Deciding to be tied in holy matrimony to a man or woman for the rest of your life is a significant step many people take at a point in their lives.
You feel you have found the perfect partner, someone who compliments your features and completes your essence.
You both love each other, feel perfectly compatible, and want to be together forever. However, with time, some cracks begin to appear in the erstwhile perfect relationship.
At first, you disregard the signs. Of course, they can’t be unhappy marriage signs, after all, you have just been married for a few years.
But rather than disappear just as they appeared, the problems begin to fester, gaining prominence with surprising speed.
At this point, you are worried, or better put, confused whether your relationship has hit a temporal snag or is on the verge of melting away.
The thing is, regardless of how long you have been married, certain moments might come when the sight of your partner will make you want to hide in the bathroom and cry out.
A marriage is like a long journey where you encounter rough patches and smooth rides. At some point though, the rough patches are persistent, getting to extents where they get draining and make you feel like you can’t come out of them anymore.
You suddenly find yourself hating your husband, criticizing the actions of your wife, or dreading their presence. These right here are signs someone is unhappy in a relationship.
Many times, the signs that your marriage is on the rocks may not be obvious. The problems that turn a happy marriage into a nightmare gradually build up for years, so you may not recognize them right away.
The fact that we live in a modern society that is characterized by several daily hassles make recognizing unhappy marriage signs way difficult.
By the time you start to take notice of the signs your partner is unhappy, the rot in the relationship might have eaten deep, sometimes down to the extent of no return.
But first, before delving into these loveless marriage signs, let’s take a brief walk down memory lane. Take a moment to reflect on your state of mind when you and your spouse began dating.
Remember the love and laughter with which you planned your wedding and honeymoon. How many children you would have and names they would answer.
Remember how you thought about your partner. Did quiet smiles creep up the sides of your lips when images of them appear in your head? Do you still feel that way now? Have you been noticing changes in their personality traits and communication styles? Or is the fright of getting to the point where you have to leave your marriage preventing you from accepting the unhealthy changes in your marriage?
Undisputably, deciding to leave a marriage is point black scary. There is that niggling fear of being alone, and staring into the hollow clouds of a bleak future.
And if there are kids in the mix, concerns about the children’s emotional, social, and psychological welfare will continually bug your mind. Because of this, many people have opted to stick with their states of dissatisfaction rather than seek immediate change.
However, as Carrie Cole, a Couples therapist and Master Certified Gottman Therapist says: “Staying in a seriously unhappy marriage can have long-term effects on our mental and emotional health” Most people in bad marriages struggle with low self-esteem, anxiety, and depression, and are more prone to illness than those who don’t.
This emphasizes the need to appraise your present situation using the unhappy marriage signs below as a guide to understanding where you lie so you can make the necessary adjustments.
Before mentioning these signs, it is important to stress that one major cause of marriage breakdowns is poor communication.
Perhaps one partner might have experienced a shift in life goals and expectations which do not align with the other partner’s, who is also unwilling to accept or acknowledge this shift. Sooner rather than later, the changes in behavior begin to affect both parties by creating a rift in the relationship.
Be mindful that all marriages – even the happiest ones – experience conflict, and some of the prevailing issues are fixable with proper counseling.
The tricky part is figuring out whether you are just going through the regular marital rough patch, or if you are actually in an unhappy marriage. Luckily, we have put together 10 unhappy marriage signs to help you with figuring out the process.
1. Lack Of Intimacy And Affection
When the sensual or intimacy level of a relationship reduces drastically, this could be a sign that a marriage is suffering.
The level of intimacy in a relationship is essentially what separates a romantic relationship from all other sorts of relationships you might have and when that becomes inexistent, it is a really big red flag.
Intimacy isn’t only tied to romantic activities in the bedroom, affectionate actions like kissing, hugging, and even holding hands also follow. Once you observe a decline in the regularity of these, it could be indicative of a real problem.
Once a couple starts to disconnect emotionally, they begin to lose interest in a whole lot of activities they initially enjoyed.
Getting intimate becomes a big chore they would rather avoid, and even when they do decide to get intimate, it comes off as uncomfortable, cold, and forced. At this point, you do not require the services of a soothsayer to make you aware of the fragile situation of your marriage.
2. You Both Begin To Flare Up Over Little Things
As earlier emphasized, no relationship is perfect. Couples get into trivial arguments occasionally which they quickly resolve or even laugh over.
However, when these apparent trivialities which were once tolerable begin to set off little emotional reactions like frustration and disgust, it is a sign of obvious discontent in the marriage.
One partner starts noticing and criticizing unnecessary issues like eating habits, personal hygiene and appearance, social style, and other insignificant details.
Soon enough, they begin to lose track of the real issues, arguing over virtually anything and everything – leftover dishes in the kitchen, the unarranged rooms, neglected renovations, late trips, and other things that were once insignificant. These are unhappy marriage signs you must watch out for.
3. Presence Of Abuse In The Relationship
Abuse in this context isn’t restricted to physical abuse. Mental, emotional, and verbal abuse are common occurrences, and when these are present in a relationship, they are telling signs a man is unhappy in his marriage.
Victims of abuse are often demoralized and are hardly able to compete in the real world, often needing the help of domestic violence professionals to survive.
Once a couple loses their ability to talk through their problems without resorting to any form of abuse, it is a sign of a deeper problem.
It should be understood that there are times when it becomes vital for a couple to seek the help of an objective professional to resolve conflicts and navigate their marital bumps without losing their sanity.
Recognizing these moments and taking the requisite steps are important to forestall abuse in a relationship. Once abuse becomes commonplace in a relationship, the only option available is to let go, and if necessary, seek help.
4. Everyone Is Talking And No One Is Listening
One of the noteworthy unhappy marriage signs to watch out for in a relationship is a shift in communication patterns. Effective communication involves active listening and speaking, a feature that is glaringly lacking in most unhappy marriages.
Listening is one of the primary ways to display love. When a partner listens, not passively but actively – asking questions, seeking clarifications, making suggestions – you feel appreciated and valued.
However, humans are different in their mental and psychological make-up. In other words, the art of listening comes more easily to some than others, and while it is a skill that can be acquired and improved with practice, it requires consistent and deliberate efforts to be successful. Sadly, many couples in unhappy marriages often complain that they feel unheard in their relationships.
Listening calls on a person’s empathy and requires them to step into the shoes of the speaker. When you listen to your partner’s concerns with compassion and genuine interest, the likelihood of your marriage suffering from unhealthy communication is significantly reduced.
But if you find yourself silently rehearsing what to respond when it’s your turn to speak, the lifeblood of the relationship is faltering.
5. You Both Can’t Seem To Agree On Anything
Do the values, worldviews, ambitions, and goals you and your partner share conflict in several ways? Does it seem like you both cannot just create an alignment on vital matters? When both parties in a relationship are unwilling to make sacrifices and compromises, this is a prevailing sign that their ship is on the wrong course.
Thoughts of a happily-ever-after future start to appear distant with the sudden realization that you both want different things and are not even ready to reconcile your differences for the benefit of the marriage.
With time, your differing mindsets create a void that affects the happiness in the relationship, and there you have it – another sign of an unhappy marriage.
6. You Both Have Nothing To Say To Yourselves
It is normal for a partner in a relationship to want to keep to themselves sometimes. This could be due to a mental difficulty that is often temporal, perhaps a bad day, or a sad event that reaches deep.
In times like this, respecting your partner by giving them the personal time they crave is important. But if a couple lives together and hardly talks to themselves for long stretches, it feels pretty much uncomfortable and immensely draining.
Situations like this cause strains to meaningful conversations. Sometimes you might both be in the same room but not actively engaged together. That is, you are together but doing separate things and minding your businesses. This is an obvious indication of a disconnection in the marriage.
7. You Are Getting More Attracted To Other People
You didn’t suddenly become blind to the handsome or beautiful features of others when you got married, you only allowed the love, respect, and trust you have for your partner to dictate your commitment to them.
But if you fantasize about cheating on your spouse or if you find yourself actively flirting with others, then it is obvious that something is lacking in your marriage that you are looking for in relationships with other people.
8. You Harbor Thoughts About A Life Without Your Spouse
Do you often imagine a future – not just any future, but a happy one – without your partner? That is a major sign that things aren’t working right. Detaching yourself from your partner happens gradually.
You try to convince yourself that you’re past caring so that the separation doesn’t hit you hard. Next, you begin fantasizing about life with a different person, or you start making plans that disregard your partner.
You don’t have to act on them, the mere fact you have thought about them points to the fact that you have fallen out of love.
9. You Prefer Letting Out To Friends Instead Of Your Partner
When you married your spouse, they became your best friend, comforter, gist buddy, and everything related to a companion you can think of. They naturally become the first person you want to talk to when something significant happens in your life.
However, once it gets to the point where you prefer to share your concerns with someone outside the relationship instead of your spouse, something is wrong in the relationship. This is one of the unhappy marriage signs you must be on the lookout for.
10. You Are Both Keeping Secrets
Marriages are founded on trust. You trust yourselves to reveal everything about your lives to each other. Once a party in the relationship starts giving obscure information or hiding particular details from the second party, this is a warning sign that you are not rowing in the same direction.
The secrets they are keeping mustn’t be infidelity-related. The realization that they no longer trust you well enough to tell you means there’s been a shift in priorities and trust levels and could be a sign of unhappiness in the marriage.
If you are concerned about how to fix an unhappy marriage, you should start by appraising your marriage to see whether any of these unhappy marriage signs are present in it.
The good news is, if the root causes of an unhealthy marriage are discovered on time, they can be resolved. So take the step today to observe your relationship and find out what side of the marriage balance you are on.
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