Do You Find Yourself Too Busy for Your Relationship?
I can’t make time because …
- I have more important things to do!
- If I go for routine activities with my partner, I feel like I am wasting time …
- In fact, as much as my partner tries to make something interesting or tries to surprise me, I try to make excuses to avoid them…
- I think it’s better to avoid similar negative experiences like what we used to have before.
- As much as I avoid my partner, he or she makes more efforts which make me more frustrated and angry!
What are the reasons behind this?
Is it because …
- You don’t love your partner?
- You are not fulfilled with your relationship; emotionally, sexually, intellectually etc…
- You feel you are losing your freedom?
- You are not sure about the future of your relationship?
If your answers to the above questions are yes, it may mean that you are not in a relationship right for you, or that you may have grown out of your relationship.
- You might have started a wrong relationship; the decision based on your wisdom at that time now doesn’t seem to be good anymore. For example, you may have chosen to be in a relationship because you felt lonely, or you had hoped to change your life positively by escaping from some previous bad experiences. So, the basis of your decision to be in the relationship was not right start with.
- When you started your relationship, both of you might have had so much in common (ideas, activities, goals, interests, hobbies etc). However during the course of time, one of you has changed and the other has remained the same. It can be a positive or negative change, but a change nonetheless . For example, one person has become addicted to drugs, alcohol etc… or one of you might have had started to pursue higher education, have had higher successes in career, or is constantly expanding his/her horizons while the other remains with the same vision, ideas etc…
- There might be several unfinished issues from your past experiences which make you avoid similar negative feelings in your relationships again. For example, if you have had suffered sexual abuse; you may have tried to overcome it, you may not have reached a point where you can enjoy your sexual relationship. It has therefore caused a big distance between you and your partner by having a less intimate relationship.
- You or your partner might be in critical situations like financial, social and personal crises. So, the person who is under stress may need more space, privacy and time to overcome his/her own crisis.
- Your relationship may have some unresolved conflicts which each of you may have brought from your past experiences or childhood. As an example, one of you may behave in a very dependent manner to fulfill an insecure feeling which came from a lack of parental care during childhood. As a result the other party gets tired of carrying the extra burden of being a mother or father in addition to being a partner. So the independent partner starts to avoid or escape from the dependent partner while the dependent feels more insecure and demands more care and attention by showing increased possessiveness.
- You or your partner do not have enough maturity to take the responsibility for your own decision and consequences. For example one of you may be consistently late for mutual engagement or may not help out in household chores while blaming others for it.
Whatever might be the reasons, both partner’s behaviors, beliefs, past experiences need to be analyzed to understand where this distance or avoidance comes from.
It’s needed to be mindful about your relationships. You may do it with your partner’s co-operation but it is hard for the involved parties to analyze the relationship objectively. We all need a mirror to be able to see ourselves, you should consider consulting a therapist to understand how we behave in our relationships and to find ways to overcome past and present issues to have a happy relationship.