When we become discouraged by the direction our relationship is headed, it can be difficult to find the right words to express how we feel about our present situation.  We try to search for words that may offer relief from our emotional pain; words that might motivate our companion to recognize how we’re feeling.  The expression of physical characteristics associated with anger, grief, and sadness can be exhibited without providing much effort, but our ability to verbally articulate how we feel may be a tougher concept to grasp.  We may keep our feelings bottled up, hoping for the day…when our loved one reasonably attempts to acknowledge our emotional pain; truly making an effort to encourage us to feel better about our decision to continue on.  But that day has yet to come.  So, we patiently wait…remaining hopelessly optimistic about a love, which had lost its strength…long ago.  We may feel that the person whose company we once enjoyed, and loved unconditionally, may have possibly come to the conclusion…that we’re no longer worthy of their affection.  So, we’ll feel undeniably empty, and void of all the emotions we experienced when our love was young and brand new.

A lot of people may have felt this way at one time or another.  Even going as far as pointing the finger, blaming someone for their emotional suffering.  It may appear to us that pinning the blame on someone other than ourselves is an appropriate course of action, because we’ve been conditioned to behave in that manner.  Never taking into consideration the role we collectively played in the destruction of our relationships.  It can be quite difficult to repair the remnants of love we no longer recognize, but there is still hope.  Anything worth building, or rebuilding, requires some form of sacrifice.  We must combine our efforts to…sacrifice our contempt for one another, sacrifice our tendency to place blame…sacrifice our inability to communicate; just let it go.  These are the areas of our lives we need to place into a fire, to burn, because we ‘can’ do more to restore our confidence in each other.  We must utilize our determination…our willpower, to struggle…struggle to regain our respect for one another, struggle to revitalize our faith in each other…struggle to rebuild our love for one another.  What is usually the case, many couples who experience relational troubles, ‘do’ make a considerable effort to struggle.  But only to defeat someone they care about, because at some point they’ve decided that their personal feelings took precedence over the feelings of their loved one.

When we struggle for control within a relationship, we can only see through the narrow-minded lens of our own perception.  It is only when we take our blinders off, we see things with a totally different understanding.  When we struggle for relational control, we lose sight of the struggle we initially had along-side each other; in the beginning of the courting, or romantic, stage of our relationship.  During that phase, most of us were willing to do whatever’s necessary to ensure the happiness of our love-interest.  It’s not that we forgot how to be devoted, as we once were in the beginning; we just lost sight of what’s important.  For example…at some point, one person may have become disappointed in their relationship (usually women), and one person possibly became disconnected (usually men).  The onset of disappointment and disconnection forces couples to develop animosity.

Just like a child who matures into his adolescence, we don’t necessarily recognize the physical changes that take place from day-to-day; the same thing occurs within our relational interactions.  We can’t see the progression of our disdain for one another, until one day we get into that “super huge” argument over…whose turn it is to wash dishes.  A couple of reasons for why we struggle can be attributed to the balance of influence, and the balance of accountability.  We may feel that we’re losing our influence over someone, so we revolt…we don’t give our companion what they desire from the relationship.  We deny our partner access to our time, our attention, our companionship, intimacy…even financial resources because we may feel we’re not getting what we want out of the deal. The thing is, we don’t realize how damaging our actions can prove to be until we have hit the tipping point, of total destruction.

Influence is not the only thing that is lost.  When we commit ourselves to someone, we become accountable to that person.  Our companion may hold us accountable in areas, such as commitment, financial stability, emotional support, intimacy…etc.  The moment we degrade the efforts of our support, in various areas of our lives, the balance of accountability becomes biased toward on person or the other.  We can recognize the effects of this, as we experience an emotional response that often presents itself when we feel unappreciated.  In order to fulfill the promise two people initially made to one another, they must successfully communicate their desires without one person feeling the need to treat the other unfairly.

Most of us can effectively rebuild the foundation of a loving union, if both people within the equation are mature enough to get past their differences, and take a leap-of-faith together.  I certainly have confidence in the belief that the salvageability of a seemingly hopeless situation, is reasonably possible.  The reconstruction of your friendship…your bond is attainable.  It may not resemble the original product, but it certainly will be much stronger and more durable than the original.  The caveat to this is that…both people have to want their relationship to continue.  If one person’s heart is not in it for the long-haul, it can become quite a burdensome ordeal for one person to bear.  If you both can agree to fight for each other, rather than fight in opposition to one another, you just might make it.  Just hang it there.

~DanKhan