It takes two to tango, but only one to be done

One false move and baby makes 3.

As I looked at the title, I realized I could very well be talking about a number of things, including the picture above..but I’m not.

#PSA-Wrap it up.

I have often said that in relationships, we have our peaks and valleys. The peaks are the easy parts of the relationship because those are the times when we can just ride it out. The valleys are the times when we have to buckle down. See what I did there? I said WE. Think about it though: how many relationships can you think of when one person held back or mentally checked out before the other party realized it was over? It happens ALL. THE. TIME.

I’d be willing to be that most of the time, it hits the other party like a train wreck in the beginning. It’s easy to make excuses for someone slowly pulling him or herself out of a relationship. Initially, it might not be very noticeable. Maybe phone calls stop being as long as they used to be and texts stop coming as frequently. When the honeymoon phase of a relationship ends, that often happens. We are no longer trying to learn every single little thing about the person, may not be quite as captivated by the things we used to love about the person. Maybe we stop spending as much time together. When love was new, some of our friends (and maybe even some our interests) got pushed to the back burner a little bit, because we were caught up in the thrill of falling for someone new. When we get settled, we got back to those things, working on a delicate balancing act so that everyone in or lives (both old and new) feel like they are getting some of our attention. Maybe we aren’t as intimate as we used to be.  Gone are the days of the cute things we used to do when we were hunting for a boo; now that this person seems to be here to stay, it is easy to forget about the little gestures we made to each other when we were becoming closer.

But just like there are innocuous reasons that your boyfriend or girlfriend seems a little distant, there are some serious ones, too. Sometimes the beginning of the end comes down to a lack of communication. It could be that some gesture or something that was said or unsaid was misinterpreted by your loved one, and he or she believed that their interpretation was unabashedly right. Sometimes, it can just be that your reaction to his or her good or bad news wasn’t quite what he or she needed it to be at the time. Other times, the root of the problem can be that once that misinterpretation happened, the individual who was offended never made his or her grievance known. Rather than voice the complaint, maybe he or she started withdrawing their attention in subtle ways, ways I have already covered in this post.

I think all they've said was hello

 

Ultimately though, either road can be a road to disaster, because it takes clear communication from both parties to make sure that things carry on as smoothly as they can.  If being distracted becomes a habit, it can be easy to give the person who means the most to us the least of our time. If we don’t air our grievances, it can be easy to form a grudge that grows larger that the initial offense (whether it was intended to be or not) ever was. Once that happens, a relationship that was “everything you ever wanted” can turn into something that neither party can recognize.

What’s the take home message from this post? Refer to the title: even though it takes two people to make a relationship work, it only takes one person to destroy what the two people have tried to build. Rather than having to play the blame game later, it’s probably more worth it to make a conscious effort to keep everything open, especially when in comes to hurt feelings.