My partner and I are professionals in our early 30s. We’ve been together for five years, and long-distance for the last three, but have just moved back in together.
While we were long-distance, we both had difficulties in our work. She had important exams, and it’s taken a long time for me to get into my career. Over the last year, our relationship has become strained, and it feels as if we’ve grown apart. Now it feels as if we aren’t friends, let alone partners. This is complicated by our work shifts. Despite now living together, we still barely see each other.
We’re both keen to figure things out, but feel very unclear about how to stay together. When our relationship works it’s phenomenal, and I miss the easy companionship, love and sense of adventure that now seem to be missing. Any advice to help us move forward together would be greatly appreciated.
My first question was: what’s making you want to stay? I wonder if the relationship has run its course, but the time apart has made you feel that now you’re back together you have to make it work? You say it’s phenomenal when it works, but how long ago was that?
Psychoanalytic psychotherapist and relationship expert (and author of a great book called Tell Me The Truth About Love) Susanna Abse’s first thought was that “it’s extremely challenging for couples to be in a long-distance relationship. Unless people have a strong emotional need to keep their sense of separateness and autonomy [and some people do], then separations are usually experienced as painful and disruptive, and over time can lead to a lessening of the attachment bond between a couple.”
Abse went on to explain that “just as children display strong reactions to separations from their parents, couples frequently do too. Children who are securely attached to their parents protest in the face of separation and can turn away angrily when the parent returns. Parents can feel hurt by their children’s reaction, but hopefully respond by coaxing them into becoming close again. But between two adults it can be more complicated.”
This is when anger and arguments come into play. “In my experience,” continues Abse, “longed-for reunions between romantic partners often end in a row, because the person who’s been left behind is not ready emotionally to reconnect, and the person who left becomes hugely disappointed at not being greeted with unalloyed joy! Although rows can feel challenging, they can also offer the opportunity to work through feelings, but instead of rowing, some couples repress their feelings and withdraw.”
Abse felt you may be in the latter category: “To reconnect, you would have to step back into your relationship, acknowledging that it matters and exploring together how the separations really felt to you both. Perhaps you’ve both used your work as a refuge, which isn’t conducive to a close, committed relationship.”
The last few years sound very intense professionally. I wonder if you both need to find some stability – regardless of being in a relationship – to acclimatise to where you’re at. I also wonder how balanced your relationship has been, when you were living together, during your separation and now. Did one of you compromise more or hold more of the power? Even now, in this disconnected period, you must have episodes where you get on better. When and where is this?
Abse thought you’d benefit from a holiday together to “see how you feel if you make space for this relationship. You might discover what underlies your unspoken ‘decisions’ not to make your relationship your priority.”
I think a holiday, or at least some time on neutral ground, would help you see what’s left of your relationship and what you want to save. I had an image of two people who are professionally very driven, but working in opposite directions personally. Some couples therapy could help to tease out what you both really want, and if that does, indeed, involve each other.
Every week, Annalisa Barbieri addresses a personal problem sent in by a reader. If you would like advice from Annalisa, please send your problem to ask.annalisa@theguardian.com. Annalisa regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence. Submissions are subject to our terms and conditions. The latest series of Annalisa’s podcast is available here.
