5 Ugly Habits That Mean Your Relationship Is Basically On Life Support, According To Research
Love doesn’t flatline overnight, but these five habits aren't helping.
Lacie Slezak | Unsplash You might not know the truth even as you’re living it. Each day passes into the next and you remain oblivious, always living and trying your hardest with the kernel of fear in your heart.
Maybe you’ve gotten used to ignoring your failing relationship, this dread as it picks at you, boring into you. I was you. I understand.
Knowing the end was coming, even as the beginning merely bloomed. Years have passed bringing an introspection you can only gain through multiple sunsets. I know how to identify the ugly habits of a relationship on life support — and now you will, too.
Here are the ugly habits that mean your relationship is basically on life support:
1. Fear
When you are honest with yourself, you will note the fear like a tide lapping at you. You may see it after many months, and when you do, be gentle to yourself in your recriminations.
You did not enter knowingly and with the will to hurt your partner. You responded out of the various fears that were too much to bear in your life.
And, as the saying goes, you can only do what you are capable of at the moment... or something like that. Meaning, you had fewer tools to handle anxieties than you might now. Forgive yourself and use this lesson for your future.
The underpinnings of fear as a potential sign that a relationship is ending involve anxieties about abandonment, loss of control, and a lack of emotional connection, which can manifest as worry, insecurity, and even self-sabotaging behaviors. A 2018 study explained that a healthy relationship thrives on emotional intimacy and open communication. If there's a lack of connection, one or both partners might feel disconnected, leading to feelings of loneliness, resentment, and, ultimately, a desire to leave the relationship.
2. Incapability of being alone
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It takes you back to almost primitive emotions, the thought of being lonely, bored, a failure at not finding and keeping a mate when all around you people are partnering up like it’s the rapture.
One of the disservices we impart to our children is the failure to teach them the difference between being lonely and being alone. Loneliness is associated with abandonment, isolation, and the loss of friends. Being alone is simply a person who is without company.
Can you live in your home without company? Of course, you can. Serving only you, and beholden to only your needs and wants, it’s a lovely existence. It makes you stronger as a person and helps to distill what you need in your life to be your happiest. Be alone at least once; try for a year, six months at a minimum.
A 2022 study explained that an inability to be alone, often stemming from attachment insecurities or fear of abandonment, can negatively impact relationships and potentially signal their end, as individuals may prioritize avoiding loneliness over relationship satisfaction. To overcome an inability to be alone, it's crucial to address underlying issues such as childhood trauma, attachment insecurities, or mental health conditions.
3. Sadness
The smile on your face? Pasted. The light in your eyes? Dim. Are you with someone who might be kind, might be intelligent, and funny, but who does nothing to illuminate your soul?
I’m not talking about a relationship where the love has fizzled due to busy schedules and raising children, where the passion still flickers, but conference calls collide.
I mean, whenever you are with your partner you start to dream of what it could be like to feel alive in love, or "alove" as I like to refer to it. "Alove" is a spark reigniting over time, whose flame grows low periodically, but never burns out.
If you do not have this enduring passion, it’s time to take action. Because you both deserve that flare, that feeling that the world is made of magic. Sadness, along with other emotions like anger and loneliness, is a common and natural reaction to the end of a relationship.
A 2018 study found that emotional detachment often stems from losing connection and disrupting established routines. Emotional detachment, adverse spontaneous reactions, less supportive reactions to good news, fewer positive non-verbal behaviors, lack of self-disclosure, and deteriorating illusions.
4. Obligation
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Nope, nope, and nope. I don’t care if you are bound by family, children, mortgage, illness, or codependency. The obligation is never a reason to remain.
Yes, if you have children, try your hardest if it is worth it. Children mean family, and family means you take consideration where you might not otherwise.
So be careful with your decisions and make sure they are deliberate and thought out, not whims arising out of anger or vengeance. Your littles deserve that. If you have taken every action to keep your family together, and nothing is working and you are all miserable, it’s okay to pull the plug.
A 2020 study found that while some obligations can strengthen relationships, excessive obligations can indicate the end of a relationship, leading to resentment and strain. When obligations become excessive, it can signal a shift in the relationship dynamic, where the focus moves from mutual enjoyment and connection to a sense of duty and obligation.
5. Messiness
Divorce and separation are messy. Determining a way to travel from point A to C, without having a clue of what B might look like, is daunting.
But you don’t have to know all the answers at this very moment. You don’t have to create two separate households out of thin air. You take it one day at a time.
You start with smaller goals and gather information for your next steps. And, most importantly, you have faith, because when you are fighting for your right to happiness these little actions, the housekeeping, the calls to lawyers, the research, it’s all inconsequential.
These actions are merely a check box next to an item on a list, attainable when you enter into your new reality with a calm mind and heart.
It might take a life-shattering illness nipping at the life you have built for yourself. It might take the close call of losing everything, or a job downsized and a stark financial situation, or it might take quiet contemplation.
Once you realize you are in a desperate relationship, it’s time to get real with yourself and your goals for the future. Because one thing desperate relationships endure is that they don’t.
Hilary Lauren Jastram is a freelance writer and author of Sick Success: The Entrepreneur's Prescription to Turning Pain into Purpose and Profit.
