Relationships have their fair share of rough patches. However, when they begin, everything is sunshine and rainbows, and fights and arguments become more commonplace as time progresses. While this progression doesn’t necessarily indicate a failing relationship, it can be a warning sign. If allowed to escalate, it’s a massive cause for concern.
In a failing relationship, you stop being your best selves. You start to make each other feel like you aren’t good enough. You lose your sense of self and begin to avoid each other to avoid conflict. All of these signal the beginning of the end – but can you stop yourselves from going further down that path? Here are three signs it’s worth it to save a failing relationship.
1. Your Arguments And Anger Are Misdirected
Arguments happen even in healthy relationships, but with a caveat: healthy conflicts are productive. When you argue with someone constructively, you prioritize listening, positive communication, and identifying root issues to solve together.
This is often not how your fights will go in a failing relationship. Instead, they fill your soul with anger and emotion, and arguments never lead anywhere, which often causes you to have the same discussion repeatedly. Even when you feel that your arguments are productive, as another controversy brews, you realize soon after that the same underlying patterns that spurred the previous fight still exist.
This is because anger is often a cover for something else. For example, a failing relationship often fails due to a lack of proper emotional connection, meaning you don’t fight about the real issue. Experts at the Gottman Institute explain that, while anger is a primary emotion, it can also be a secondary emotion.
This means that anger is often not the initial emotion you feel but a protective emotion that masks the more genuine, more painful feelings underneath. These are the true roots of your relationship problems and the things you’ll need to address – not the surface-level issues you fight about. Here are some examples of situations where there are underlying roots not being addressed:
Root causes of your arguments:
- When Partner 1 asks Partner 2 to do something, Partner 2 becomes angry and starts criticizing Partner 1 for being lazy or not pulling their weight in the relationship, even if they are. In reality, Partner 2 needs more alone time to rest and set proper boundaries.
- Partner 2 initiates fights with Partner 1 multiple times over small, seemingly minor incidents of Partner 1’s forgetfulness. This makes Partner 1 think that Partner 2 constantly makes big deals out of nothing. In reality, Partner 2 often has to pick up the slack when Partner 1 forgets about things, and all the small “minor” things they’ve done have added up and begun to burn them out.
- Partner 1 likes to ask Partner 2 about their work and check in with them about their progress on specific tasks. Partner 2 becomes angry about this and calls Partner 1 a control freak. In reality, Partner 2 is dealing with personal inadequacy and feels ashamed that they may not be doing well enough to measure up to Partner 1. If Partner 2 never communicates these feelings, Partner 1 will be unable to understand that Partner 2 needs validation from them.
It’s also worth noting that sometimes, fighting and anger aren’t even …
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