“We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.” ~Sam Keen
When we fall in love, we feel excited to experience some of the most joyful moments of our lives. Because love is supposed to be the source of the best feelings, right? But what about when that relationship churns up some hard stuff and leaves you feeling hurt, annoyed, sad, and irate?
For many of us, especially deep-feelers like me, when we start to experience these inevitable lows in our relationship, we may conclude that something is inherently wrong with it.
But what if that assumption is just smoke and mirrors? What if it is preventing you from truly experiencing the real love you crave?
Believing something is wrong with your relationship might, tragically, lead you to conclude that the relationship has failed and should be ended, even though it’s actually pretty healthy and promising.
“I’ve been annoyed with him a lot lately,” and, “We just haven’t been connecting much” are common complaints I hear from people I talk with. Followed frequently by the sentence of doom, “Maybe I made a mistake by marrying him.” “Maybe they aren’t meant for me.”
I’ve made that same jump of reason in the past. Multiple times in my twenties, I ended relationships full of potential because bad feelings were arising more often than I thought they should. I thought it meant something was wrong with him or with us.
Being someone who is highly attuned to what I feel, I have always taken my feelings really seriously. When I feel bad, I feel really bad. And when things feel, well, blah, I feel that deeply, too.
As had been my norm in past relationships, when my partner and I began to get over those hormone-stoked, bursting-with-love early months of our relationship, I started to feel moments when things didn’t feel “good” anymore. When it all felt “dull.” When he wasn’t behaving how I thought he ought to. When we weren’t “connecting” like I thought we should.
Like I had done in the past, I could have taken this as a sign that something was wrong with our relationship, and that he was the wrong man for me.
But I was gifted with a powerful secret that changed everything at a relationship workshop we had attended together to preemptively deal with the normal stuff that sabotages great relationships (we were committed to this relationship thriving): This dullness was normal and healthy.
What?
As I let the power of this one mental shift sink in, and marinated in the subtleties of what it meant, my relationship began to full-on thrive—and continues to years later.
My hope is that it can change your relationship for the better, too.
Let’s Investigate This Further
Imagine your emotional life as a spectrum from terrible to wonderful, with neutral in the middle. It is completely normal to spend one-third of the time on the negative side of the emotional spectrum, one-third on the positive, and one-third in a neutral state.
When we believe that love should always feel good, we often experience the neutral times as less-than good, which we interpret to mean bad. We turn “okay” into “bad” and “bad” into “terrible.”
This is especially true for sensitive souls like me, because we feel things so deeply: anything less than positive registers as uncomfortable, or negative.
When I realized that two-thirds of the time it is absolutely normal to not feel “good” when it comes to my love life, I felt immense relief.
It means that there is nothing wrong with my experience. It means I can stop feeling upset that I’m upset, or mad when things are just okay. I can stop feeling so disappointed when I feel unhappy, dull, irritated, sad, or confused.
I now see that it’s the measuring of my experience against some ideal and unrealistic standard that feels so extra bad. It’s my resistance to what I am actually experiencing that feels terrible.
So now I say, so what if I feel a bit of discomfort, or things are a little dull inside me, or between my man and me? So what if I am experiencing numbness or just okay-ness? I can just let it be what it is, knowing that it is normal and healthy, and it will change soon anyway.
I’m not suggesting we tolerate abuse or mistreatment for any percentage of time; just that it’s normal to not always feel head-over-heels in love and blissfully happy.
One of the biggest benefits of “embracing neutrality,” as I call it, is that my joy is amplified during the times my partner and I are really connecting well. How could I even know what good was if I never felt it’s opposite?
Contrast is the truth of life. Contrast is part of our humanity. To have a rich love life, embracing all our feelings is the only healthy path. Because, as we allow it all, we fall deeper in love with life, and everyone in it.
Though my life is filled with the same amount of sad, annoyed, frustrated, bland, and ho-hum moments as ever, the way I experience them has entirely changed: so much softer, so much less agonizing.
And as I have practiced being accepting of the neutral times, I’ve actually begun to appreciate them more. When I welcome neutrality, the ho-hum moments almost start to feel good, too. That means I now feel more good feelings than bad ones, by far.
If you’d like to recognize and get comfortable with feeling less-than-great so you can avoid ruining a good thing, here are a few tips:
1. Use gentle awareness and be really honest with yourself.
When you notice you are feeling less-than-great (just less-than-great for your first few times, not terrible), get curious about what you are really sensing. Feel your emotions. Notice what physical sensations are there. Do you feel constriction? Or openness? Or a vague sense of nothing?
2. Assess your feelings.
Rate this body-feeling on a scale from one to ten, ten being the best you could feel, five being neutral, one being terrible.
3. If you rate below a six, really investigate with curiosity how that feels in your body.
Allow it to be as it is. Notice that it isn’t a problem to not feel good. It’s just a bunch of interesting sensations. Even unhappiness isn’t so bad when you look at it with gentle curiosity. You are safe to experience what you feel.
When you do this a few times a day you will expand your capacity to tolerate discomfort. You may even realize that you can actually enjoy your significant other’s imperfect behaviors and human quirks that were bothersome in the past.
Like the nights he is mentally absorbed by a work issue and acts distant. The times he says, “uh-huh” before you even finished what you were saying, as if he wasn’t really paying attention. When he picks his nose in public…
Because most of us, let’s be honest here, are a far cry from perfect. No one will ever truly fulfill and delight you all the time.
That is actually your job, not your partner’s! It is your work to drop the expectations, comparisons, judgments, fears, and beliefs that are interfering with the health of your relationship and to learn to care for the normal, bland, day-to-day humanness of your sweetie.
Because if you don’t embrace the dull times, you are much more likely to lose the whole glorious package by rejecting your experience and your partner a majority of the time.
When I notice I’m resisting feeling dull or I’m a bit uncomfortable about something going on in my relationship, I now use this powerful affirmation to remind me that discomfort is simply part of being a human in love: “My relationship is most authentically and deeply loving when I allow the seasons of my heart to come and go, experiencing them all with presence and acceptance.”
If you embrace neutrality like I have, instead of believing it means something has gone wrong, the neutral times become like a glass half full (instead of half empty). The good times become rich and wonderful. And those truly hard moments? They are simply reminders of how delightful the good times actually are, and reinforce their joy.
About Hannah Brooks
Hannah Brooks is a love and marriage coach and host of the “Highly Sensitive, Happily Married Podcast.” She helps sensitive women put an end to the upset in their marriage and create the supportive, loving, light and connected relationship they really want with their significant other. Take her free quiz, “How Much is High Sensitivity Impacting Your Relationship?” to find out if (and how much) high sensitivity is affecting your happiness in your relationship, and what to do about it.
Though I run this site, it is not mine. It's ours. It's not about me. It's about us. Your stories and your wisdom are just as meaningful as mine.
Life is going to come with many highs and lows. It is important to love the highs, but learn from the lows. See it with a different approach. While you may be experiencing a low, it is important to realize how truly blessed you are in life. I deal with depression and my own thoughts everyday. When I wake up and force myself to say that today will be a good day, it will be. All because it is the first thing that my mind is thinking about
Having been with my wife for 11 years – and married for 2 – I see it Hannah as giving someone their space, and also, being intimate. Like that good mix which removes highs and lows and replaces the peaks and valleys with a level appreciation. After 7 years of circling the globe and living in some interesting spots we faced fears many couples never face. I purged some big time wicked energies with these fears, as did my wife. So we both learned to appreciate the journey, and to be warm and connected while letting each other do our thing.
“It’s the measuring of my experience against some ideal and unrealistic standard that feels so extra bad.” This is exactly it. Thank you. I’ve been in a dull place for a few months due to lots of reasons and this pinpoints exactly how to be ok with this neutral every day part of life. Thank you.
I find that the best way to get through the lows is to find some way to laugh with my partner. When we laugh together and are playful we feel so connected. Even if it’s just a glimmer in a sea of hardship, it makes such a difference.
It’s sad for me to think back on the relationships of my past that either, I have thrown away (meaning her) or my partner threw away (meaning me) because we failed to understand the basic precepts in your short, very wise piece. I learned. The hard way. As so many of us do. But…..I have learned. And because I have, and so has my partner, we have a powerfully enduring relationship. We are committed to allowing the dull as a part of the seasons of the heart to slide in and out of our relationship without this natural process having any impact whatsoever on the foundation of our relationship. Would that I had learned this decades ago. When I finish my time machine, I’ll go back 30 years and take your article with me……maybe I can save myself some pain…….or not.
You are most welcome, Michael!
Hi Ryan, Thank you for your take on it! You put it beautifully. One of my favorite quotes about relationships is this: “The two wings on the bird of love are autonomy and togetherness. Take care of both for your relationship to soar.”
Michael, wise words! What is in our mind shapes our experience so powerfully! And we have so much more control over our mind then we ever thought. You will do well in life with awareness of such!
Hi Cate, I’m really glad it struck a chord with you and helped you with some “dullness”. You are so very welcome! Warm wishes to you.
Thank you for the kind words. That truthfully means a lot to me!
Thank you for this wonderful piece!
Hi Hannah
This is exactly what I needed to read. I’m so sensitive that i ‘ve been having this perfect picture in my head of what a relationship should be. Because of that my expectations are so high that it keeps me from totally accepting my husband as he is. I often say to him why have things changed between us? Why do I feel like things were so much better before? All this makes me even doubt my husband’s love for me .thus creating unnecessary arguments. After reading your article it felt like something just lit up I my brain lol and I took a couple of minutes to process everything. What if I was unintetionnally sabotaging everything? I shall definitely change my mind set any all this.
Thanks Hannah 🙂
Ari, Your comment gives me shivers and brings laughter, both! I just love that you learned (hard as it was) and now really live this understanding, with your partner. It doesn’t matter how long it took, because here you are! Enjoying the seasons of your heart. And maybe that is what we are really here for: to grow into better, more understanding, more loving versions of ourself, shifting with life. Which it sounds like you have done and continue to do! Cheers to you!
Trisha, you are so so right. I love what you wrote. It sounds like you consciously try to find things to do together that elicit laughter? My partner and I often, in the middle of an interaction that has gone poorly (because we both sometimes think human drama in general can be silly), find ourselves laughing at the absurdity of our own human reactivity and frustrations with each other–and it always eases the tension some (or a lot), and shifts our perspective back to one that allows us to feel allied again (instead of adversaries).
I’m so glad it came at a good time for you! What you write about is really common and true for many: I’ve found in my work with highly sensitive clients that there is a tendency to have especially high standards and expectations and unconscious “rules” about relationships and our partner. In part I think this comes from an unconscious effort to try to protect our sensitive systems from dealing with extra hardship (a partner who is a pain in the booty sometimes). And yet, it ends up backfiring because we aren’t accepting and embracing fully the one we have chosen–which creates distance and tension and those unnecessary arguments you mentioned, etc–the very opposite of the connected intimacy we really want! So in a way it is self-sabotage, like you said. I love it that this article “lit up your brain”! So great! I’d love to hear how it works its way into your relationship over time. Keep me posted! I bet it will settle in there and shift things ongoingly for the better.
You are really welcome! Thank you for reading it!
Really loved this piece. As a highly sensitive person myself, if things were going mediocre or my boyfriend wasn’t giving me the “loving” responses I expected from him, I would think there was something automatically wrong with the relationship. I’d become upset and really insecure within myself, thinking that he doesn’t like me anymore, or our love has just fizzled out. But recently, I’ve come to the realisation that the honeymoon phase doesn’t last forever, and that’s okay. This article is just what I needed to remember it’s possible to accept all aspects of my relationship- the highs, lows and everything in between.
Enjoyed the article. I struggle with the concept that is it is “my work to drop the expectations”. I have finally come to learn that I have needs and it is ok to want them to be met. The difficult part is finding balance in that, accepting that my partner will not and can not meet my needs all the time. But when I am let down (generally through communication issues) I have to find a way to get past it and let it go. On the flip side though, I wonder if perhaps some of these problems that arise mean we are not genuinely compatible. It ends up being a vicious cycle sometimes.
Thank you for this article. It made me feel a little better knowing I’m not alone. And normalized what I’ve been agonizing over, concerning my feelings within my relationship.
Undiagnosed, but I know I suffer from anxiety and quite possibly, depressions. Almost once a month, I get to a stage where all of my feelings for my partner dissipate, and I’m feeling extremely low. A pit in my stomach, low. But within a couple of days, I am back on the high of our togetherness, my love for her and the possibilities of the future we are planning together.
I wish i understood it more. And this article assisted with some of that. The comments below helped as well. The quote about the two wings on a bird — autonomy and togetherness. That hit home.
I was single for seven years before my current relationship of 8 months. I was used to being extremely independent, having ample amounts of alone time, while socializing with friends through occasional lunches, birthday dinners, outings. With talking on the phone, being the bulk of my socializing. Since meeting my love, we spend almost 24/7 together and I’m starting to feel that the reasons for these bouts of sadness, have to do with the imbalance of time spent with self — the autonomous factor is greatly lacking.
The last time I woke up to the pit in stomach, I felt doom concerning my relationship — though my partner was doing nothing wrong. So, I said, “I must take some time for me,” and went to the spa. Something I used to do often. I feel like, taking time for myself and with friends, may alleviate this uncomfortable feeling, and add the needed balance for this bird to soar.
Thank you for your wisdom. I needed this read.