5 Signs You're Working Too Hard on Your Relationship
Why You're Working So Hard
There are two issues driving you to work this hard, says Pizzulli. The first is that we avoid negative feelings. "As children we're taught that bad feelings are abnormal, and that you should fear them and make them go away," she says.
In so doing, we lose the ability to feel both positive and negative feelings in a symbiotic way—which is key to preserving a relationship, even when you disagree. "When you forget that you love someone while you are fighting, you get overwhelmed and overworked," she says.
If something feels bad, it doesn't necessarily need repair. This compulsion to fix is an outgrowth of negativity avoidance, and you fear that if you don't fix it, you'll fail. "Even therapists will automatically pathologize' an issue, just because you came into the office," says Pizzulli. "I think it would be great if therapists would just start by saying Congratulations! You are perfectly normal.'"
It's easy to see how you could think of your relationship as a job: You're either accepting applications for potential long-term partners or applying for one (and online dating and job seeking only blurs that line further). Dates can feel like interviews ("So, tell me about your last…err…thing"). You wonder if this is a good fit, or if you're even in the running.
But to believe your relationship is a job (at a start-up, no less, which essentially they all are) is to think that all your energy should go toward propping it up, even when it's a slog. It also makes you likely to shrug and say, "Meh. This is what all relationships are. Hard work. Guess I better get back to it."
Wrong. This love-as-work philosophy feeds the assumption (and fear) that this is the best you can do and you might as well stay, even if it's not working. Second, it can turn what could be a really wonderful relationship into the subject of ceaseless mental and emotional surgery. Both are uninspiring.
"Even the best relationships have conflicts", says Pizzulli, "but managing them should feel more like adjusting the steering on a vehicle in motion than dragging a dead car down the street."
Conflict is a given; endless hard labor to get your relationship to "tolerable" is not. You don't need to fix everything that's wrong, but you do need to be able to tolerate and manage conflict. A sign of a strong relationship, says Pizzulli, is one in which you say to yourself, "I love this person so much I can't think of anyone I'd rather have a conflict with."
Which makes that old saying true once again: If you love what you do, you never have to work again.
—Written by Terri Trespicio for HowAboutWe
Do you think you can work too hard on a relationship, or do you think relationships require all the work you can put into them?
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