A beautiful marriage can provide a safe haven for one to return to every night, but a bad one? A bad one can make one's life a living hell. It takes a toll on one's mental and psychological health and may turn them into the shadow of the person they once were.
However, without knowing the signs that your sweet relationship has turned into something bitter, it is possible to keep on living in denial, and making yourself unhappy.
Choosing to leave a marriage or stick it out is one of the toughest decisions one would ever have to make, but it would be even worse to keep hurting yourself for someone else's sake. These 10 signs show that your marriage has hit rock bottom.
1. No Date Nights
Date nights can be amazing ways to reconnect with your partner. Spending some extra bucks to enjoy private time with the person you love feels nice. It doesn't even always have to be overly fancy, either. A date night can be going to the cinema or the art gallery together.
If you can't remember the last time you had one-on-one time with your partner, it might be time to plan a date night.
2. No Romantic Gestures
Romantic gestures can be sending flowers to your workplace, leaving a cute love note on the fridge, or gifting them something they've been talking about for quite a while. They may seem like “little things,” but they go a long way to show someone that you care.
The beginning of every relationship comprises lots of romantic gestures — that's one way to know the flame is still blazing.
3. Suggesting an Open Marriage
An open marriage is one where both partners come to an arrangement that they are allowed to date other partners. Some relationships are fine with this from the start.
But if your partner has gotten cagey and is suddenly suggesting an open marriage, you might want to find out why and how things changed.
4. They're Always on DND
When your partner suddenly has their phone on DND (Do Not Disturb), it raises a big red flag. Sure, sometimes, people don't want any kind of disturbance. But when they always have this feature on, especially around you, it might suggest that they're up to some sneaky acts.
5. They Join Tinder
People who join Tinder, join mostly because they are looking for romantic relationships or other kinds of intimate relationships.
There's hardly anyone who has the intention of making new friends on dating apps unless those friendships come with benefits. So, if you're ever using your spouse's phone and discover they recently downloaded Tinder, you may need to look deeply into it, no matter the reason.
6. It Feels Like Business
A business is never business. It should never feel like a business. Remember the butterflies and goosebumps you felt at the start and the following years? When it starts to feel more like a prickly sensation, and you start doing things like you would at the office, scared not to piss off your mean boss, your marriage may be heading for doom.
Marriage should also never feel transactional, else again, it's likely business.
7. Life Becomes More Difficult
Life with your married partner is meant to be relatively easier because every burden is shared. u/TheBirdAbides wrote a true statement:
“One of my big pet peeves, when people give relationship advice, is the ‘marriage is hard, relationships take work' mantra. That mentally does so much harm and guilts people to stay in s—y or outright abusive relationships for way longer than necessary.
Yes, relationships take work, and yes, there may be moments that are hard, but there should be WAY more easy or coasting days than hard days.”
8. You Keep Giving, and They Keep Taking
Love should be 50/50. Sometimes it's not. Partners are only humans, after all; they have bad days and good days — days when they can only give 30%, and days when they can give as high as 70%. But it becomes a problem when it feels like you're always the one putting in the extra effort, doing more to make them happier or more comfortable.
When that starts to happen, it's a major sign that they may be (getting) tired of the marriage.
9. Trust Dies
Trust is one of the most essential building foundations of every relationship. Without it, any relationship is doomed to fail.
The minute you start getting paranoid, going through their phones every minute, monitoring their movements, and listening in on every call, it may not be a sign that you're crazy. But it's clearly a sign that there's no trust, and the very foundation of your marriage has been shattered.
10. You Secretly Hate Each Other
A person can lie to everyone else, but they can't lie to themselves. Or maybe they can. Convincing themselves that they care about their partner when they secretly despise them is the greatest way to betray themselves and the relationship. Also, they may be telling themselves that if they hated their partner so much, they could have left — it's not because they don't want to, it's because they can't. They depend on each other to fulfill one need or the other.
Someone described the situation perfectly: “A ‘s—-y marriage' isn't a violent or toxic one, it is so bad that people are constantly annoyed but not bad enough to finally make them leave. So, this continues for a long time, sometimes forever. The partners low-key hate each other, and cheating may occur, but they stay together, sometimes forever, looking down on people who get divorced or stay unmarried.”
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This article was produced and syndicated by Wealth of Geeks.
Boloere Seibidor, fondly called B.S. is a Nigerian-based writer and poet. Her favorite topics to cover include music, especially Hip-Hop, film, lifestyle, and fashion. She's been published by Feral Journal, Fantasy Magazine, The Temz Review, and most notably, Wealth of Geeks. She enjoys romantic dinners, movie nights, and touring new sites. When she's not writing, she's delving back in time to the underground world of Hip-Hop, watching TikTok, or visiting the cinema.