Are Your Relationships Faltering In-the-Betweens?

“I guess it's over now

I think we've seen the end

When our common dream

Faltered in-the-betweens.”

Cause and Effect, It’s Over Now

It seems like we are all too busy today for significant relationships; and so it’s no wonder when we receive a reality-slap telling us that a relationship—even one we have claimed to truly value-- has “faltered in the betweens.”

Relationships are strained by busy-ness. And no relationship can sustain itself if the two people involved aren’t making time for each other. Distance could be the result of at least two factors:

1)      Maybe we have erected a wall between us because our original common dream has faltered and fallen apart. I think most every serious relationship begins with a common dream that draws us together. But as people grow and change with the tick-tock of time, their dreams can also twist, change and evolve into something that no longer resembles the common dream that formed the foundation of the relationship. When this happens we can find ourselves treading water until we finally acknowledge that it’s all over.

2)      Or it could be that we are simply emotionally unable to deal with the intimacy requirements of the relationship, even though part of us truly desires the companionship of the other person. In this situation, we allow our internal discomfort to steer us away from our partner in anyway possible; and workaholism is an easy escape from our emotional discomfort. So we busy ourselves at the office; take on all additional duties and responsibilities that come our way, or even seek out whatever we can in order to avoid going home in the evening.

If possibility Number 2 is the reason why a significant relationship is in strain-mode, then we need to face our internal discomfort and learn from it. What feelings are we running away from? Are these feelings tied to the past? Is there someone from the past who is present in this relationship because we are projecting that person onto our current partner? Are we simply too wounded inside and fearful of being hurt again? Or our we consciously hiding something that we are afraid will be found-out if we allow ourselves to go any deeper with this person?

Sometimes it’s a matter of the fact that we aren’t capable of multitasking on an emotional level. Some people get married, have children and find that they have taken-on more emotional responsibility than they can handle. Suddenly, they’ve gone from being responsible for themselves, their job, and their friendships to being responsible for a spouse and small children. Emotionally multitasking these relationships can place tremendous stress on any given individual. They are all demanding of attention and that leaves some of us drained of all our emotional life blood.

People suffering from this sort of emotional-overload know that they can’t afford to lose their jobs—not with many mouths to feed—and so it becomes an easy way out to invest all of their time and effort into their career. Being overly busy at work means that they can escape the emotional pressures of family—and they can easily justify it. When confronted by their partner about their absence from family life, they can simply insist they are only doing it “for you and the kids.”

Workaholism is every bit as serious of an emotional disease as alcoholism and codependency. And it’s a form of acting out that cuts across all levels of addiction. Many alcoholics and codependents are also busybodies, or workaholics, because being overly busy is an easy way to medicate away unwanted emotional discomfort.

If we are in a strained relationship right now, we need to ask ourselves if it’s just a matter of fact that our common dream with this person has faltered in-the-betweens, or is it a matter of fact that one (or both) of us is emotionally running away from the relationship. Then we need to choose to do something constructive to either salvation the current relationship or to move forward into a new and healthier relationship with someone else.