![Growing Apart: How Putting Your Relationship Last Leads to Disaster [Are We Roommates?]](https://www.combatdomesticviolence.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Growing-Apart-How-Putting-Your-Relationship-Last-Leads-to-Disaster-scaled.jpg)
By GROWING APART: HOW PUTTING YOUR RELATIONSHIP LAST LEADS TO DISASTER [ARE WE ROOMMATES?]
Kyle Benson
In an interview on the Armchair Expert with Esther Perel on eroticism, the show host Dax Shepard said this,
“Here’s what I find to be so heartbreaking about divorce…in many of these cases with my friends, the dad has the kids half the week and the mom has the other half of the week, and I look at that, and I think, ‘Isn’t it heartbreaking that they had to separate so that each person could get 3 and a half days of their own life back, and that they couldn’t have just said, ‘We’ve got to figure out how to get a day or two of our life back within this…
[And after divorce] Now they can give that time to someone else; each of those people can give 3 and a half days of their week to some other person that didn’t build all that with them, and that person receives that, yet their poor partner, that was never an option.”
What Dax is sharing is far more common than I’d like to admit.
For example, a research study on dual-income couples with kids discovered that these couples:*
- Spend less than 10% of their time at home with each other and without their children around
- Are career-focused with long working hours (partner one) and have a double burden of work and childcare (partner two)
- Prioritize children and household needs over the needs of their spouse or self
- Become more like roommates, drifting apart emotionally and physically
- Miss important opportunities to connect emotionally on a daily basis
“If you need a happy couple to have an intact family, then what does the couple need to do? It really needs to redirect some of the energy away from family and children to themselves, and to do it without massive amounts of guilt, to do it because they actually know that the survival of the family will depend on their ability to redirect, what I call the erotic energy to the relationship.” – Esther Perel
One of the main reasons I named this website Intentionally Intimate Relationships is because I witnessed a trend of how unintentional couples grew apart and separated. The lack of energy invested into one another and the relationship, over years, inevitably led to the relationship ending.
Maybe you know couples like Alex and Jordan, who on the outside looked like they were deeply in love.
They have three adorable kids, posted photos on Instagram that made you say “awe” but also feel a tad jealous too, and when they talked, you would have said with confidence that they are experts on each other.
Then, out of the blue, they get divorced.
“We just grew apart,” Alex says.
Like the 63% of couples who divorce, they didn’t see a professional prior to signing the papers.**
The distance between them turned into a chasm so wide that they both grew hopeless at their ability to connect with one another. Instead of reaching for each other, they each went into their shells.
This form of growing apart is what my colleague and friend Nate Bagley labels “The Roommate Syndrome.”
Nate and I would argue that, most of the time, the Roommate Syndrome is curable and divorce is preventable.
The problem is the Roommate Syndrome sneaks up on you though.
- You stop going on fun dates…
- You don’t make out anymore…
- You spend all your time taking care of the to-do list (which your partner isn’t on)…
- You feel more and more stressed, burned-out, and lonely all the time…
Then one day, you wake up, and you think, “What are we doing? We’re more like roommates than lovers. This isn’t what I signed up for…”
It’s terrifying how it creeps up on you.
Is your relationship headed down that road?
Or maybe your relationship is great, but you want to make sure you never have those thoughts…
*Campos, B., Graesch, A. P., Repetti, R., Bradbury, T., & Ochs, E. (2009). Opportunity for interaction? A naturalistic observation study of dual-earner families after work and school. Journal of Family Psychology, 23(6), 798-807. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0015824
**Johnson, C., Stanely, S., Glenn, N., Amato, P., Nock, S., Markman, H., & Dion, M. (2002). Marriage in Oklahoma: 2001 baseline statewide survey on marriage and divorce (SO2096 OKDHS). Oklahoma City, OK: Oklahoma Department of Human Services.
