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 our parents or the birth of a child. It can sometimes even survive an indiscretion (although such a behavior shows a shocking lack of respect for one’s partner). It can survive layoffs and career changes, of going back to school, or buying your first home together. It usually can even survive the wedding, one of the most stressful things adults go through in their lives.
A relationship can survive angry tirades and arguments that span endless lonely days and nights. Anger means you care, even though you are caring in such a way as to negatively affect your partner. Relationships can, with some difficulty, survive lack of communication or communication problems.
Communication is one of the key ingredients to a successful relationship. 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 survive with poor communication, although they tend not to be happy ones.
What a relationship has real difficulty surviving is when two people have gone into “autopilot” mode and become indifferent toward one another. When you’ve given up on emotion 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 might do 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 a relationship. There are no arguments, so everything may seem okay on the surface. Arguing stops because you don’t care if you were right or felt hurt by another person’s words or actions. Trust isn’t an issue, because you don’t care about earning or having the other person’s trust (or trusting them).
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. But 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 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 and your feelings for them. If both people in the relationship listen to that warning sign and seek help for it (for instance, with a couples counselor), there’s a good chance the relationship can survive if both people want it to.
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 the relationship’s future, you’ll listen to it.
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Links to This Article
Great Online Relationships | Article Animal (3/2/2009)
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Indifference the sign that a relationship is in jepardy! « Balanced Spiritual Life Coaching (6/11/2009)
Indifference the sign that a relationship is in jepardy! « Balanced Life Coach (7/18/2009)
7 Comments to
“How Indifference Can Kill a Relationship”
Totally agree with this point – it’s also a difficult one to fight against as it can creep up on a relationship. The counter to indifference is passion
Give me time please. I’ve been a user and admirerer ( love that sp erroe ) of you and your site for years. Do you link your kind of ‘indifference’ with the dismissal type of attachment?
Thank for your efforts.
What the **** is wrong with people acting like they care at the beginning of a relationship then turning to indifference after a few months? I never stop caring, or doing the things that show I care, regardless of how much time has passed. I’ve heard that in order to attract people who are genuinely kind and caring, you have to be that kind of person. Why isn’t it working, then? Our world is built on lies, you know. God has forgotten all of us and left us to die in suffering for the choices that other people made long ago. Boycott God! Let him know that we will stand up against the hipocrisy that he has allowed to accrete within humanity!
I was puzzled by the fact that my last relationship ended so quickly after he made a commitment to the relationship. In the beginning there was laughter, love meeting of minds so close we would finish each others sentences or say the exact same thing at the same time.He lied to me about being celebate for over 6 years as he then said I have had an AIDS test not long ago if you want to see it. I never called him on it.He never in the while time I was with him called me by my given name,he would not answer why. I would love to know what others think and also why I cannot after 3 years banish him from my heart and mind.
my boyfriend of 2 and a half years just broke up with me and this seems to say exactly what was happening inour relationship. I care but he just didn’t seem to anymore. He never made plans that automatically included me, he refused to commit to any plans I tried to make, there was no passion left in our relationship. All this really confusedme and I was unable to get an answer from him as to what was wrong. I cared so much for him but could not understand why he didn’t feel the same way. It was definitely indifference. I can see that now. I was willing to try councelling and he initially agreed but then wouldn’t let me make an appointment. I feel really hurt and don’t know what I could have done differently to avoid this situation from arising and killing our relationship. I hope that just being aware of it in the future may help me spot the signs earlier before all is lost.
@Helen
I don’t call people by their names
usually. This just means I have a
distance to people I don’t know
very well. For me, using the name
is kind of personal and a bit
intimate.
I have to really like someone and
trust the person to call Him/Her
by Her/His name. (unless it’s
necessary to shout to someone
from far away)
Maybe it’s just me, but I think the
guy just didn’t like You that much.
I think sometimes ‘indifference’ develops after you have ‘felt’ too much, and for too long, and nothing has changed.
Like this: First you really ‘love’ him so much. Then he hurts you so much. Then you get ‘angry’ so much, and from there you stop caring altogether.
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