If You're Feeling These 15 Things, You're In A Dead End Relationship

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Are you wasting your time?

Relationships usually begin with high hopes and bright expectations. The key is to not waste precious time hanging onto one that is bringing up more and more question marks. Here are signs that you’re sticking with a dead-end relationship, and it might be time to move on:

1. You have more confusion than clarity. 

Time should bring important insights into your relationship, so it’s a red flag if you are more confused now than you were weeks or months ago.

 

2. Initial attraction hasn’t led to a lasting bond. 

Being attracted to external qualities—a nice smile, a quick wit, a confident demeanor—can hold a couple together for only so long. A romance that flames out quickly might be due to a strong physical attraction with little else to feed it.

3. Your desire for “space” is increasing. 

Everyone needs individual time—that’s normal and natural. But if “me time” has become much more appealing than “us time,” consider this a clear warning sign.

4. You work hard to improve the relationship, but the other person is not making the same effort.

A healthy union needs two people who both carry their weight and invest equally in the partnership.

5. Time has revealed a mismatch in your values and beliefs. 

Be realistic about whether your respective lives and desires are pointing you in the same direction, or whether impossible compromises lie ahead.

6. You don’t share the same level of motivation and ambition. 

Whether these include career advancement, further education, or personal development, each partner should have clearly defined objectives and a plan to attain them.

7. You’ve noticed incidents of dishonesty and deception. 

Lies destroy a crucial component of any relationship: trust. The presence of lies and the absence of trust spell trouble.

8. One person is clingy and dependent. 

Few relationships are able to survive extreme jealousy, possessiveness, overdependence, or controlling behavior. Such actions and attitudes indicate that one or both people lack a solid emotional foundation.

9. Your partner is unrealistic about what is needed for long-term success. 

In a healthy relationship, the individuals acknowledge that nobody is perfect and there will surely be problems to address. Every relationship will require hard work and perseverance.

10. It’s become obvious that your career and financial goals are not in sync. 

Ask yourselves how you envision your standard of living, income, and vocational progress into the future.

11. You have put your own needs and ambitions on hold to concentrate more on your lover’s. 

This kind of imbalance will eventually leave you feeling resentful. A healthy relationship requires equality, with both individuals feeling valued.

12. More and more you wonder if there’s someone better suited for you. 

It’s normal to have occasional doubts and questions about the long-term prospects of your partnership, but don’t ignore the warning signs if those thoughts become increasingly frequent.

13. You don’t feel like you can be “completely yourself” with this person. 

Trying to change or conceal your true self is a big tip that this isn’t a good match.

14. You’re feeling an acute sense of “time urgency.” 

Regardless of your age, you’ve begun to think that the time you’re spending in this relationship could be better spent exploring other (better) possibilities.

15. As you look ahead, the vision of your future together is fuzzy. 

You should be able to envision your relationship five, ten, twenty years ahead with joy and clarity.

source:- http://www.yourtango.com/2015276791/if-youre-doing-these-15-things-youre-dead-end-relati

The Surprising Thing That Helped Me Get Over My Divorce

I loved cooking and keeping house for my husband. When he left, so did my self worth.

The abrupt end to my marriage felt like an amputation of my heart. My self worth had already been diminished for several years, but when his side of the closet was bare and all I saw was that empty soap dish in the shower as a daily reminder that he wasn't coming back and my husband truly wanted a divorce, I felt worthless and I lost my sense of purpose in life.

As a woman who was dependent upon my husband for my feelings of worthiness and value, it was especially crippling when the end of the marriage came so suddenly. Mistakenly, I made him the absolute center of my universe. Not only did that feel natural for me, it's what I'd seen my mother do for years. As a little girl, I'd watch my mother put on fresh lipstick and a spritz of her Arpege' cologne before my father came home from the office at 5:30. ... I know it's not popular to admit, but I really enjoyed taking care of the household and being his wife.

With my broken heart and an empty house, I felt I had no meaning in my life; I didn't know who I was without him. With no kids to care for, my life's daily routine revolving around my husband was a complete blank when he moved out five days after he informed me he no longer wanted to be married to me. I was pretty shell-shocked, but after a few months I came up with a plan to boost my self-worth and keep perspective on my situation by volunteering. Strategically selected volunteering.

As a wife, I enjoyed preparing meals whether it was just for my husband and me or the twenty-five guests we'd have for our annual Thanksgiving food fest. Cooking for one was utterly depressing, if I even felt like eating.

• Did you play the supporting role in your marriage?
• Can you relate to feeling dependent on someone else for your own feelings of self worth?
• Are you feeling a bit lost, directionless and that your days don't feel like they have a purpose since your separation or divorce?

The solution I found was with Project Angel Food in Los Angeles, where I was able to help prepare meals that were delivered to home bound patients dealing with chronic illnesses. Chopping carrots and onions felt familiar to my old life and gave me a sense of contribution and purpose. Being around other volunteers and people in general was a welcome respite from the exhausting anxious thoughts racing through my brain.

If you enjoyed cooking in your married life, why not help at a local food bank, Meals on Wheels or even cooking for neighbors and friends?

While my ex and I chose not to have children, we doted on our nieces and nephews during our 16-year tradition of spending Christmas on the East Coast with the family. His family. In an instant, that was gone, too. That first year I wasn't sure how I was going to get through it and yet somehow in my scattered mind I came up with the idea to volunteer at an Orphanage in Romania.

Yes, it was a "flee" response for my self-preservation. I did a lot of escaping and running away because I didn’t have the skills, tools and awareness that I learned on my healing journey that I now help my clients with today. I help them practice intentional grieving and healing from the loss of their marriage and give them the guidance to prevent them from making the missteps I made.

Those sweet children saved me that first Christmas. Their kindness and generosity of spirit soothed my soul. (You can read about my experience with the children in Romania in my book, Wine, Sex and Suicide — My Near Death Divorce.)

When I returned home, I signed up with School On Wheels, an organization founded by Agnes Stevens in 1993 to serve the homeless youth and families in transitional housing in Los Angeles. I was scared to death of tutoring, afraid I wouldn't be of any value to a child. Even though I had serious challenges with fourth-grade math because it didn't look like the math I knew, the kids seemed happy to have me there and focused on them. 

It was from the children that I learned resiliency. Seeing the children face each day with hope showed me there is always an opportunity for something to change if we are willing, ready and able.

If you're dealing with split custody or an empty nest it may help you feel purposeful to be of service to children. You might find a hospital where premature babies need to be held, become a Big Sister, or offer to help your friends with their kids for a few hours a week.

The point is to keep doing the activities that in your marriage gave you a sense of belonging, value and purpose. You do the same activity, just for a different recipient.

Going through a divorce can derail us, stop us in our tracks and shatter our lives sometimes overnight. It can be shocking and cold to have a life ripped away leaving us shaking in the aftermath of confusion and unanswered questions. I felt untethered, adrift and abandoned.

You may not feel like getting dressed and leaving the house, but doing something that was similar to your 'past wife' role will create a bridge from what was familiar to the new vast unknown landscape of your life.

We can't go back to the life we had or the people we were. During the shock and awe attack on our perception of reality, we may cling desperately to the remnants of what was, terrified of the unknown. It is only with time and a practice of intentional grieving and healing with an introspective self-discovery process will we see the opportunity and the gift of being set free to fully step into who we really are at our deepest soul self.

source:- http://www.yourtango.com/experts/patty-blue-hayes/strategy-helped-me-feel-normal-after-my-husband-left

                                                   

Rachel Cusk: My Broken Marriage

Kelly Dyson.

Recently my husband and I separated, and over the course of a few weeks the life we'd made broke apart, like a jigsaw dismantled into a heap of broken-edged pieces. "The new reality" was a phrase that kept coming up: people used it to describe my situation, as though it might represent a kind of progress. But it was in fact a regression. A plate falls to the floor: the new reality is that it is broken. I had to get used to the new reality. My two young daughters had to get used to the new reality. But the new reality, as far as I could see, was only something broken. It had been created and for years it had served its purpose, but in pieces it was good for nothing.

My husband believed I had treated him monstrously. This belief of his couldn't be shaken: his whole world depended on it. It was his story, and lately I have come to hate stories. If someone were to ask me what disaster this was that had befallen my life, I might ask if they wanted the story or the truth. For me, life's difficulty has generally lain in the attempt to reconcile these two, like the child of divorce tries to reconcile its parents. My own children do that, forcing my husband's hand into mine when we're all together. They're trying to make the story true again, or to make the truth untrue.

In the mornings I take my daughters to school. We spend the evenings mostly alone; I feed them and put them to bed. Every few days they go to their father's and then the house is empty. At first these interludes were difficult to bear. Now they have a kind of neutrality about them. It is as though these solitary hours, in which for the first time in many years nothing is expected or required of me, are my spoils of war, are what I have received in exchange for all this conflict. I swallow them down like hospital food.

Call yourself a feminist, my husband would say to me, disgustedly, in the raw bitter weeks after we separated. He believed he had taken the part of woman in our marriage, and seemed to expect me to defend him against myself, the male oppressor. My husband said he wanted half of everything, including the children. No, I said. What do you mean no, he said. You can't divide people in half, I said. They should be with me half the time, he said. They're my children, I said. They belong to me.

Fragile Hearts And Timid Souls: 9 Courageous Steps For Letting Go And Finding Love Again

“Surrender to what is. Let go of what was. Have faith in what will be.” Sonia Ricotti

It’s not easy to love again after heartbreak.

I know because heartbreak has been my divine teacher.

And it’s taken me a very long time to come to terms with my breakup, accept my divorce and let go (mentally) of the person who occupied so much of my life.

It’s close to four years now and I FINALLY feel ready to move on.

Ready to let love into my life again.

Ready to open myself up again.

How I got here

When my marriage ended abruptly, my life began unraveling for a couple reasons. One, I loved my ex-wife, and despite our many challenges together, I was hopeful as ever of a love that would heal, transform and reignite. I felt it was only a matter of time before our differences would darken and our hearts would shine.

Two, my life unraveled because I couldn’t accept such a drastic change in it. Maybe I took love and marriage for granted. Or maybe I had the old-school version of relationships stuck in my mind – that relationships lasted no matter how challenging or tumultuous they were. The only solution, I believed, was to stay together and keep trying. And in the meantime, we had to keep working through the kinks.

Although divorce was what I ultimately came to accept, it was after much kicking and screaming on my part.

I didn’t want to let go of someone who I had come to see as part of me. Despite our differences, I had always felt soulfully connected to her.

Naturally, when she left, my soul felt empty and my life felt broken.

I went from a state of shock and pain to sadness and loss.

Much of this is chronicled in this blog, and much of what I’ve written describes how to come back from such dark and tragic places in our lives.

For me, the process of healing and letting go has taken place at a snail’s pace.

Over the past few years, my mind continued to replay the ups and downs of our relationship. Of course, during periods of grieving, your mind can hardly remember the downs.

You mostly remember the good times, the happy times and the joyful times.

I remembered the laughs, dreams and hopes we shared.

And every city or restaurant we had visited together triggered a reaction in me.

Every current conversation or movie triggered conversations and chatter of the past.

I saw her name everywhere and heard her name everywhere, including in magazines, books and movies.

I was clinging and holding on for dear life to this lost love. I felt that losing her was losing myself. This dying relationship felt like my own mortality.

It was not easy, as you know, to pick up the pieces, get through each day and move on.

The path back to myself has been long and treacherous. The path back to love has been fraught with tears, sorrow and sadness.

The path to moving on has required that I find the courage to let go of the past, accept the present and step into who I am today. The path to myself required that I put myself together after being completely broken.

It’s required that I stand up and step into my soul + my life.

If you have gotten out of a soul-crushing, life-crushing relationship and find yourself on the bathroom floor crying out to a God that doesn’t appear to exist, I bow to you and welcome you to join me on this journey to healing.

Your heart may be fractured, but your soul is about to emerge – stronger, more vibrant and more courageous than ever.

You may feel as though your breakup has shattered your life, but that doesn’t mean there’s no hope for living today.

To the contrary, if you go through this journey of healing you can find peace today, gratitude for what happened and joy in future possibilities.

Cracking open a fragile heart can unleash a timid soul.

You can become courageous again and be ready to open your soul to something new.

If you’re ready to let go and move on, let me take you through my own healing process.

Knowing When To Walk Away From Unrequited Love

“Love does not obey our expectations; it obeys our intentions.” ~Lloyd Strom

To say that love hasn’t obeyed my expectations would be the understatement of the century.

I have not been lucky in love. I’ve been blessed with some amazing moments over the years, but somehow have managed to choose partners who did not want what I wanted, did not feel what I felt, and did not want to walk beside me into a future together.

I have really had to sit with this and try and figure out what part of this was my doing, and how to change it, because this year I once again chose a partner who was not walking with me. Except this time not only was he not walking with me but he was subtly trying to kick my feet from under me every chance he got.

I once again entered into a relationship desperate to find love and instead found a beautiful disaster. Love is a blessing, this we know. Unrequited love is toxic, and it can eat you alive.

Falling in love can be a slippery slope, regardless of any protective barriers we may have built. It can ease in like a light a mist that settles itself beautifully over your life, or it can blindside you.

Often we fall in love with a person before we have fully gotten to know them. By this point it’s too late—you’ve already stretched your heart for someone capable of bruising it. This is what love requires:utmost vulnerability and trust. Hopes and expectations rise along with the awareness that it can slip away.

I suggest we do our best to live in the moment. Love is elastic. It stretches and retracts and changes shape constantly. It is very uncertain. One day you are over the moon and the next disillusioned.

The elastic can break. You can re-tie it, but there is now a knot. Suddenly that perfect perception of the other person is a little bit tainted. Something rocked the pedestal. Sometimes we can recover from this, sometimes we can’t. 

Loyalty and commitment teach us that we are not to walk away from people that we love. Buddhism teaches us to love without expectation. There are a lot of belief systems about love and I question them often. If your love is shared and you are both happy I assume you wouldn’t have to question love at all.

But if your relationship, be it friendship or romantic love, is unbalanced and one person is hurting, how much is enough? How many pieces are supposed to break and how damaged can we allow ourselves to get before we throw these belief systems out the window and accept that this type of love isn’t healthy?

How do we do what is best for ourselves without damaging the heart and mind of someone else in the process?

Love and relationships require work and responsibility. We have to learn when to stretch and when to break.

For those of you who have been blessed to find a romantic love that is equally shared, I truly admire this and I have set the intention to find it one day. I think it all starts with being aware, open, and ready.

For a long time I didn’t believe I would find love so I subconsciously chose partners who I knew would be a challenge. I am no longer interested in this challenge. I told myself when my last relationship failed that I would never put myself in a situation where I didn’t know where I stood in someone’s life again; where I felt unsteady and unloved.

Unfortunately I did it again this year and I can promise you that it was the last time. I now know what I would like my relationship with my future partner to feel like, and that is the first step towards being open to receiving this gift. Love is a gift.

I have been tested often this year and with this came the opportunity to learn lessons. I have lived my life openly. I have experienced love and trusted the process. I fell in love, watched it grow, watched it change, and watched it fall apart.

I felt the pain, and still continue to recover from it. My heart is healing and that is a slow process, but it was necessary to hurt to have learned what I learned. For this I am grateful. I’m also grateful to my friends and family who helped me to pick up the pieces when I didn’t have the energy to do it alone.

8 things I have learned about relationships so far:

1. If there is a feeling better than love, I have not felt it. Take the risk and dive in with everything you have.

2. Enjoy the good times together as they are happening and be grateful for them.

3. Stay out of the future and in the moment. Now is certain.

4. Protect both your heart and your partner’s, whether the love is still there or not. We are human and we deserve kindness. We don’t need to add to the burdens we already carry by hurting others. Trust me, it doesn’t make thing better.

5. If your relationship starts to crumble, know when to put it down and let it be. Don’t grind it into dust.

6. You cannot continue to give to another person when you are not at your best; when you are so broken, so beaten down that you have no energy left. When talking has failed and words no longer have meaning, this is when you know it is over. When you feel like this, you have to do what is best for the relationship and for each other and wave the white flag to avoid further damage.

7. Some things just won’t work, no matter how badly we wish they would. Sometimes the match that felt so right just isn’t. Please don’t do more damage to your heart by trying to fix something that has past its expiration date. It will leave you raw.

8. It is okay to walk away from something that hurts you. It doesn’t require blame or justification. It just requires you to stop fanning the flames. You will find love again, and next time it will feel better.

Life isn’t easy. Some things build us up and some tear us down. Our hearts expand and break and rebuild—repeatedly. We are constantly learning and changing and growing. If in love you find yourself in a sticky situation like I was, please stop picking at scabs.

Nothing good has ever come from this. Stop the cycle, and let your heart heal so you can find pure love. Surround yourself with loving relationships. Something beautiful is out there waiting for you. If you feel it on the inside, you’ll find it out there.

source:- http://tinybuddha.com/blog/knowing-when-to-walk-away-from-unrequited-love/