A one-sided relationship feels like you’re loving on a mannequin. It’s hard to wake them up and get them to be proactive in the relationship, but it is possible. Photo: Adobe Stock: Lightfield Studios.
When you marry someone you wholeheartedly adore, a person you love doing things for and love with all your heart, who you can’t wait to throw down and make passion-filled love to, those feelings can carry you a long way before you realize that you’re doing just about everything in the relationship while they sit by and receive. “Wait a minute,” you think one day. “What the hell is going on here?”
When our flaming love fires simmer down to lukewarm bathwater temperature, it’s usually because we have not had enough energy input to keep us fueled. We can give and give to others, but we need them to give to us, too. When that doesn’t happen enough, the fire starts to go out over time, and it becomes harder and harder to feel anything close to what you’d been feeling. That’s when a person sits down and tries to figure out what has caused this major shift.
A one-sided or unbalanced relationship or marriage isn’t that unusual, unfortunately. The concept of stoking romantic feelings, also known as relationship work, is well presented in Gary Chapman’s world-famous book The Five Love Languages. Whether it’s one or both partners who have dropped the ball and allowed the love tank to get low, it’s completely avoidable. But today, we’re not going to talk about when both do it; we’re going to visit the sad story of when one person has enveloped the other in love so thoroughly that they didn’t even realize that they were the only one pedaling the bike until they stopped and took a breath.
Lazy romantics have their reasons for not bellying up to the bar of actionable love, of course. Here are some of the things I’ve heard:
I don’t know how.
My family never showed love; it was just understood.
I’m not that kind of person.
You knew that when you married me.
No one ever told me I was supposed to do that.
More understandable reasons from my point-of-view are:
People hurt you in your life, and you went into a self-protective cocoon.
Past traumas have rendered you allergic to doing things that make you uncomfortable.
You are avoidant attached due to past traumas, and coming close to another person causes you anxiety.
You’re afraid of rejection.
You were shamed for showing vulnerability.
You have low self-esteem, feelings of insecurity, and believe your partner doesn’t want you.
Life has been too easy for you, things given and not earned, and that’s the only thing you know.
Having a healthy relationship takes a lot of hard work — time, focus, and attention. I write about this all the time. A healthy marriage is like a high-maintenance plant. It needs the right amount of light, water, minerals, and soil and must be pruned and tended to. Unfortunately, too many people think that once you’re married, life shifts to responsibilities: a career, splitting the bills, household duties, kids, and doing things together. None of those things fosters or nourishes a relationship except doing things together. People become bored and restless in a long-term relationship when there is nothing but responsibilities and routines. What a perfect recipe that is for negative relationship issues and eventual emotional distress.
Marriage itself insinuates there will be romance, and unless you mutually agree otherwise, it must be on the table. The pattern I see is what I mentioned at the top of this blog — one starry-eyed, love-struck partner so entranced with a new love that they don’t even notice the object of their affection does not come up with ideas to do much of anything and has little or no romantic bones in their body.
Maria and Jose.
Maria was crazy about Jose. She was so attracted to him in a way she could not find words for; he had her heart on every level, and she obsessively focused on his every need. She didn’t notice that he never talked about marriage, never had ideas for a date, rarely called or texted her, didn’t write her cards, bring her gifts, or do little things to show he cared. He was more than happy to receive her love and attention and welcomed it, but they would have stayed home if she didn’t think of something to do. All the signs of a one-sided relationship were waving in her face, but she failed to notice them. This is a common mistake.
When she felt she had waited too long for a marriage proposal, she told him it was time, and he did nothing. Months passed by, then a year. Finally, while driving one day, they talked about it, and she screamed, “What is wrong with you? I want a family, and if you do not marry me, I am going to leave you!” “Okay, okay,” he said, “Wanna marry?”
Sitting in therapy years later, she said, “I just thought he was scared of commitment or something, but he was very committed. “He would have stayed like that forever, spending time with me while I doted on him, but he had no thoughts of marrying me or moving our relationship forward. It never occurred to him to do thoughtful things for me. Why didn’t I see that he was the kind of man with no ideas, no vision of a future together, no need for variety, and not one romantic thought ever?”
Now that Maria was worn out with giving, doing the romantic heavy lifting, and giving her marriage her best effort, she stopped cold turkey. When they came to see me, they lived as friends and roommates. A one-sided situation like theirs almost always ends up like this. Blinded by the chemicals of new love, she missed every red flag warning that Jose did not know how to give to her romantically, and theirs was an imbalanced relationship, a one-sided marriage, a situation that no one ever imagines for their romantic relationships. Of course, Jose could have gone on like that forever, and even when Maria discontinued her efforts, it didn’t occur to him to check what was going on. “I did ask her, ‘Hey, when are we going to have sex?’” he said.
Relationship apathy.
This issue of relationship apathy affects both genders. It often results from growing up in an invulnerable family. Imagine family members quietly living together who did and said the bare minimum when together, with little or no emotional support, and no one shared the truth about what was going on in their lives or who they were. People who grow up in families like this have no concept of mutual engagement, helping one another, and understanding and relating to the other’s struggles and challenges.
Also, people who have never been compelled to exert much effort or work to maintain or keep a friendship, mainly because things just happened for them, never learned the two-way street that defines relationships. I have met many physically stunning people who didn’t have much personality and showed no interest in engaging with others for the purpose of getting to know one another. It appeared they just existed, much like a piece of art on a wall. “How did this happen?” I used to ask myself.
Now that I am a therapist, I know that certain things like beauty, money, and fame are powerful gifts that magnetically attract people. People who appreciate the aura of your gift want to be near it for the sake of being near. When people gravitate to you, stick around, do things for you, and expect nothing in return except your presence, you quickly learn that this is what a relationship is. People without the gifts that magically draw people in must make a dedicated effort to join in the game of life and engage with others. They seem to sense that if they sit there and wait for things to happen, they will end up sitting there alone.
Giselle and Dave.
After over twenty years together, Giselle and Dave were in a marriage crisis. The hard-working, ever-helping wife was awakening to the reality of her imbalanced romantic situation. Almost overnight, she realized Dave was a talker, not a doer who would not change. She had hung on to the idea that, at any moment, he was going to turn that around, but now she was pretty certain that day would never come.
She was very successful in her career and had done everything possible to make his dreams come true, including funding many of his brainstorms, but he always dropped the ball. His lack of effort to follow through on anything had lost her respect, but how lonely she felt bothered her the most. This is a common feeling of the one who is the strong one and cheerleader in one-sided love.
“Why didn’t I see he wouldn’t change before?” she said. “Where have I been? I have just been waiting and waiting for him to finally step up to the plate and do his part as a partner, and you know what? He can’t do it. I don’t want this type of relationship.”
Giselle came in alone after our first couples session. “He’s not coming back even though he says he is,” she said, rolling her eyes. “He says he wants to read the relationship books you recommended before setting up another appointment for us, but I need to see him take urgent action. Anyway, I know he won’t read the books, and it’s just another excuse not to come to therapy. If we were going to go to couples therapy and really work on it, it gave me hope; without it, I have none. I’ve seen all I need to see.”
Why are people not doing their part?
The core problem with people who can’t or won’t step up and do their part in a relationship is usually emotional immaturity. They are children in adult bodies, still expecting their parents to plan and take care of everything. This is one reason family therapists tell parents of young children to push their children toward doing things themselves and being independent on an age-appropriate level along the way. The end goal of parenting is to have children who can be launched and care for themselves like a mother bird nudges her nestling from the nest. When the child grows up and allows others to do almost everything for them, you can be sure that didn’t happen.
Emotional immaturity is caused by being traumatized in childhood, and most of us have plenty of it, whether we remember it or not. Humans become emotionally disabled due to all of this in five core areas: self-esteem, boundaries, reality, dependency, and moderation/control. (1) People with childhood trauma often have a lack of self-care and self-awareness, so they won’t even notice they have an issue and wouldn’t do much or anything about it if they did. The disabilities inevitably appear in relationships, and like a person with one arm who can’t button their shirt, things you would normally expect a person to do as part of a romantic partnership won’t happen, like making plans for a romantic evening together. They only think about getting help because their spouse begs them to. The good news is that it’s entirely reparable with professional help, but often, they are pretty happy with their life the way it is and aren’t that motivated to change.
Lack of integrity is a trust killer.
To say you will do something and not do it is the same as lying to a partner. It kills trust and causes resentment. In marriage, one of the most important things to have is a foundation that says, “You are solid, and I can count on you.” (2) In unrequited love relationships, the taker stays in their comfort zone and assumes no risk, much like sitting in an easy chair and having life delivered. It’s very safe in that easy chair, but you must rely on others to keep you alive. Sadly, two-way relationships’ emotional investment, vulnerability, risk, and reward are all the qualities that make them worthwhile. Still, in a one-sided relationship, the taker will probably never experience it.
In the end …
The title of this article says it will tell you how to fix your one-sided relationship, but it takes two to fix this problem, and as I said, the person with this particular disability isn’t likely to do their part. I have seen many clients like this eventually divorce, and thankfully, the low-energy partner is usually able to support themself and keep a roof over their heads once on their own. Still, they will live in a way that causes them the most comfort and the least stress. It’s a sad dynamic, but that’s their chosen path.
My suggestion to everyone who has been the doer in a one-sided relationship is to be very aware of the potential partners you meet moving forward. If you enjoy them, ensure they are stepping up and doing their part. You also want to make certain you aren’t the one who immediately steps in and starts helping them in the areas where they struggle. Let them figure their own stuff out, and if they don’t do anything about it, you’ll know what to do.
Pia Mellody, Facing Codependence.
Sue Johnson, Hold Me Tight.
Note: I am an Amazon affiliate and may receive a small percentage of the sales of these books at no extra cost to you.
Check out my new ebook on marriage crisis and how to know if you need to separate. It also includes a plan for an amicable divorce.
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Becky Whetstone, Ph.D., is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in Arkansas and Texas* and is known as America’s Marriage Crisis Manager®. She is a former features writer and columnist for the San Antonio Express-News and has worked with thousands of couples to save their marriages. She can work with you, too, as a life coach if you’re not in Texas or Arkansas. She is also co-host of the YouTube Call Your Mother Relationship Show and has a telehealth private practice as a therapist and life coach via Zoom. To contact her, check out www.DoctorBecky.com and www.MarriageCrisisManager.com. Also, here is how to find her work on the Huffington Post. Don’t forget to follow her on Medium so you don’t miss a thing!
For licensure verification, find Becky Whetstone Cheairs.
Becky Whetstone is an Arkansas native and has a Ph.D. in Marriage and Family Therapy from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, Texas. She is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) in Texas and Arkansas. 
