My ex-boyfriend and I NEVER ever fought—funny enough, that’s actually a big reason we’re no longer together. You would think that not fighting is a good thing, but the occasional disagreement or argument is actually essential for a healthy relationship. No wonder it didn’t last.
- No fighting means weak communication. We failed to maintain the most important aspect of any relationship. If you can’t communicate, you don’t have a relationship, end of story. All you’ve got is two people, tiptoeing around each other, pretending to be people they’re not. It might have felt nice in the moment—it truly felt like a perfect relationship, for a while there—but it just wasn’t healthy in the long run.
- We weren’t really being ourselves. We were low-key acting, trying to please each other and make sure we didn’t do anything that could possibly disappoint the other. This made our relationship stagnant. We would do the same things over and over again because we knew they wouldn’t cause waves between us. We were living in the safe zone and it was super boring all the time. No wonder our connection fizzled out.
- We were both actively avoiding conflict on a daily basis. If either of us noticed even a slight conflict coming, we would do everything we could to cover it up, move on, and just pretend nothing ever happened. For example, if I showed up late and he was noticeably annoyed by it, he’d insist he was fine even though he clearly wasn’t. To make it worse, I wouldn’t do anything to pull the truth out of him because I didn’t know how and frankly, I was scared of what might’ve come out. We were both afraid of that side of ourselves and it proved to be a bad thing for our relationship in the end.
- It was all surface level; we never got deep. I would definitely describe our relationship as shallow. We were always joking about stuff, even serious stuff like what we thought about having kids and our experiences in past relationships. It made for a very easygoing relationship but an unfulfilling one as well. We never got a chance to tell each other about the darker aspects of ourselves that would’ve brought us closer.
- Tiny little problems felt threatening to the relationship. The longer we kept the anger inside, the more the resentment grew. We weren’t expressing our disapproval of each other so the tiniest things would cause endless amounts of resentment to build. As time went on, I would judge him for little things like not brushing his teeth right away in the morning. It was so silly but that’s what happened.
- We were both highly sensitive people. We were both highly reactive people and didn’t handle conflict easily in any area of our lives. We were both afraid of offending each other so we were constantly walking on eggshells, making us even more paranoid and reactive. We weren’t inspired to communicate honestly and that was a huge problem.
- We were afraid to hurt each other but ended up doing exactly that since we weren’t honest. If you can’t be honest with each other, you don’t have much. I mean, isn’t that the whole POINT of a relationship—a safe space to be fully yourself, even if it means you get mad or upset or have a fight every now and then? If you can’t be yourself around someone who’s supposed to love and accept you then you can’t be yourself anywhere.
- Neither of us knew how to fight fair or process fights. We both were raised in families that fought constantly and getting yelled at or disapproved of could mean real danger for us. When you take two people whose inner children are permanently scared of getting in trouble, a healthy approach to fighting doesn’t come easily…or at all.
- We spent a lot of time in silence. We never just took the chance, jumped off the deep end and voiced our opinion on something that maybe wasn’t working very well to try to figure it out together. Even that was too scary for us, so we’d either try to do things undercover to fix it or just sail past it hoping it would change on its own.
- It’s almost like neither of us felt that the relationship was worth fighting for. It’s sad to think about, but our insecurities totally trumped our desire to save the relationship. It wasn’t worth it to us to put ourselves on the line for love out of fear that we would be rejected, so I guess we didn’t truly love each other all that much.
