All relationships are emotional investments. We choose our partner, give the best of ourselves to them, and wait to see how things play out.
Like any other investment, we watch the dividends over time. Is the commitment paying off, or is it costing more than we can afford? Are moments of diminishing returns understandable and correctable, or an omen that the emotional investment we hoped would bring us abundant rewards is, instead, diminishing?
When they are aware that something is wrong, successful partners navigate those down times by buckling up and refocusing energy on each other. They explore why the relationship doesn’t seem to be “paying off” anymore and focus, instead, on what still is. They make their relationship their first priority and face whatever the situation is together. And often, they succeed.
I Love You, But I’m Leaving—When Relationships Cost Too Much
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But not always. If they’ve waited too long to heed the signs, they may be in a downward spiral. They recognize that there is still value in the relationship, but the cost of it outweighs the return so much that one or both cannot invest any more of themselves into it.
What keeps partners from recognizing and sharing their feelings when they feel the relationship is costing them too much before they begin writing it off?
Though there are many reasons for unforeseen endings, in my four plus decades of working with couples, I have found these three reasons are the most important.
1. Attachments
Though the focus on personal attachment style has been intense over the past few years, I’m not referring to that when I explore the attachments that keep people together long after their personal relationship is no longer giving them enough reason to stay.
When a couple has been together for a long time, they have usually formed important connections with family, friends, spiritual communities, business associates, children, and even pets. They may own property together. They may have come from the same social group initially, they may have met fighting for the same cause, or they may have the same dreams for themselves and each other.
As their relationship diminishes in its personal intimacy, those attachments to people, lifestyles, and things don’t go away. They are separate attachments from those that once bonded the couple together.
The partner ultimately left behind may have been blinded by those parallel commitments and experiences and not realized that their primary relationship was slowly fading away. The partner who has given up on the investment may be understandably reticent to lose the other attachments and deny their own growing feelings of unhappiness.
I have witnessed how those once-sacred attachments actually become less important once a person cannot live within the personal relationship anymore. The value of a social group, the fear of letting down a family member, or material things just become less valuable than they once were.
2. Not Recognizing That Predictable Comforts Are Becoming Stifling Limitations
In most of the relationships where costs becomes higher than returns over time to only one partner, they can begin to feel entrapped even though the other does not share those experiences.
Because of the mutual attachments they share, the partner who feels increasingly boxed in may reach to others for the stimulation and encouragement they are lacking in their relationship. They are vulnerable to those who are not a better long-term choice but seem too exciting to pass up.
Those who feel moral restrictions to that kind of betrayal may begin other outside activities that take resources from the primary relationship but then come back to the relationship fulfilled. The other partner may focus on that result, rather than on why they are spending more and more time away or so obviously prioritizing those outside interests above the relationship.
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Over time, the primary relationship becomes less attractive as the other activities or pursuits take hold. As that lack of energy, availability, and interest grows, the attachments that once held them there diminish in importance. It is a slow emotional demise.
Yet, what is obvious to one, and even to surrounding others, may not be to the partner who is still focusing on the day-to-day simpler enjoyments which remain enough for them. When the now-liberated partner calls it quits, utter confusion may reign. Pleading, threats, demands, and offerings of new behaviors don’t have the power to change the situation anymore, and the partner leaving no longer will live in emotional bondage.
3. Not Realizing a Loss of Respect for Self
Many people don’t realize they are living an inauthentic life. There are so many distractions, stresses, and pressures taking center stage that rationalizing can be the easier way.
There is no person who hasn’t given up something important to them to make a relationship work, or hasn’t emotionally blackmailed themselves into believing that things are good enough in order to hold on to things that still matter.
But, that balance of giving up self to make a relationship work must feel okay. When it begins to feel wrong more than right, when sacrifices become martyrdom or create blame and resentment, the balance is lost. If not corrected, it becomes too hard to endure over time.
I ask these questions of partners who have ceased to find their investment profitable for themselves anymore.
“Do you like who you have become in this relationship?”
“Are the sacrifices you’ve made compensated for by the positives you still enjoy?”
“Are you bobbing your head like a stuffed figurine in the back of a car window, but deteriorating in your ability to laugh, to risk, to reach for the dreams you know you can’t live without?”
“Are you blaming your lack of taking charge of your life on your partner’s constrictions, or feeling stuck because you can’t fathom a separate life?”
Their answers tell them whether it is time to let go.
Whatever your reasons, your relationship will not work if you do not respect who you are within it.
