The Hard Truth About Being in a Long-term Relationship Many Don’t Want to Share

Many people glamorous the idea that being in a relationship is always better than being single. While I’m myself in one long-term relationship for almost 6 years now, I want to highlight that no “status” is better than the other.

I get their perspective, though. Being in a relationship can bring more benefits and happiness into your life (if you’re with the right person, of course). However, being single also have its own benefits that aren’t less important than those who are taken.

Those who are in a long-term relationship especially don’t want to share the struggles because they don’t want people to think they aren’t the “perfect match.”

And people like that are the ones who end up stuck in a toxic relationship for longer than they’d like to admit.

Your past trauma still can get in the way.

Being with someone long enough doesn’t necessarily make your past trauma go away. You can never depend on your partner to heal those wounds — it’s on you to fix them.

The first 2 years of my relationship, things were so hard because of my chronic trust issue. I kept “accusing” him of cheating which drove him crazy because he didn’t. Reassuring me that he’s loyal didn’t lessen my trust issue.

Then I realized all work should come from me. It took me so long to grasp the idea because I depended on my partner to be more secure. And obviously, it didn’t work, and I had to work hard to heal those past traumas I got in the past so it wouldn’t affect my current relationship.

You need to constantly reconnect and make sure you’re still on the same page.

To jump into a relationship is easy but maintaining it for the long run? Not so much.

Just like anything else in life, you need to constantly put in the effort. Especially when it comes to a relationship, that means both parties have to show up every day and show appreciation to each other even if they don’t feel like it.

That’s why when you’re with the wrong partner, everything feels heavy because it does feel like work. Sure, relationships, in general, are constant work, but when he/she is right for you, you wouldn’t feel so alone trying to keep it together.

Being in a long-term relationship can be tricky because sometimes both people already feel so comfortable that they think no work requires anymore; no effort from both ends to show some love, no more working hard to surprise their partner on the birthday.

They stop because they assume their partner don’t need it anymore since they’ve been together for so long now, but we tend to forget that as we get older, our preference and feelings in general change.

So it’s necessary to be consistent in showing our love to our partner and reconnect emotionally every now and then.

Problems might be less, but that doesn’t mean there’s none.

It’s true that the more you know someone, the fewer disagreements you’ll have. This is because you spend a lot of time together, and it only makes sense that you start getting to know their love language so well.

But that doesn’t mean there won’t be any fights ever. My partner and I still have arguments and a big fight once in a while. And the tricky thing is, whenever that happens, you tend to have higher expectations on how much they should understand your feelings.

They know the ins and outs, so they should’ve known what you want without you telling them, right? Not really. You still need to effectively communicate your needs to your partner no matter how well you assume they know you.

Love is never enough to keep it going.

When the relationship is under one year or so, you think nothing else matters than the strong love you have for your partner — as if you don’t need anything else in this world but this romantic relationship in front of you.

However, when the honeymoon phase fades away and life becomes more “real,” you will notice that you can’t depend on that lovey-dovey feeling to maintain the relationship.

You need to work on your career to feel “recharged,” you need money to feel more secure about the future of your relationship, and you definitely need to think about all other external factors that might impact the dynamic in your relationship.

In short, you need to be logical, too, in order to keep the relationship healthy because you can’t be the best version of yourself for your partner if you are burning out or broken inside.

You tend to depend your happiness on your partner, and it’s never a good thing.

Following up on the previous point, it’s important to be responsible for your own feelings even if you know you have this one person you can count on.

I’ve seen many people in a long-term relationship that don’t take care of themselves and depend their whole happiness on their partner. It makes the relationship hard to breath— because there’s no space for it.

When getting older, I no longer believed in such a thing as “your better half.” We are all still our own person even if we’ve been committed to someone for the rest of our lives.

The Takeaway

I’ve been both single and in a long-term relationship, and one thing I can tell you is that both have their ups and downs. Being in a relationship doesn’t guarantee you’ll be happy because it’s easy to think that way when you’re single. “If only I had someone, all these sad and lonely feelings would go away” — trust me, it doesn’t work that way.

You can be in a long-term relationship with someone you deeply love, and you still feel lonely. I think we tend to interpret our internal needs in the wrong way. Sometimes we don’t need the other person to fill in that void, we need ourselves to do the job.

And you can never be happy if you give that job to someone else — even if it’s someone you call the love of your life.

I write about all things that you might struggle with within your love life. My main goal is to make you feel less alone on your journey. If you resonate with my stories, stay in tune by becoming a Medium member here, or you can buy me a coffee here 🙂

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Previously Published on medium

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