Your Relationships Are Failing Because You Can’t Let Go

As Belgian psychotherapist, Esther Perel, “the quality of our relationships determines the quality of our lives.” Relationships are the cornerstone of every person’s life. Your success, your failures, creativity, quality of life, and every in between depends on how you manage your relationships.

I didn’t know how to cherish relationships in my early 20s. I was terrible at maintaining my friendships, I definitely wasn’t the best daughter, sister, or partner. I’ve learned a few things, though, in the last few years. I’ve learned how to sustain my relationships and more importantly I’ve learned why some of my past relationships failed in the first place.

Keeping score

I had moved away from home for my university days. I lived off campus with a coworker of mine. I barely knew her for a year but she was also moving to the same city as I was and we were friends at work so it made sense at the time.

Little did I know that I would be entering into one of the most toxic relationships I’ve ever experienced.

And it was completely my fault.

I started to resent her. I kept track of little things like if she ate one croissant out of the six I bought. It was debilitating. I didn’t like who I was turning into but I couldn’t stop myself from nit-picking. Needless to say, we did not remain friends after we moved away.

Relationships are not equal. They’re not perfectly balanced. Just because you wash one dish doesn’t mean obligated your partner to wash the other. If a relationship is built to last, the relationship will be reciprocal and balanced in their own way. You will give more in some relationships while you might receive more in others. If you’re constantly trying to come out on top or believe that you’re being sucked dry, your relationships aren’t going to make it in the long-haul. Constantly tracking the small things in life is a sure fire way to lose the big things. Once you stop keeping score, you’ll realize how intoxicating and toxic that mental hold was. As Benjamin Hardy says,

“High-quality relationships are transformational, not transactional.”

Prioritizing the need for a passionate love affair over the natural evolution of your relationship

About a year into her relationship, my friend started complaining about how unromantic her then boyfriend (now husband) was. He stopped doing the little things like giving flowers, planning surprise dates. She missed the shower of passion and affection.

My first Valentine’s Day with my husband was a sweet weekend getaway. I used to go overboard with his birthday and Christmas gifts. After being together for 10 years, I don’t even remember the last time we got each other birthday gifts and I haven’t received a flowers in years.

While that might not work for some relationships, it works for us. This was the natural flow of our relationship. Our relationship feels easy and natural which is a highly underrated but hard to achieve status in a relationship. I’d much rather have ease in a relationship than a see-saw of passion and drama.

You’re constantly being bombarded with messages about living with passion. You need passion for your work, you need passion in your relationships, you need to live with passion. It’s very overwhelming because if you don’t have passion in any one of those aspects, you start to feel like there’s something wrong with you. You start to feel a disconnect with your partner, job, or even think that life is meaningless without that fire constantly burning. That disconnect is not surprising given our society shames you if you’re not passionate in every aspect of your life.

The magic takes a nose dive at a certain point in a relationship. You would do anything to recreate that magic but passion is overrated.

Having passion for something or someone doesn’t mean that that relationship is going to be easy. It usually means that the relationship is going to be hard. It’s going to be hard to find and hard to sustain.

Passion in any relationship will invariably die down. Passion for work leads to burnout, the need for a passionate love affair leads to divorce. You end up depleting yourself and your partner. If you let go of the idea of a passionate love affair, you let go of unrealistic ideals. If you can let go of the need for passion, you can bring the joy back into your life.

Expecting too many of the little things from your partner

There’s a story I read a few years back that always stuck with me. Since reading it, I’ve always carried the lesson with me into every relationship and especially the one I have with my husband. While I can’t find the original source anymore, the story went something like this:

It was time for their counselling session. They’ve been going to marriage counselling on a weekly basis now. Bickering over who washes the dishes seems to be the new norm in the household these days and rarely do they even acknowledge each other when one walks through the door. They’re trying to fix the relationship, mend broken fences as one would say. Counselling is their last resort.

Their psychologist sits across from them, looks at the husband.

“Do you know what the number one reason for failed marriages is?”

The husband, quick to answer, says, “Finances.”

The psychologist responds with an equally quick, “No”.

“Sex.”

Another hard “No”.

The psychologist looked at the couple, took a breath, and said, “Expectations. Expectations is the number one reason marriages fail.”

I read that story a few years ago and I’ll never forget it.

There are so many things in this world that can kill a relationship but it all stems from having unrealistic expectations or too high expectations of ourselves and of each other. That’s not saying that you shouldn’t have expectations. You need to set expectations in a relationship — trust, honesty, respect, and mental and emotional support to name a few. But if I expected my husband to change every diaper, I would be sorely disappointed. If my husband expected that I would have dinner ready every night by 6pm sharp or even at all when he got home, we’d probably be filing for divorce right now.

Expectations only brew disappointment and eventually resentment when you and your partner constantly struggle to meet them. When you expect the little things, you also take them for granted when they’re being done. There’s no end to the number of expectations a person can have on the relationship but there is a limit as to how much disappointment and resentment a relationship can handle.

“I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.” ~Bruce Lee

Relationships are hard. There’s no doubting that. They’re hard to develop and even harder to maintain. Relationships don’t always turn out the way you pictured them. With the exception of abuse, it’s often up to you to take a look at why your relationships are failing. Sometimes the strongest relationships are built on the ability to let go — the pettiness, the need for a passionate love affair, the unrealistic expectations and other negative feelings you might be holding onto. Relationships are meant to lift you up, not bring you down. If the quality of our life depends on the quality of our relationships, shouldn’t we try our best to see the best in the relationships we have and let go of the worst?

Originally published on Medium