Unless you are one of the few lucky ones who got to marry their high school sweetheart and remain hopelessly in love with him/her, chances are you have, at one point or another felt stuck in a relationship.
Perhaps you are feeling stuck right now.
Perhaps you also feel extremely confused: there are days when you can’t imagine a future without your partner but there are others when the idea of a future with them makes you feel like you’re drowning, sinking deeper and deeper into the ocean.
When these feelings start increasing in number, it’s natural to start thinking about whether it’s time to end your relationship.
As Beverly D. Flaxington explains in her article in Psychology Today:
Oftentimes, those seemingly successful relationships can become turbulent as they progress — these ups and downs are quite commonplace and should be anticipated. But if the phases get longer and don’t seem to pass, and unsettling feelings of discontent and weariness grow stronger, you should ask yourself whether the relationship is the right one for you.
One thing’s for sure: the more you leave your feelings unaddressed and unresolved, the more stuck will you feel in your relationship.
Let’s dive right into what steps you can take to stop feeling that way.
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Define What “Stuck” Means for You
This might come off as silly, but the first step to stop feeling stuck is to ask yourself whether you actually feel stuck, or if there is some other emotion behind your dissatisfaction with your current relationship status.
For example, a couple of months ago, I went out with one of my friends and we quickly started discussing our love lives. At one point, she told me that she had started feeling stuck in her relationship.
I asked her why she felt that way, and she told me something along the lines of, “You know, I just feel more bored with him lately.” I then asked her if she felt that bored to break up with him and she said, “What? No! I’m just saying we’ve been doing some boring things lately.”
She just meant that they stayed home more — and she hates staying home.
That’s definitely not what feeling stuck means. Philosopher, author, and founder of School of Life Alain de Botton perfectly encapsulates its meaning in this article:
Many of us spend a large a part of our lives, in one way or another, feeling stuck, that is in a state where a strong desire to move forward on an issue meets with an equally strong compulsion to stay fixed where one is. For example, we might at one level powerfully want to leave a job in finance in order to retrain in architecture — but at the same time, remain blocked by a range of doubts, hesitations, counter-arguments, and guilty feelings. Or we might be impelled to leave our marriage — while simultaneously unable to imagine any realistic life outside it. To act feels horrific, but doing nothing is killing us as well. Every avenue appears shut off.
If you do feel this way, keep reading.
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Dig Deeper Into What Makes You Feel Stuck
Sometimes, people feel stuck in their relationships because they generally feel stuck in life.
For example, losing your job, having to cope with a big financial debt, or dealing with a loved one’s sickness can push you into a pit of anxiety and depression that might make you feel stuck and despise everything in your life — including your relationship.
That’s why before you start assuming that your relationship has reached its end, you might want to ask yourself these important questions:
- What’s missing in my life?
- If I had *the thing that’s missing* would things be better in my relationship?
- Do my feelings of dissatisfaction come mainly from my relationship?
- Does my relationship make me constantly feel drained and dissatisfied?
- Does the idea of leaving my partner makes me feel free and hopeful?
- Do I imagine a happier life without my partner?
Answering these questions and continuing to dig deeper and deeper will help you uncover the true source of what makes you feel trapped. It’s not always that your relationship makes you feel stuck; sometimes your overall dissatisfaction with your life circumstances affects the way you view your relationship, as well.
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Remind Yourself That All Relationships Hit a Rut Eventually
We all know that relationships take work. A lot of work.
And especially if you’re working on a long-term partnership, then you have to remember a crucial thing about relationships: any of them will one day hit a rut.
What I’m trying to say is that it’s natural for you to start feeling stuck in your relationship at some point, especially if you have been with your partner for a long time. All lovers are flawed and all honeymoon periods eventually end.
Outside of our relationships, we’re all dealing with an array of responsibilities and problems that pressure and change us. When that happens, we need to have an honest conversation with our partner, and if we find that the love and effective communication are still there, try to work through it together.
Instead of letting the temporary doubts take over, it would be wiser to search — if possible — for ways that will allow you and your partner to reconnect and re-align the things you want from your lives and each other.
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Sometimes the Only Way Out Is Ending Things
The decision whether to stay or leave a partner is one of the most complicated and painful any of us ever has to make throughout our lives.
When your doubts stop being temporary and become permanent, and when you reach the conclusion that you feel stuck with your partner — not because life has got in between, but because your romantic attachment is fully gone — it probably means that the time has come to end things.
If you know you want to break-up with your partner, but struggle to do it, remember that:
- No one is to blame. Not all relationships are meant to last.
- You’re not a bad person for ending your relationship.
- Being alone for a while is better than being miserable with someone — and making them feel miserable as well.
- Your partner will eventually recover.
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Final Thoughts
When you feel stuck in a relationship, it can be difficult to tell what’s causing it and what needs to change.
What matters is that you don’t ignore your feelings as they will slowly become worse and harm both you and your partner in the long-term.
Remember, you shouldn’t jump to any conclusions or rush to make permanent decisions. Instead, take the necessary time to do some self-reflection and dig deeper into your emotional state. Honesty is the key here: first with yourself, and then with your partner.
Once you come to terms with your feelings, it will be clear what decision will make you happier in the long-term; be brave and make it.
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This post was previously published on Medium.
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Photo credit: Roksolana Zasiadko on Unsplash