Why You Feel Disconnected in Your Relationships

Photo by Christian Fregnan on Unsplash

So many people crave love and connection and yet, they feel utterly disconnected in every relationship they’re in.

And maybe that’s something you have experienced too — I know that I have. It didn’t matter who I was with or what I did, I just didn’t feel how I knew I was meant to feel, how I knew I could feel. Deep down I just knew this wasn’t it … but I had no idea how to get there or what I was doing wrong.

At the beginning of a new relationship, I was excited because I was hoping and anticipating that this time it would be different.

This time, we’d truly like each other and keep liking each other. This time, we’d really connect on a level neither of us had ever experienced before. This time, we’d stay madly in love. But ‘this time’ never happened.

We couldn’t keep the spark going or make the connection happen. No matter how hard we tried. It all fizzled out pretty quickly and whoever I was with soon started to tend to their own interests and projects.

I, however, lay on the sofa crying and feeling hopeless and depressed. Sadly, I wasted years like this. I didn’t think it was ever going to happen for me.

I never took action to change because I thought that that’s just what it was like for me. I didn’t realize that this was something that could be changed or that it was something only I could change.

Every now and then I had little spurts of hope and motivation and it was during one of those spurts that I began learning about healthy relationships.

It was mind-blowing!

I had always thought that I knew what a healthy relationship required. It was things like love, loyalty, commitment, trust, respect, etc. but I was wrong.

What I interpreted as loyalty was really only self-sacrifice. What I interpreted as commitment was self-abandonment. What I thought of as love was codependency.

And the root cause of codependency is disconnection. Disconnection from yourself.

I had no idea how to make sense of it all or how to use this knowledge to my advantage. There weren’t any instructions and I didn’t meet many people who knew about this.