Relationships Shouldn't Feel Like Work

Think back to the times in your life when you’ve been happiest in love.

Were you distracted at work? Were you scared to speak your mind? Were you constantly torn between staying and breaking up???

Of course not.

Yet that’s what it feels like when your relationship stops making you happy.

You get this awful, sinking feeling.

You try to get him to change. He promises he will. He does, but only a little. Then he reverts back to who he really is, and things slowly deteriorate.

Yet you stay, even though the thing that’s supposed to make you happy—your relationship—is draining your spirit.

If you identify with the above, you’ve likely bought into the biggest lie ever perpetrated by parents, couples counselors, and dating gurus:

“Relationships take work!”

You’ve fallen for men your entire life and spent years trying to justify why they were a long-term fit, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

You cried and fought, broke up and made up, and vented to your friends and family because you thought this was NORMAL.

All because “relationships take work.”

Sorry, but they don’t take that much work.

In other words, if you tried on an expensive pair of shoes that didn’t fit, would you keep trying them on for TWO YEARS?

No way.

You might admire how gorgeous the shoes looked.

You might think it’s too bad the shoes didn’t fit.

I can guarantee you wouldn’t continually force your feet inside them.

This is what you’ve been doing with men. Here are three main reasons why:

Chemistry

Think of the person you’ve been MOST attracted to. Your Best Sex Ever Guy.

Do you have him in your mind? Great.

If he isn’t your type, picture someone else. I’ll wait.

Next question: Are you married to that man right now? Is he cooking you dinner, rubbing your feet, and listening to you after your hard day at work?

No, he is not. He’s likely someone else’s best sex ever and is slowly destroying her self-esteem. Or maybe he’s in jail. Hard to say.

But that’s chemistry. It’s intoxicating…and it has no correlation with long-term compatibility.

Chemistry literally refers to “brain chemistry.” Dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine get released when you’re attracted to someone, lighting up the pleasure centers of your brain. This functions like cocaine or meth.

In related news, people under the influence tend to be poor decision-makers and have roller-coaster-like emotions. High highs. Low lows. Chronic anxiety.

Does that describe how you felt in some of your most ill-fated relationships? If so, that’s the opposite of what a healthy partnership should feel like.

So yeah, if you’re like most people, you may have overstayed your welcome with a messed-up partner because the sex was amazing. But here’s the thing:

In a healthy relationship, sex is the icing on the cake.

In an unhealthy relationship, sex IS the cake.

You can’t live on cake alone.

Sunk Costs

I hate to sound like an economist (Note: there is no way I can sound like an economist), but it's hard to pull out once you make an investment.

If you're standing in a non-moving line, the last thing you want to do is leave, only to discover there’s no faster line.

If you moved for a job and discovered you didn’t like your workplace, you wouldn’t necessarily want to turn around and move back home.

If you put $10,000 in Bitcoin and it’s down to $5000, you’ll probably hold on to your blockchain money until it zeroes out.

(These could be better examples. Is there an economist in the house?)

Anyway, sunk costs cause people to remain in broken relationships. Have you ever said one of the below statements justifying why you won’t break up?

"We’ve been sleeping together for four months, and he still hasn’t deleted his profile. I’ll give him a little more time to figure things out.”

“We’ve been living together for a year, and while we fight 50% of the time, we’re a great couple the time we’re not fighting.”

“We’ve been engaged for three years, and even though I’m unhappy with the relationship, I’m getting older, the dating pool is awful, and I’d rather stay in this soul-sucking partnership than go onto the dating apps.”

These are all variations on the same story:

You have an epic three months together. You meet his friends and family, take a few weekend trips, and slowly, his mask slips off.

You start to see the real him and don’t like what you see: Flashes of anger, dishonesty, selfishness, criticism, laziness, and emotional unavailability.

Still, you stay, hoping he’ll grow, change, “do the work,” and become the man you want him to be.

He won’t. This is who he is. At some point, you have to cut your losses.

Last Man on Earth

I tell every client not to treat any man like the last man on earth. It sounds silly, but I don't know how else to phrase it.

My clients rationalize staying by citing the dearth of “quality men” available: "This connection I had is so rare. I only find guys like this once every few years. I’ve seen what’s out there. It sucks, and I don’t want to settle."

If you’re saying this while in an unhappy relationship, you ARE settling.

Maybe not on height, intelligence, or status, but you’re settling by staying with a guy who doesn’t allow you to let down your guard and relax.

At the root of “last man on earth” syndrome is a fear that if you break up with him, you're screwed.

You’re too old. You’re too damaged. You’re not loveable. You’re not worthy.

These aren’t my words. These are the words floating around in your head when you choose to stay in a relationship where your needs aren’t met.

Even though you know you should dump him, you anchor onto every good thing about him as if the list overrides his lack of kindness or communication:

“He’s so smart. He’s so funny! He has a great job! He makes a lot of money! He gets along with my family! He said I’m beautiful! He told me loves me! He’s a devoted father! He took me to Hawaii with his kids, and we barely fought!”

Yes, those are the reasons you chose him.

They are not the reasons you should stay.

You should stay because he’s your best friend. You should stay because his love is unconditional. You should stay because he has your back. You should stay because he sees the best in you. You should stay because you trust him to do the right thing.

You should stay because, even if nothing changes, you’ll be happy with him for the rest of your life.

While, theoretically, all of us can change, you can’t have a relationship dependent on your partner changing for you.

In fact, in 20 years of dating coaching, none of my clients married the man she was dating when she hired me.

That’s because people in good relationships don’t hire me.

They’re too busy enjoying their life.

I only get a call for help when someone is terribly unhappy with her partner.

I hear from her after she’s read self-help books, done therapy, listened to podcasts, dragged him to couples counseling, and nothing has worked.

This is why I feel so strongly that good relationships shouldn’t feel like work.

You can’t fix a man who doesn’t want to be fixed. You can’t have a relationship dependent on your partner changing for you.

I’ve been married for 15 years. My wife and I have disagreed about many things. Whether she should go to bed before 2 a.m. (she says no), whether it makes sense to take a full day to pack for an overnight trip (she says yes), and whether I’m impatient or impossibly impatient (we agree to disagree).

Despite these recurring arguments, we get along 95% of the time.

That’s the way it should be.

So, if you’re bristling at this piece because your parents fought like cats and dogs to stay together, I’m not second-guessing their decision.

I am only asking if you’d like to have a better relationship than your parents.

I believe you do, and I believe you can.

It just requires a little reframing of the idea that “relationships take work.” When that’s been your template since childhood, you think it’s normal to have a marriage with name-calling, stonewalling, slammed doors, silent treatments, snooping, and constantly breaking up and making up.

All relationships take some effort, but when that effort starts to feel like actual work, your relationship is not serving its purpose.

When I look at my happy marriage and the happy marriages of my Love U clients, those relationships all have one overriding quality:

They’re EASY.

If that sounds hard to believe, that’s because you’ve never chosen an easy relationship before.

I invite you to consider that you can. Life is long. You’re worth it.

Originally published on Lovesplaining via Substack.?