To the Relationship Workhorses: It’s OK to Say ‘Enough’

You might not know it from our physical appearance, but some of us can carry an entire relationship on our shoulders for months or even years at a time.

We are the friends/siblings/romantic partners who take charge of keeping the lines of communication open; monitoring every slight alteration in the other person’s mood and adjusting our behavior accordingly; and suppressing our own needs to focus exhaustive energy on what we can do for the person we care about. We do this hoping to receive love and consideration in return, of course, but we will keep doing it long after the other person stops putting in effort.

Ironically, all that heavy lifting doesn’t make us stronger; instead, it often makes our sense of self frail and sickly. And here’s the worst part: in the end, it usually fails anyway — because a relationship can only exist for so long when one person is doing all the maintenance work.

When an unbalanced relationship (romantic or otherwise) ends, it can feel like a personal failure on the part of the individual who was more actively invested. We wonder, “If I gave this my all, and it still wasn’t good enough, what does that say about me? Perhaps I myself am not ‘good enough’ in some fundamental way.”

But let me assure you of something I have learned, then forgotten, then relearned several times over the years: Your relationships are not a mirror of your worth and your lovability. All they reflect is the particular combination of two very unique people. One of those people is you, and the other is someone over whom you have no control. I repeat, NO control.

Any relationship has its periods where one person puts in more effort than the other. The problem starts when that becomes the default mode. And for those of us who are anxious, or people pleasers, or frightened when we feel a lack of control, or perfectionists, or survivors of past relationship trauma, or all of the above…well, it’s all too easy to continue bridging the gap and hoping we can fix things and bring the balance back. We become the workhorses of the relationship.

During times in my life when I felt an inexplicable emptiness, I looked to certain friendships or romantic pursuits to fill the void. Those relationships, I believed, were a mirror that would tell me deep truths about myself and my worth. If one began to falter, instead of recognizing that not all relationships are meant to last, I took the shift as a sign that I was doing something wrong. And if I was the problem, I could be the solution as well, so I doubled or tripled my efforts.

I’ll fast-forward to the end of each of those stories and tell you that approach didn’t work. It was depleting and damaging and wasted a lot of precious time. Relationships live or die based on the actions of both participants. One person can hold things together for a while, but not forever, and the quality of the relationship in the meantime will rapidly deteriorate.

The truth is, if our partner returns to meet us halfway, it’s because they made the choice to start showing up again in the relationship. We can’t really take credit for their renewed effort. And if they choose to keep putting in the bare minimum, guess what? We can’t take blame for that.

Try to let that sink in. Your partner/friend/relative is going to change for the better, or they are going to keep doing exactly what they’ve been doing and make only surface-level investments in the relationship. That’s not under your control. Believing otherwise will lead to misery and utter exhaustion.

If you want to direct your energy in a productive way, focus it on figuring out what you’re fighting so hard to get from this other person. Then work on meeting those needs without involving anyone else. The only relationship that directly reflects your worth is the one you have with yourself.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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