Out of the Box Dates Welcomes You!

Sure, there are many causes of a broken heart…

…but we would be willing to bet that often they begin or end with indifference.   This lazy offender usually takes hold of only one spouse in a marriage, but it’s attacks deeply wound the other. 

Sometimes the killer of relationships isn’t a lack of trust, a lack of communication or arguing with your significant other. It’s simple indifference.

A relationship can survive most things if both people involved in it are committed to the other person and act with respect toward the other. It can survive the death of parents or the birth of a child. It can survive layoffs and career changes, of going back to school, or buying your first home together. It usually can survive the wedding, one of the most stressful things adults go through in their lives!  It can sometimes even survive an indiscretion.

Successful couples don’t always agree, but they let each other know what’s going on in their lives, and how they’re feeling (especially when their partner does something that sparks a particular emotional response in the other person). Relationships can even survive with poor communication.

What a relationship has real difficulty surviving is when two people have fallen into “autopilot” mode and become indifferent toward one another. Giving up entirely, when you feel nothing toward the other person, that’s a difficult thing to come back from. Communication appears to be taking place, but it’s just shallow talk — like two acquaintances who just met on a plane.

Think about it. Even when we argue, we communicate with the other person — we express our disappointment, hurt or anger for some perceived slight or harm. When we distrust our significant other (for whatever reason), it hurts because we care enough to want to trust them in the first place. Cheating hurts most people not because of the act itself, but because of the basic violation of trust and respect in the relationship. The fact that it hurts, however, signals we care. If we didn’t care, it wouldn’t hurt us.

Indifference is not caring what the other person does in the relationship. There are no arguments, so everything may appear okay on the surface. Arguing stops because you don’t care if you are right or wrong.  You don’t feel hurt by your spouse’s words or actions. Trust isn’t an issue, because you don’t care about earning or having mutual trust.

You interact every day in a vacuum where everything seems okay, because neither of you cares whether it is or not. It’s a perfect illusion that you both have silently agreed to live. Underlying causes of indifference can include simple loss of hope. Trying to connect and getting no response.  It leads to learned “helplessness” when you just can’t get any response from your partner after repeated efforts with no result.  So it’s not a relationship at that point anymore. And it’s hardly living.

Ideally, relationships help us not only love another human being, but grow as a person. They teach us lessons about life that otherwise would be difficult to learn, lessons about communication, listening, compromise, and at times giving selflessly of yourself and expecting nothing in return. Of learning to live with another human being and all that entails.

When we’ve closed ourselves down in a relationship, we’ve shut off caring. We’ve shut off growth. We’ve shut off learning. And we’ve shut off life.

Indifference doesn’t have to be the end of a relationship, however. If caught early enough, it’s a warning sign that something has gone horribly awry with the relationship, with caring about the other person. If both people in the relationship notice the warning signs and seek help (for instance, with a couples counselor), there’s a good chance the relationship can survive — if both become aware and want change.

Beware indifference in a relationship. If your automatic response to your significant other’s question always seems to be, “Whatever,” that may be a sign that it’s creeping up on you. If you still care about the other person in your life and your relationship’s future, you’ll pay attention to the signs…and take action.

For more background information: 5tweetsretweet  with Dr. John Grohol (CEO and founder of Psych Central). http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2009/02/28/how-indifference-can-kill-a-relationship/