The 5 Signs That Reveal It is Time To End Your Relationship

In this week’s Success Newsletter, I would like to reveal the 5 signs that it is time to end your relationship.

First a quick update:  

The Breakup Test

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Heal Your Issues With SRTT

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Now, let’s talk about the 5 signs that it is time to end your relationship.

Do you have doubts about your relationship – where it is right now and where it is going; do you really have a future together?

While there are specific parameters which highlight or predict that your relationship will succeed or fail, it can all be summed up quite simply: The way you speak about each other.

The way you speak about each other reveals the deeper emotions and beliefs you have about each other. And it also indicates if it is time to end your relationship.

Shocking as it is, women initiate divorce more than men. Women initiate sixty-nine percent of all divorces, and college educated women initiate ninety percent of divorces. However, in non-marital relationships men and women equally initiate the breakup. It is possible that the difference is that non-marital relationships are built on different expectations and agreements than traditional marriages. Accordingly, perhaps women are happier in non-marital relationships.  Source: https://www.asanet.org/press-center/press-releases/women-more-likely-men-initiate-divorces-not-non-marital-breakups

The Way We Were

When you speak about your relationship to yourself or to others, and when you are thinking about the history of your relationship together, are you cherishing or trashing your partner? In other words, do you focus on the good times over the bad? Do you accentuate the successes over the failures? Do you focus on your partner’s positive traits over their negative or annoying traits?

Kim T. Buehlman, John M. Gottman, and Lynn Fainsilber Katz of the University of Washington conducted research and oral interviews with married couples to predict the dissolution or divorce of a marriage: “How a Couple Views Their Past Predicts Their Future: Predicting Divorce from an Oral History Interview.” Source: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232601072_How_a_Couple_Views_Their_Past_Predicts_Their_Future_Predicting_Divorce_from_an_Oral_History_Interview

Known as the Buehlman Scoring, they presented a five-dimension assessment to predict the death of a relationship; it can also be used to tell you if it is time to end the relationship.

Alarm – Danger Ahead

I believe that this alone is the  strongest indicator that your relationship is extremely unhealthy: The way your body responds.

As you verbally or mentally describe your partner and relationship, do you notice your heart rate is up, your chest is tight, your breath is shallow, you are tense, nervous, agitated or you feel highly stressed?

If yes, your body is responding to the unhappiness within the relationship. This is called Diffuse Physiological Arousal (DPA) which is your body’s general alarm mechanism. It is also known as ‘flooding’ because you feel overwhelmed or flooded with wide-ranging stimuli that is also harmful to your health. This alone reveals that it is time to end your relationship

This physiological reactivity (akin to fight-or-flight response) will, in turn, also further negatively impact your behavior and the way you interact with your partner. DPA prevents you from thinking clearly. It creates disorganized behavior and hypervigilance whereby you see things as even worse than they perhaps are. In turn, you react to arguments and other occurrences as ‘threats’ thereby worsening the initial flooding or physiological reactivity.

Here are the five signs that reveal whether or not your relationship will survive; they are also effective indicators that it is time to end your relationship. They were designed as open-ended questions to describe and reveal the way you tell the story of your relationship. Below I have created these questions as a way to help you to identify the health of your relationship.

1. Fondness and Admiration

As you speak about your partner, do you express “warmth, affection, and respect for each other” or do you highlight the negative? Do you give compliments and express pride in your partner? Do you adore your wife/girlfriend? (Did you know that women want to be adored over being loved?)

2. Me-ness vs. We-ness

Do you speak more about ‘we’ or ‘me’? Do you function well as a unit, as a couple? Do you communicate with your spouse about your problems, or do your viewpoints clash so strongly that you cannot communicate? Do you feel lonely or isolated, lacking in support from your partner or from others?

3. Knowing your partner

How well do you know your partner? Do you understand your partner sufficiently to relate what makes them tick, what is important to them, their values, and what affects them positively and negatively, or have you lost the connection? Are you emotionally intimate? Do you trust and are you vulnerable with each other?

4. Glorifying Your Struggles

Do you speak of the struggles you overcame in a positive manner? Do you refer to the way that you grew and learned from them, became more strongly committed with deeper mutual trust, and shared meaning and purpose? Do you describe the way you were/are as chaotic but yet, still feel hopeful and close? Do you struggle to solve problems together? Do you feel out of control?

5. Disappointment vs. Satisfaction

Are you satisfied with the way your relationship is evolving or are you disappointed that it is not what you expected? Do you express negativity about the relationship? Do you feel cynical about your future? Are you belligerent (often a male response) or contemptuous and angry towards your partner (often a female response)? Are you defensive, stubborn, or withdraw (often a male response)? When describing your relationship, do you feel depressed, hopeless, or defeated?

Review your answers, and notice where you are in these 5 areas. When there is contempt, anger, belligerence, a negative view of your partner and the relationship (past and present), an inability to communicate and solve problems and differences, then you are most likely at the point of no return. It is time to end your relationship.

If you would like help professional help to deal with changes within your relationship or to heal the past and resolve your issues, book a one-on-one session with me.

 

You can add to the conversation below.

I wish you the best and remind you “Believe in yourself -You deserve the best!”

Patrick Wanis Ph.D.

Celebrity Life Coach, Human Behavior & Relationship Expert & SRTT Therapist