6 reasons to end a relationship
With the first week of the year being one of the busiest for divorce lawyers its a good time to reflect on reasons why people end their marriages and what we can learn for designing closure experiences.
Listed below are 6 reasons people end their relationships according to Daphne Rose Kingma a relationship councillor. Lots of parallels for us to consider in the breakdown of service relationships or creating closure experiences.
Reasons to End it
1. Fights
One of the indicators of a relationship in trouble is that it has become a battleground. “All we do is fight; we can’t have a single normal conversation” Whenever a relationship gets to this point, it usually means that the life-giving, nourishing elements of the relationship have been depleted and it has moved into a degenerative phase.
2. Irreconcilable Differences
A couple is experiencing irreconcilable differences when either one of them finds that the area of common ground they once shared is now so small that what occupies that territory is a multitude of differences. Irreconcilable differences occur in certain strategic areas.
• A common one is time—how much time each partner wants to commit to the intimate life of the relationship.
• Often conflicts have to do with money. When his wife received her sizable inheritance, one man felt suddenly totally inadequate.
3. Boredom
One of the other ways you can tell it’s ending is that one day you may get up feeling depressed, vaguely disconnected and blue. Nothing terrible has happened, but I just have this creepy listless hopeless feeling.”
When you feel this way, it could be that the essential vitality in your relationship is gone. The thrill is gone; the zing has gone; there’s nothing happening between you two. You’re not “in love” anymore, and you’re also not having enough ongoing transactions that have meaning or provide
4. Emotional Distance
For most people, boredom is the most pervasive feeling that indicates a relationship is on its way out. But sometimes the feeling is much more acute. You become aware that this other person, to whom you’ve been relating, is no longer there when you reach out to make contact. You try to have a conversion and get no response, or you try to have a conversation and get a consistently negative response.
5. Changes In Venue
A lot of relationships, which have already outlived their usefulness really flounder and collapse when there is a change in the geographic circumstance of the relationship. Since we generally carry on our relationships in a daily and domestic fashion, there is much about a relationship that is supported by and contained within its specific geographical and domestic circumstances. A change in location or circumstance can bring out the fact that all the essential underpinnings in the relationship are already gone, that in a sense the relationship was being held together by the house, the neighbourhood, or the town.
6. Affairs
In general, we have agreed that sexual bonding is one of the ways we define our primary relationships. For this reason, it generally does have a divisive and corrosive effect when we dilute our commitment by having sex outside of our primary relationship. For when we do that, we take away one of the things which makes it unique and exclusive. This can’t help but affect the primary relationship. We all know this on an unconscious level, and that’s one of the reasons why, when we are trying to end a relationship but don’t know how, we often engage in an affair so that the affair can communicate our real intentions—intentions which are still unfocused or which we are afraid to communicate in a more direct way.
