“I need to be more grateful for what I do have.” Some version of this is a common reflection for folks who are starting therapy to wrestle with their struggles in a relationship. Gratitude can be really important, but gratitude doesn’t carry us if it isn’t something we can hold with honesty. Underneath, some folks are feeling a lot of fatigue, loneliness, and something that keeps diminishing their own voice to keep the peace. Just because you love someone does not mean that the relationship is meeting your needs, and it isn’t “ungrateful” to acknowledge that.
Simply being grateful for not having it as bad as others is not a sufficient marker for a successful relationship. It begins to feel more like a muzzle - something keeping your mouth clamped shut from speaking to the areas that aren’t working in your relationship. A healthy relationship will have room for both - to both acknowledge when things are not going well, when one or both are not doing their part for the relationship, and to be expressive about when things feel connective and mutual.
Lots of couples, particularly when folks have been together for a longer period of time, can confuse “commitment” with “endurance.” My son ran his first half marathon recently, and when I asked about how his body felt in the run, he talked about the pain he started to feel at a certain point in the run, but he kept pushing. He had been training, so I imagined that the pain was closer to the end when he was pushing a little further than his training goes, but he said it started about ⅓ of the way through the run. He had a goal in mind to finish, and to finish at a certain time, so he pushed through it all the way to the end. He is someone that is applauded regularly for his endurance and work ethic, and ultimately, he knows his body best, so as we talked through it, I trust that he would stop if he needed to stop. When we carry that into a relationship, though, and we continue to tolerate a lot of pain, and keep telling ourselves that we “can survive this,” and “just keep pushing through,” that endurance is different than commitment. Commitment would be staying in the relationship without disappearing. Commitment invites evolution. If your relationship requires constant self-abandonment to keep going, something important needs attention.
Most people feel two things at once in long-term relationships.
Love and frustration.
Devotion and longing.
Safety and restlessness.
We rarely talk about this openly.
Especially as parents.
Especially in midlife.
There is enormous pressure to be satisfied once you’ve “made it.”
Partner.
House.
Kids.
Stability.
But ambivalence doesn’t mean you chose wrong.
It means you are still a living, changing person.
Ambivalence is one of those feelings we talk about regularly in therapy, because most of us are creating a lot of distress for ourselves in trying to be all one or the other, rather than making more space for, or tolerating, the ambivalence that comes with a human experience.
Therapy is often the first place that someone says the things out loud. They have been swirling in your mind, or maybe written in a journal, but more often, you don’t even know what you know…until you know it.
Therapy can help a couple or an individual in naming the needs without blaming, understanding the difference in their relationship between burnout and incompatibility. In a long-term relationship, ideally, you and your partner will change…multiple times. I am grateful, as is my spouse, that we are not the same people we were when we first met. We were younger, and life brings change and growth. So we have to renegotiate the terms of the relationship as we change. What has changed since you first started dating? What are you not talking about? What do you need to sort out together, if there is room for you both to adapt to who the other is becoming? Sometimes therapy helps a relationship deepen. Sometimes it clarifies the change that is necessary for it to continue. Sometimes it just gives some words to what has always been felt but never spoken. And all of those outcomes matter.
If your relationship feels unsustainable, that’s information. These aren’t failures or a betrayal.
You are allowed to want a relationship that supports your nervous system, and to want that for your partner as well.
Loving someone does not require silence.
And honesty, while uncomfortable, is often the doorway back to real connection.
If you’re feeling stuck in the gap between love and exhaustion, therapy can help you make sense of that space—without judgment and without pressure to decide anything before you’re ready.
