5 Promising Signs Your Failing Relationship Is Still Worth Fighting For
It's not over yet.
unsplash We’ve all been to that place where we find ourselves wondering if our romantic relationship is worth trying to salvage.
I remember a time when I would try to envision a new life without my partner every night as I drove home from work—sometimes, so lost in thought, I’d have no recollection of the 30-minute drive. Something kept telling me, every time I stared into her pale blue eyes, that we had to try to work it out. There was an underlying connection between us that neither of us was ready to walk away from—no matter how much drama there seemed to be.
Sometimes, it feels like even though you're in love, no amount of advice can fix your broken relationship. But that's not necessarily the truth.
Love and relationships take work, but how do you know if yours is worth the effort? There are 5 definitive signs that a relationship is worth fighting for:
1. When you imagine the future, you see your partner's face.
I have some pretty specific plans for my future. When I close my eyes and I see all the countries I’m going to visit, her face is always part of that picture — walking down the cobblestone streets of Paris, on a gondola in Venice, playing on the beach in Honolulu — none of it makes any sense to me without her. She is the one that puts the fire inside of me to want to achieve those things in the first place.
Success would feel empty if your partner wasn’t part of the celebration.
2. You still enjoy doing things together.
I’ll admit, there have been relationships in my past where I would just “endure” the time we spent together on shopping trips or family visits. When I found someone who I actually “enjoyed” spending time with, it almost made everything else about the relationship reach a magical level.
When we hit a point sometime after Christmas where we really had no spending money to go do anything, we spent the afternoon at a bookstore drinking espresso and browsing the “Get Rich Quick” section. It was the most fun I had in a very long time and I know she felt the same. This day always comes to mind when I wonder if I should throw in the towel.
3. The thought of your partner moving on is too much to bear.
Whenever we reach a point where it almost seems like all we’re doing is fighting, my typical reaction is to daydream about beginning a new relationship with some imaginary woman who is a lot less adversarial and judgemental. When I begin to do this, I also try to imagine my partner walking and holding hands with someone else, making love to someone else and sleeping next to someone else. Usually, these thoughts fill me with dread and a lot of anxiety. The despair I feel at the thought of her experiencing life with someone else is enough to convince me to do whatever it takes to heal our union.
It’s pretty unpleasant but it is also necessary to keep reminding yourself that it’s a two-way street. If you go elsewhere, so does your partner.
4. Your trust your partner implicitly.
Ironically, getting honest and vulnerable with another person is usually scarier than most anything else.
There was a time when I inadvertently became emotionally unavailable because my partner made me feel inferior during a seemingly benign discussion about her former boyfriend. When the inevitable argument began about why things became so cold between us, I was faced with the unenviable task of having to admit things about myself that made me uncomfortable on a visceral level. The look in her eyes when I finally opened up forever warmed me to the idea of allowing myself to get that emotionally naked and honest with her any time I ever needed to.
It did something else too: it forged a bond between us that was stronger than almost any other relationship I ever had with any other woman in my entire life. It became the glue that held us together during the earthquakes and ups and downs we experienced through the years.
5. The sex is still incredible.
After we reached that point of communication and comfort with each other — after we understood each other as human beings — the sex became almost next level. It was like no other emotional experience I had ever had before.
I never actually realized what a charade it was trying to reach that stage of intimacy with a virtual stranger until I was fortunate enough to make love to someone who I cared for so deeply. Every time we laid next to each other, out of breath after make-up sex or boredom sex or Sunday afternoon sex, it was so obvious that this was not a thing I could experience with just anyone. This was beautiful and different and special.
It was the kind of thing that led me to plead with her to try couples counseling when it all began to spin out of control. The thought of relying on luck to get to a place like that with someone else was too much to consider. Especially because I realized I hadn’t gotten to a place like that with anyone before — so it seemed foolhardy to think it would be easy to be blessed with that again.
I believe there are times in even the most beautiful relationships where things get so bent, they seem like they’re just about to break into a thousand pieces, never to be made whole again. It makes us question the idea of trying to work on maintaining and preserving them; however, we go ahead and do it anyway because we know in our hearts the person is worth fighting for.
One night when she and I were going at it rather fiercely in the middle of a rainstorm, I noticed that as angry as she got, she never stopped holding the umbrella over my head — even while yelling about how inconsiderate I was. It was in that moment that I knew that I wasn’t going anywhere. At least not without her.
Billy Manas is a poet, singer-songwriter, and truck driver from the Hudson Valley in New York with a degree in literature. Follow Billy on Instagram.