If only there were obvious signs to look out for that signal your relationship was damaged beyond repair…
…Luckily, there are.
I didn’t pick these signs lightly. Instead, I thought about what it means to outstay your welcome in a dynamic that has no hope of being revived.
When you are in the same room as someone, and your life becomes about surviving that rather than enjoying it, you know it’s time to make some decisions.
Some things you just can’t come back from, and I believe there is a point of no return for all couples.
While many don’t reach it, others do. And if you fall into the latter category, you’ll recognize the following:
1. Weeks turn into months, and months turn into years with no change or improvement.
I feel like every week where relationship damage goes unresolved or unimproved is akin to a bridge being burned between you and your spouse.
It’s as if you’re striking the match yourselves and giving your relationship even less chance of being able to come back from the opposite sides of the chasm you’re on.
We all have issues with those we choose to spend our life with, but if you’re not working toward improving your connection, or even discussing the issues, what’s the point?
It’s like you’ve got a rotten piece of fruit in your fruit bowl, and you know it. But instead of taking it out and saving the others, you’re letting it rot into neighboring apples and pears, ruining everything it touches.
Eventually, the whole bowl will need to be thrown away, and nothing can be saved.
If time is going by, and the weeks are turning into years with no effort or willingness to change things from one or both of you, I honestly don’t know what you’re waiting for.
2. Apologies no longer feel like something is being healed, and feel more like a cycle you’re stuck in.
Successful relationships depend on you noticing when you’ve caused your spouse pain, and being remorseful enough not just to say sorry, but to mean it, learn from it, and act differently next time.
Words are used so flippantly, though sometimes, aren’t they?
“Sorry.” “Love you.”
They almost act as a reflex, just to keep the peace or because we’re simply supposed to say it.
Real apologies open doors for healing fractured moments; they don’t simply cover over the cracks.
If you or your partner are stuck in a cycle of just letting the word sorry roll off your tongue without caring if a week later, you upset them again, there are some bigger questions you should be asking yourselves.
There is nothing worse than a robotic response to pain.
3. You are abandoning yourself to keep the relationship alive.
We don’t think we’re doing that at the time. We may notice these small shifts and differences with ourselves, without taking into account that they all add up.
You used to go for a daily walk, and you now stay home and sacrifice it because you were made to feel guilty, or because you never feel happy enough to grab your headphones and get out the door.
You’ve always wanted to get a job in the city, but to do that you’d need to move closer, and that’s something your spouse is unwilling to do. So you stay small and stay in the job that keeps you bored and never challenges you.
These are signs that you are steering away from who you are in order to keep a relationship that’s already damaged from completely falling apart.
Of course, compromise is necessary in any relationship, but it shouldn’t always be in one direction, nor should it ask you to deny who you are.
If it does, then it’s not compromise. It’s self-abandonment. And it has no place in a healthy, loving relationship.
4. You’re holding onto the potential, not the reality.
This one bites a little, doesn’t it? Be honest: are you holding onto this relationship because you think it could be amazing ‘if only this or that happened?’
You think, “If we got over this stumbling block, if we could move past what happened, if we found a way to reconnect…”
You would finally have the relationship of your dreams? You’d forgive, love, thrive?
When irrevocable damage hits a relationship, what once could’ve been a reality dashes to a mere pipe dream.
You go from heading toward this idea to it now only being possible in your imagination. But you don’t want to let it go. You want to believe that somewhere it still exists, and so you live life through that lens of potential instead.
If you have to default to wishes and dreams in order to survive your relationship, then the damage that’s been done is likely to be at an unfixable point.
5. Your relationship has suffered a thousand emotional fractures that you ignored, and now no amount of glue can piece it back together.
I had a favorite Christmas mug once that shattered when I filled it with hot water. The shards went everywhere, and of course, my hot coffee spilled all over the worktop and cascaded onto the floor like a dark, caffeinated river.
I knew for months that this mug had many cracks in it. I ignored them all, hoping they were just cosmetic faded paint lines.
The problem wasn’t that the mug broke; it was all those tiny cracks that warned me it was getting weaker and weaker.
And yes, I am using a Christmas mug as an analogy here, but the message is the same:
Damage can be done in a thousand tiny ways, rather than one big moment.
If you’re not seeing those fractures for what they are, or you are, but you’re continuing as normal, eventually you’re going to be dealing with so much damage that it’s impossible to fix.
At that point, your relationship cascades over as my coffee did, and you watch it spill everywhere. That’s when you can no longer pretend everything is okay.
6. You’ve accepted unhappiness as normal.
The only way you can begin to heal from a past wound is to acknowledge it. Awareness is pretty much always the first step to change a behavior or improve a situation.
But sometimes, we can’t tell when something has gotten so bad because we refuse that acknowledgement or lack the awareness that something is wrong.
We don’t want to admit the wounds are there, so we deny them or make excuses for them. Or because they are so ever-present, they kind of become our normal. This is particularly true if it’s all that was ever modelled to us as children as well.
Wounds that never heal cause you the kind of pain that’s easy to get used to.
Unhappiness can feel normal when it’s so frequent, but does that really mean it’s okay to feel unhappy all the time?
7. Trust is nothing but a memory.
Remember the days when trust was never an issue? Your spouse would pick up their phone and read a text, or work late, and you just assumed it was just because their friend sent a message, or because work was genuinely chaotic.
Then something happened.
One day, everything changed, and since then, trust has never been within reach.
You spend your time wondering who fills their messaging apps, and if work really does need them to stay on.
Some couples do move on from cheating, but many don’t. If you fall into the latter category, you can stick with the relationship, but it’s likely that things between you will never be normal again.
It’s a little like trying to build a nice, cozy home right in the center of an active volcano. It’s just not going to work.
If trust can’t be genuinely rebuilt and then given freely, the relationship is beyond repair.
8. You’re reading and relating to articles like this.
Hello there. You’re here. You saw the title of the article, and you thought, “Damn, this could be my life.”
You clicked instead of scrolling, and there’s a good reason for that.
Relating to what appears in your timeline means that somewhere in the title and/or contents, the subject matter has hit a bit of a nerve.
I think when things get that bad, you know there might be some damage that’s irreversible in your relationship.
Final thoughts…
Nobody enters a relationship assuming that it will become damaged beyond repair someday. If we knew that, most of us probably wouldn’t bother at all.
We meet and fall in love with someone, with only good intentions, but over time it’s very possible to reach the point of no return.
Being able to know when that point is, rather than keeping on going and going, trying to survive in such a barren, unforgiving space, is much better for both parties.
If you were unsure before, I hope you now have a clearer idea about the state of your relationship.
What you do with that knowledge is up to you to decide.
