecting. Projecting is when you “project” the way you feel about something onto someone else, acting like they feel that way, even when there is no evidence, sometimes even when there is contradictory evidence. Blaming your partner for things that have changed about you since you’ve been together, even when they had nothing to do with that change, also falls into this category.
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Try To Control Your Partner
Attempting to control your partner is a bad idea. Period. Making your child check in with you every hour or two when they’re out is okay. Making your adult partner do so is not. The same thing applies to spending small amounts of money… it is fine to require your child to check with you before spending $5, but the same is not true of your partner. Again, requiring your child to get prior approval of anyone they want to spend time with is fine, but trying to do the same with your partner is not.
Your partner is not a child, and especially not YOUR child. Don’t treat them as if they were.
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Try To Force Your Partner To Change
This is a mistake that a LOT of people make. You cannot, under any circumstances, force someone to change. It is simply not even possible. You can put in place incentives to do so, and negative consequences for not doing so, but you cannot force them to do it.
Add to this the fact that people respond extremely negatively to feeling like their power of choice is being taken away (or even infringed upon), and you have a recipe for disaster.
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Try To Manipulate Your Partner
Manipulating your partner, or even attempting to do so, is bad. It causes the same defensive reactions as trying to force them to change, for the same reason. You are trying to take away their power of choice, or limit it, and people resent that. If you succeed, it also causes your regard for them to drop, because you begin to see them as something that you can control, not an individual capable of going their own way and making their own choices. That’s an almost certain path to losing your respect for them, as well, and at that point, your relationship is effectively dead.
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Tell Your Partner White Lies
You know you shouldn’t lie. That’s not a disputed issue. But some people, at a middle depth, think small lies are okay if they don’t get caught. When I say at a middle depth, I mean that if you ask them they will almost always say lying is wrong under any circumstances. They also probably believe, at their core, the same thing… which is why even white lies eat at you a little bit over time. This type of lie even comes out without conscious thought at times, especially if you feel like you’re under pressure, or even worse, like you’re being attacked. The lie simply pops out before you are even aware you are thinking about it.
Once you have lied, one of two things is going ot happen: either you are going to get caught, or you are going to think at least slightly lower of your partner. Either one of these things will bring your relationship suicide closer to success.
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Complain Regularly
Being around someone who complains all the time is draining. Having that person be your partner makes it worse, because you feel guilty if you tune them out and, of course, you spend more time around your partner than most others. Listening to someone complain all the time causes you to be more aware of the negative things, thus bringing you, the listener, to a lower mental state, as well as the complainer.
Try not to complain, and if you DO complain, try to think of two good things to sayfor each negative thing you catch yourself complaining about.
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Complain (Regularly) About What Your Relationship Is Lacking
Combining a couple of the items above, complaining about what your relationship is lacking is a very easy way to put a serious hurt on said relationship. It is pointing out to your partner what they are doing wrong, saying that you think what they are doing isn’t good enough, discussing their faults, complaining, at least somewhat manipulative (you are trying to get them to do or not do something, whatever is lacking), and many other negative things.
Discussing where your relationship could improve is a good thing… but not all the time. And when you DO discuss it, make sure you do it from a positive perspective, as in “We could be closer if we did such and such” rather than “You never do so and so”.
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Drop An Emotional Bomb Before Reaffirming Your Love
Want to make your partner feel pressured, overwhelmed, and attacked, all the same time? If so, try dropping an emotional bombshell on them first thing after being apart, before showing them that you love them. This includes first thing in the morning (sleeping counts as being apart), right when they come home from work or a trip, or anything else that involves being apart. Give them a chance to feel like they are at home, and, if you can, show them that you love them by doing something nice right off the bat. That something nice can be complimenting them, hugging them, kssing them, all of the above, or something else altogether that you know they appreciate.
And don’t just do something positive, and then immediately hit them with the bomb either… give them at least a few minutes to shift from “out” mode to “home” mode.
So if you want to commit relationship suicide, start going down the list above. The death of the relationship will be directly affected both by the number of the above-listed things that you do, and by the vigor with which you do them.
If, on the other hand, you would like to start a new relationship off right, keep your current relationship strong, or turn around a relationship that has been falling apart, use the list above as a test. Give yourself an honest evaluation as to which of the things you do, and work on stopping them. Try to stop the behaviors that build on each other first, or the ones that you do particularly badly. You may even find out that your relationship soars to new heights!
