Experience changes people. If one partner is a hot shot corporate climber travelling the world and clinching deals and the other person is a homemaker looking after kids and walking with them in the park, then obviously they are experiencing life in different ways.
Not growing together, leads to growing apart. Sometimes in a marriage, two people don’t grow together. This leads to a lack of intellectual intimacy and that’s when your relationship stops growing.
You do not keep pace with each other when you are moving in one direction. While one person becomes more knowledgeable, mature and emotionally sound the other might not be growing as much.
The goals change. You could have started your life with the same couple of goals but as time went by the goals changed. Like a couple started Growing Apart in a marriage when a husband decided to become a homemaker and wanted the wife to become the breadwinner.
The wife had thought it was a temporary arrangement but when she realised he wanted to make it permanent they started growing apart in the marriage because their goals clashed.
You do things as individuals. When two partners begin to grow apart, at first their combined chores slowly start becoming their chores and before you know it, the spark is gone.
You both remain in denial that the marriage has come to a dead-end and keep dragging the marriage due to other factors such as parents, children, society, etc. to a point where none of you can drag the marriage any more and you call it off.
There is too much space in the relationship. Space is not an ominous sign in a relationship. It’s important to have space to thrive in a relationship. But when that space becomes more and more the trouble begins.
You start Growing Apart in a marriage when the space you enjoyed starts engulfing the relationship. You are happy in your own spaces and as soon you get together you feel you are in an unhappy marriage.
Warning Signs You Are Growing Apart In A Marriage. Growing apart in a marriage is not something that happens in an instant. Couples begin to move beyond the attraction and infatuation stages where love is, but not the priority. Responsibilities, career goals, personal ambitions, and a million other things make only love not enough to sustain a marriage.
Couples feel like their marriage is Growing Apart because they believe one of them is changing. However, there are some warning signs for you and your spouse in a marriage, and though they can vary for different couples, the essence largely remains the same. Has your husband checked out emotionally? Maybe you just did not notice.
You don’t do things together anymore. Married couples always have their thing. Whether it’s a Friday night or weekend binge-watching, you two always planned something to do together. You both would always sit down and decide together which restaurant to pick for date nights.
You both don’t talk about the future anymore. Marriages are all about long-term planning for the future. Both partners make short-term plans like going on vacations, having babies, etc. and long-term plans like investing together, and buying a car or house.
If you both don’t talk about the future anymore, it’s because the future doesn’t matter to you anymore. You both don’t care about having babies or going on vacations. Everything has become mundane.
You’re not having sex. Not having sex is an absolute sign you have grown apart in a marriage One of the major red flags of Growing Apart is that you both aren’t having sex anymore. The spark in your marriage has gone and you both behave like two strangers sharing the same bed.
Sex says a lot about intimacy in a relationship as sex isn’t just about the physical connection but the emotional connection that you both share. If you both don’t have those pillow talks anymore after sex then it seems that you both are losing interest in each other and growing apart.
You both have stopped talking to each other. You both don’t know how to talk to each other anymore. There’s always the regular small talk like What do you want for dinner? Or what time will you come home? But that’s not talking.
Two married couples talk about more intimate things and ask each other about their day or tease each other about various things. Did you just have a flashback about how you both used to be? If you both aren’t the same people anymore, there’s some thinking to do.
You both are Growing Apart growing apart emotionally. You both see each other as normal individuals. That emotional connection that you both had is fading away. One of you may have also begun to look for emotional satisfaction elsewhere.
Establish Trust With TherapistYou both don’t share intense things anymore. On the other hand, you both are starting to get irritated with each other’s presence. When married couples begin to see their partner as just another individual, it means that there are getting less emotionally involved with each other.
You don’t miss your partner. Remember those days of courtship when you both would look forward to meeting each other? You would miss your partner and keep checking your phone for his texts.
Share Your Concerns. The first step toward overcoming the growing distance between you and your partner is to talk about your concerns. However, it’s important to make sure this is a conversation and not a confrontation.
You might start the conversation by talking about what you are feeling. For example, you might say something like, “I feel like we aren’t as close as we used to be and I’d like to find ways to spend more time together.”
Don’t go into the conversation with comments like “You’re never around” or “You act like you don’t even care anymore.” While you might feel those things to be true, starting a blame game will only put the other person on the defensive and make them less likely to want to work together on rebuilding your intimacy and connection.
Growing Apart requires you to Spend Time Together. Research suggests that couples who spend more time together tend to experience greater happiness and less stress. Shared time together, however, isn’t always easy to come by.
Studies looking at the intersecting demands of work and family suggest that both are high-demand and time-intensive institutions that require a great deal of devotion. This requires individuals to make choices about where they spend their time, which sometimes leads to relationships getting short-changed to make time for kids and work.
Studies looking at the intersecting demands of work and family suggest that both are high-demand and time-intensive institutions that require a great deal of devotion. This requires individuals to make choices about where they spend their time, which sometimes leads to relationships getting short-changed to make time for kids and work.
Past research has suggested that marital well-being can have long-term effects on health, but one study found that simply spending time together can have several immediate benefits as well. The results of the study found that:
People were almost twice as likely to report feeling happy when they were with their spouses than they were when they were apart.
Simply having a spouse present also appears to decrease stress levels. Participants were 21% less likely to report stress during activities when their spouse was present.
Growing Apart requires you to support One Another Sometimes it’s easier to feel a connection to someone when you feel like they are in your corner. Look for ways that you can show care and support for one another.
“When we believe we’re supported, we feel better about ourselves and can cope better with stressful events and situations,” explained Rob Pascale and Lou Primavera, PhD, in their book “Making Marriage Work: Avoiding the Pitfalls and Achieving Success.”
Have Fun Together. Any relationship can start to feel less exciting over time as the realities of maintaining a lasting partnership and the grind of day-to-day life take precedence over keeping the passion alive.
“People stop engaging in the very activities that brought them together in the first place,” explain therapists Robert Schwarz and Elaine Braff, authors of “We’re No Fun Anymore: Helping Couples Cultivate Joyful Marriages Through the Power of Play.”
Schwarz and Braff suggest that even after your relationship settles into a pattern, it’s essential to maintain a sense of fun to have a successful and lasting relationship.
Get Professional Help. If the distance seems to be growing despite both of your efforts, consider talking to a mental health professional. Couples counselling can help identify underlying problems, help couples rebuild intimacy, and improve empathy and communication.
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