"Should I follow my intuition and be alone?" Photo / Getty Images
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I have been with someone for 18 months. We don’t live together. I’m divorced and she is separated and has been going through a very difficult financial separation for the entire time we’ve been together. Understandably it occupies much of her waking thoughts and much of our conversation. I feel lonely and exhausted by it but also want to be supportive.
She thinks a lot about our future together and wants our lives to be more merged. I, on the other hand, am anxious about that and at times make excuses not to see her. I don’t feel completely authentic, I’m not good at being alone and often have gone from relationship to relationship. I wonder if I should follow my intuition and be alone and enjoy just being me. Scary as that seems. - Richard
Hello Richard,
It sounds like there are two different but related issues you are grappling with. It may help you to consider them separately. Firstly, you are looking at how focused on being in a relationship you have been and wondering if you would be wise to spend some time alone. Secondly, you are beginning to recognise that you have been too accommodating of your partner for your own good.
The connection between these issues is likely to be your relationship with yourself. On the one hand, we would guess you struggle to feel competent, capable or safe enough to be by yourself. Being alone is scary. On the other hand, it seems like there is a fear that you aren’t good enough or important enough to be loved for who you are, so you need to be pleasing and accommodating, maybe even self-sacrificial, to secure the relationship you need to feel safe.
At this point, we encourage you to use the opportunity your existing relationship provides to work on learning to value and assert yourself better. Working on this when you are single (especially if you undertake individual therapy with this as a focus) is possible but the progress tends to be slower. A significant relationship will challenge you to care for yourself more frequently.
Being in a committed relationship always involves a balancing act between caring for yourself and your partner. How you weigh your respective needs and desires is always a judgment call – there is no objectively “right” way to do this. As with many things in life, we improve our judgment through trial and error. It sounds like you are seeing that the extent you have been focusing on your partner’s needs and neglecting your own is not sustainable for you.
It’s concerning that you don’t appear to see an alternative to either continuing as you are or ending the relationship. Continuing without change would not be wise, given that you already feel “lonely and exhausted”. However, before ending the relationship, we’d like to encourage you to explore whether the culture of the relationship can be re-negotiated to work better for you. It is time to be brave, stop avoiding and have a tricky conversation with your partner. Building a strong relationship requires it to be possible for you to have uncomfortable conversations productively.
Talk to your partner about how you still want to support her but you also desire space in the relationship that is not filled up with talk about her concerns about the financial separation. Be mindful that, given how selfless you have been, the impact of her stresses on you may be news to her. Make sure you tell her what you do want, as well as what you want less of. For example, “I’d like it if we only talk about your struggles with your finances and your ex before dinner during the week so that after dinner can be ‘us’ time.” Talk about what you want that “financial-stress-free time” to be like. Make vivid for her the kind of atmosphere and experience you want to create with her if she disciplines herself to allow a space that is temporarily free of her struggles.
If she responds with a willingness to make the relationship work better for you, then taking this risk could lead to a deeper level of connection. One where you are both more bravely honest and vulnerable with each other and everyone’s needs can be tabled and attended to. This shift, from constantly trying to please each other to honestly exploring and negotiating between our individual needs and wants, is a normal and necessary step in every healthy relationship.
To make it work, she may have to look elsewhere for some of her support, for example, by talking to other friends or an individual counsellor. Having somewhere else to “off-load” makes it more likely that the two of you will find time for lightness and to enjoy each other and connect with you and what is important in your life.
Of course, it is possible that, no matter how gently and kindly you raise your concerns, she will still react defensively. If you persist with goodwill but she remains unwilling to show caring or respect for how things are going for you in the relationship or insists you are attacking her or being unkind, this is not a good sign. It is hard to be honest if someone takes things too readily as a sign of rejection. That would be the point where you may want to consider your future in the relationship.
However, if your initial conversation is productive, then you may be able to have broader discussions about how to make the relationship work well for you both. While you are being frank, you could also talk about not being ready to merge your lives and ask if she could please slow down. Stress you are interested in exploring what is possible with her in the future but at a pace that works for you.
Withdrawing from her and making excuses not to see her is not wise. Avoidance will likely lead to resentment building up in you. To make matters worse, your making up excuses may be detected by your partner and add to her feeling insecure or fearing your rejection of her – making her increasingly likely to engage with you anxiously. Of course, talking to her about wanting to go slower might also trigger her feelings of being unwanted but this is part of getting to know each other and can then be further addressed.
The challenge of shifting your relationship on to a more open and honest footing is necessary and inevitable. It’s an opportunity for you each to grow and learn; we encourage you to embrace that challenge and what you can learn about yourself and your partner before considering leaving this relationship. Practising making how you feel important and acting in service of that no matter how your partner responds can be a step in developing a stronger and clearer sense of yourself. If the relationship ends because your concerns cannot be resolved, this will provide a good foundation for learning to be more comfortable being alone and single for a time.
• Verity & Nic are psychologists and family therapists who have specialised in relationship and sex therapy for more than 25 years. They have been working on their own relationship for more than 40 years and have two adult children.
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