You found the love of your life early on and feel lucky compared to others who remain single around you. And, then suddenly, you notice subtle and then drastic changes in your relationship. There are many reasons a relationship can fall apart. Lifestyle changes like a loss of a job, or a lack of communication and an insensitivity to each other’s needs. Unfortunately, as a result of these actions, you may develop emotions such as resentment and anger and feel empty inside. These emotions can also lead to bad habits like substance abuse and cause serious health problems.
Depression and Anxiety
Problems at home can affect everything you do. They can cause you to have a lack of focus on the job which can result in missed deadlines putting you at risk for firing. It can also affect your ability to maintain friendships and if you have children can cause you to become irritated easily or have a total lack of interest in their daily lives. You may fall into a state of depression or develop anxiety and stress over your life. When this happens many people take to drinking or experimenting with drugs to escape reality. These bad habits can quickly blossom into a serious problem where when you don’t have them you simply can’t function. Luckily, there are places like in patient alcohol treatment centers that can help you not only beat the dependency but, also get to the underlining problem through therapy and outside counseling.
Stress, the Slow Killer
If you recently lost your job, are in a bad marriage or are going through a divorce you probably have a lot on your mind. Dealing with these up and down emotions daily can take a toll on your health and mental state of mind. Unfortunately, chronic stress can literally kill you. It can raise your blood pressure, cause heart disease and slowly kill off your brain cells. The good news in that you can learn to reduce your stress by identifying what triggers it and then working through it. If you are in a bad relationship, talk with your partner and voice your concerns. Listen to each other and try to work on your differences. If you simply are no longer compatible, then end the relationship. Even if you have children, they are not a reason to subject you, your spouse and your children to this type of lifestyle. While divorce is not easy for children, having parents who are happy and calm benefits them more.
Working on the Relationship
If you and your spouse decide that you still love each other and want to give it a second chance, that’s great. One of the first steps you should take after making this decision is to attend marriage counseling sessions together. It takes two to make any relationship work and having an outside professional person with an unbiased opinion will allow you to see each other’s point of view. The next step is to rekindle your love and get back to why you got together in the first place. Take a mini vacation or a weekend getaway and spend time alone, just the two of you. Once you return home, keep the closeness you found by doing something together on your time off. It can be something as simple as a walk in the park or creating a once-a-month date night.
Communication
With a full-time job, children and a home to run, it may often feel like you and your spouse are ships passing in the night. As time goes by you may talk less at home and then start to do hobbies on your own. This separation of time and lack of communication can begin to wear on even a healthy relationship. It’s important to remember to ask each other how their day was and if anything exciting happened. Open a dialog and keep it open. In the morning before heading off to work seal it with a kiss and do the same before retiring for the evening. These little gestures keep your partner interested and connected.
Problems at home can lead to stress, a weakened immune system, and depression. Instead of potentially jeopardizing your health open up a dialog and see if you can work together to resolve your differences.
