‘I Feel Like A Roommate With My Partner’: Possible Causes And What To Do
Emotional stagnation in the area of marriage or courtship is one of the common reasons for consultation of those who go to the psychologist, whether in individualized psychotherapy sessions or couples therapy.
However, the majority of people who experience this phenomenon are not able to put words that clearly define what they feel, and tend to give very abstract or even confusing and incoherent explanations at times. It is normal for this to happen: love is an experience based on emotions and is not meant to be limited by the use of language or logic, especially if you do not have training in psychology.
Thus, Phrases like “I feel like a roommate with my partner” are common, as well as “I am simply with my partner and nothing more” or “we have gotten used to each other and we no longer expect anything.” In this article we will review the general characteristics of this type of experiences, and their possible solutions or strategies to overcome them.
When living together as a couple turns into boredom
Love is often talked about as the core of relationships, and in part, it is true that it is. However, considering that a marriage or courtship is based on a clearly delimitable element which we call “love” and on which the entire relationship is built exposes us to a problem: Emotions change, evolve, and with them so does the emotional bond, for better or worse
In other words, it is clear that love is very important when establishing a relationship, but under this concept there is actually a flow of affections, feelings and intense emotions that unite us with that person, and this is transformed as we go along. that this relationship goes through different phases. What we feel for that person after two years of dating is not the same as the falling in love of the first weeks, and the coexistence of the first days under the same roof bears little resemblance to those who have already formed a new family unit with each other.
None of this implies that the relationship has to always go from the bottom up in terms of satisfaction and happiness, but the fact is that some people notice that after a few months or several years, this coexistence becomes a simple routine, the fact of knowing that the other person lives with us, without more. For one reason or another, in certain cases the relationship reaches a phase of stagnation in which boredom or even frustration predominates due to not feeling interest in doing things together.
This does not have to indicate that this relationship has no reason to exist; many times, what is behind that experience is not so much the incompatibility with that person, but rather a series of habits unconsciously adopted by both when interacting with the other and that can be “unlearned” to make the relationship satisfying again, and not simply tolerable.
Possible causes of emotional stagnation as a couple
Although each relationship is unique, Generally there are a series of situations that have a great capacity to produce that feeling of being “living with our partner” without further ado. They are the following.
As we have seen, where some would only see the dramatic end of a love relationship, triggered by deficiencies in the essence of that love, relatively banal psychosocial variables may be hidden, but as the days go by they can accumulate and generate a rarefied environment in which passivity and apathy predominate. Or even psychopathological problems, especially in the area of mood disorders.
In any case, the best way to address these cases (and the only one, in the case of psychological disorders) is to go to a psychotherapy specialist. In the psychologist’s office it is possible to have a professional who makes a diagnosis tailored to each specific case, and who proposes solutions adapted to each person and couple.
So, both from individualized therapy and from couples therapy people learn ways to manage negative emotions, guidelines for effective and assertive communication, ways to keep the mind active and in constant interaction with the environment (and with others), and other ways to have a better predisposition to detect negative emotions. potential sources of incentives of that romantic relationship, and to take advantage of them.
Specific, Cognitive-behavioral psychology works to help people modify their behavioral patterns starting by modifying and improving their framework of interpretation of what happens in their relationship, that is, the set of beliefs and ideas from which they extract meaning from what happens to them when they are with the other person. In this way, it is possible to adopt a more constructive mentality and tend to detect opportunities or even promising projects to carry out together, as well as improve communication between both.
If you are interested in having psychotherapeutic support to overcome problems related to the management of emotions or emotional relationships, contact me. I am a psychologist specialized in the cognitive-behavioral intervention model, and I work offering sessions both in person (in Madrid) and online by video call.
