By Shirley Shropshire, MS, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist Associate
Your sex life has lost its spark.
Changes in a couple’s sex life are common as life fluctuates. Working overtime, raising young children, and health issues are all examples of factors that impact the ebb and flow of sexual contact. So, when should you be concerned? When something in life throws your relationship off track and keeps it there. Perhaps you find yourself thinking about intimacy with your partner, but find you and your partner are unable to initiate sex or even talk about the fact that it has changed in your relationship.
You secretly hold a grudge.
The loss of connection with a partner can be a difficult burden to bear. It can be upsetting, painful, and sad. It can also be frustrating, infuriating, and overwhelming. Losing contact with a partner is so powerful that it colors the way you see yourself, your relationship, and even the world. This is why you secretly resent your partner, because you despise feeling so bad when the two of you are disconnected. You have the doors locked so your partner can’t get in.
The silent treatment has become the status quo.
One of you may have started out giving the cold shoulder, but now it has taken root. Your new relationship language is silence, like a car with an old battery. Sure, there are times when you both talk and the tension is released but any indications that your partner doesn’t get you blow a fuse. The distance increases and mum’s the word. It is like telling your partner, “I’m so tired of you not hearing me that I can’t even try.” Sure, your partner may get the message that something is wrong, but silence doesn’t help either person increase their understanding of one another.
You have stopped checking in with one another.
A kiss goodbye, a midday text, or calling one another on your way home from work are ways some couples stay in tune with one another. Perhaps you used to do something different. The point is you and your partner have stopped doing these minute magical things that kept you plugged into one another and fed your sense of connectedness.
You are lonely.
Your partner is lying right next to you, yet there is a canyon of darkness between you. Your partner is present but feels a million miles away, like you’re driving in the dark without headlights. You can’t turn to your partner anymore, not to share a bad day at work or a silly story. You desperately want your partner to “get” you, but your needs have been neglected for so long they feel like wishful thinking. The more your partner doesn’t “really” see you, the lonelier you become.
Do you want to change your relationship? Call me for a free couple therapy consultation or visit Foundationscft.com to learn more.