Why Do We Keep Drifting Apart in Our Relationship

[00:00:00] Why do couples who love each other still end up feeling like strangers? What causes that slow drift apart? How can you share a home, a bed, a life, and still feel alone? A lot of people think relationships are held together by grand gestures, and grand gestures are nice, but most of the time it’s not big things that matter.

It’s the small, consistent moments that build connection when those everyday moments fade. So does the closeness. Welcome to this complex life. Today I am talking about the slow disconnection that happens in relationships and how rituals of connection can help rebuild closeness and emotional safety.

This is something that I see show up a lot in my therapist’s couch, on my therapist’s couch, where people will say, we had such a great time when we were dating. Or they remember what it was like when they first moved in [00:01:00] together, and then slowly over time. Things just felt less close, less connected.

And the challenge here I pose to people is relationships take work. They are not set and forget. And if you think about how much time we might spend nurturing other areas of our life, focusing on career on development. Professional development on maybe even tending to a garden or going to the gym or some sort of sport or hobby, and we know that.

We require consistency and effort and attention, and sometimes investing money and time to see progress in those things. Relationships are no different. They require intention and effort and dedication, and it needs to be, it’s a garden that needs to be watered. It doesn’t just happen miraculously because it worked several years ago.

Now relationships can start to feel distant for a number of reasons. Daily life can erode connection without us realising it. Things like work stress, [00:02:00] parenting, mental load exhaustion, and these things slowly push emotional connection to the side. And then technology can add a whole other layer of distraction where people can be in the same room together on the same couch together.

Both looking at their phones while also having a screen on like the TV on, and there’s layer upon layer of distraction of attention being divided. You stop turning towards each other. And for some people, if we have AI being in the mix, I did a whole episode on AI affairs and chatbot affairs. You can check that out, the will be link to that in the show notes.

Conversation, day to day starts to become about logistics instead of your own feelings and emotions and your emotional world and your your internal world. You might become really good at running a household but not staying emotionally close. And I hear this so often where so many couples say they feel more like roommates than romantic partners.

That sense of drifting. It doesn’t always come from [00:03:00] conflict. Sometimes there can be no conflict, which isn’t necessarily a good thing either, but it comes from missing moments to turn towards each other.

One of the, ways in which I would work with couples that come to me for this kind of disconnection is thinking about rituals of connection and rituals of connection are small, intentional actions that brings couples closer. They’re not routines done on autopilot.

They are things that you do with meaning. Even if they seem simple, they are those rituals that build continuity. Comfort and a sense of being a team. It might be how you say goodnight, how you make coffee in the morning, a daily or weekly walk that you both look forward to. When these rituals fade, the relationship can start to feel emotionally flat.

When they’re protected, they can act as as anchors or touchstones for connection. And when we feel that connection. It can [00:04:00] reduce conflict. It can keep us more emotionally connected and attuned and safe, and that is really good for not just our relationship health, but our health in general. Our physical health and mental health is so impacted by our relationships.

One of the examples that someone really creatively came up with in the work and work that we’ve done together was to walk to and from childcare together, so they would add that extra little bit of commute time and chitchat about their day while dropping their child off. I’ve seen others have lunch with each other once a week, meeting at their workplace, or creating a space for that if they’re working from home together.

So. They can be small, intentional moments. So think about your routine and ask yourself, ask each other, is there something that we can do together that feels meaningful for you? If you get up at a different time to your partner, you go to bed at a different time, or one likes to be up watching TV while the other’s reading a book, there are all these moments that you might have different [00:05:00] preferences, different needs.

None of them are bad. How can you find space to connect through the day, through the week? Maintain that over time. How do you create that shared experience and that ritual of connection?

So this is really, this can be really important to then creating shared meaning, and this is one of the foundations of deep emotional connection. It’s about knowing what matters to both of you and starting to create your own traditions and values as a couple. So this is. Step up, I guess you could call it from ritual.

So the rituals are the day-to-day stuff. When I’m talking about traditions, this could be how do we celebrate when someone gets promoted? How do we celebrate a birthday? Do we do a breakfast in bed? Do we do a weekend away? What do we do on Christmas Eve or any other religious holiday that you celebrate?

Or how do we celebrate New Year’s Day? Or what do we do for a sporting event? Or if someone gets an accolade or a trophy or their hobby has a [00:06:00] showcase, you know, they’ve got a, a dancing performance or they’re playing in the grand final of soccer or whatever. How do we celebrate those things? What’s, how do you want me to show up?

Because we don’t all have the same life experience and same values, beliefs. This can really change what we want, what we expect. So have a conversation about it. Create your own traditions as a couple. Talk about your own dreams as part of this, what you hope for, what you long for, why you want it like that.

And it’s not a bad thing to talk about what you want. We have to get over this fear or this illogical thought of, if I have to tell them, then they don’t really love me. If I have to explain it to them, then it’s not really genuine. Your partner cannot read your mind, and they might have no idea that something matters to you.

You need to talk about it to request it, and they are allowed to say, I can’t do that, or No, they’re allowed to set that boundary. But it [00:07:00] opens up a conversation about what’s important to you If you want to have a surprise birthday party and your partner has no idea that you like surprises. They’ll never do it for you.

Maybe for them, the idea of a surprise party is absolute torture and they would not want it on anybody. So then why would they give it to someone without knowing that’s what they want? Because for them, it’s like, I wouldn’t do that to someone, put them in the spotlight like I know me personally, I would hate that.

I would hate to feel like the last to know to walk into a room with a whole bunch of people jumping out and scaring me. Definitely not my idea of a birthday celebration. So it would never, might never occur to me to offer it to someone because I would hate it. So I just wouldn’t do it. So if my partner was to say, I really like surprises, or I’ve always wanted to have a surprise party, I would make a mental note of that and then I can find an opportunity to make that possible.

And it doesn’t mean I care less because they’ve had to tell me. It doesn’t mean that it’s disingenuine [00:08:00] or not genuine. It’s just I know that that’s what they want and if it’s within my capabilities and I can find the opportunity, I will throw them that surprise party. So talking about what brings you joy and purpose, reflecting on childhood traditions can help, you know, starting to think about your own,

what are your best memories of family rituals? What are your worst family memories? How do you feel about those rituals today? What do you want to carry forward, and what do you want to leave behind?

So maybe ask yourselves, ask each other what rituals or values from childhood. Feel worth continuing together. What would you like to do different to what you grew up with and what might you like to do the same and explore that. That could be a whole date night conversation. It doesn’t mean you have to do all of those things, but start the conversation and see where it takes you.

So if your relationship is starting to feel a little stretched, a little lonely, have a look at some of those rituals for connection where you can start to build them in. And then start to think about the creating [00:09:00] shared meaning those bigger occasion based traditions. And that can be how you spend a family Friday night together.

It could be what you do for your birthday, those sorts of things. But I wanna come back just before we wrap up on. How to discover and talk about your own rituals. Now, they don’t have to be complicated. They can grow from small moments that already exist and try checking in with each other. Ask, how do we celebrate when something goes well?

How do we greet each other when we come home? What’s our favorite way to spend time together on the weekend? What does repair look like? When we argue, what do we already do that helps us feel close? This isn’t a one-time exercise, it’s an ongoing conversation that shifts as the relationship evolves when it comes to something like, what do you wanna do together on the weekend?

You might need to get really granular with this. And what I mean by that is I have seen many times where people say, I just wanna have fun. It’s like, yeah. Me too. I wanna have fun. Who doesn’t want fun? What is fun for them might [00:10:00] be very different. Someone might say, I want to go for a drive. I like going for long drives.

And the other person’s like, cool. I like to go for long drives. And that one person, it might be like, great, a long drive means chitchatting and exploring and having conversations and stopping off at different sites along the way. And the other person is like, we hit the open road and I’m just there with my thoughts and I drive.

Or I might wanna listen to an audio book and the other person wants to listen to music or wants to chat. So even trying to understand what you want in those experiences is really important because we might want different things where I see this happened. On steroids is for holidays and people will say, I love traveling.

And they might, I’m really, look, say something. I’m really looking forward to our trip to, wherever we are going. And the other persons like, can me too. I’m really, I really love traveling. How they like to holiday or how they like to travel might be very, very different. Neither is bad or good or worse or whatever.[00:11:00] 

It’s actually, how do you figure out what that is? So if one person wants to lounge around the pool and read a book, and that’s their idea of a blissful holiday, and the other’s like, great, we’re gonna arrive, we’re gonna dump our bags in the hotel and we’re going to explore and we’re gonna go through the back streets and we’re gonna find some street food.

And then I’m gonna organise a Sunrise Mountain hike. And they’re constantly asking their partner, come on, we’ve gotta go. Why aren’t you doing? What are we doing? And the other person’s like, will you leave me alone? Why do we always have to do something? You always over jam pack our holidays and before you know it, that can become conflict.

If that’s happening for you, maybe check out the episode I did on the Four Horsemen. There’ll be a link to that in the notes as well. So having an idea of what it means, what that looks like. Helps you start to figure out how do we navigate that? How do we make it happen for both people? What does that routine look like, that ritual or that experience that we want?

So there might be some things that make this difficult to implement in your relationship. Sometimes one person [00:12:00] requires or has a preference for more. Maybe they want more connection. The other person. He’s quite content. It doesn’t mean you’re incompatible. You might just value connection in different ways or have different ideas of what connection means.

Or maybe you get connection from other sources outside the relationship, so it’s not as pressured in your relationship. You might not need as much from your partner because it’s balanced out across other people or the other way your partner, it might have their needs met in lots of different areas of their life and.

You feel like, well, I maybe I work from home, I work remotely. I don’t have a big team, and so I need more connection from you. Understanding those things about yourselves and talking about them and having a conversation is really important here. One person might want conversation. That might be how connection feels good for them, and the other might be happy with just doing shared things together, going for a walk together, but being in silence or sitting next to each other on the account wall.[00:13:00] 

One reading a book and one watching tv. So we have different ideas of what connection means. Even talking about that, what that looks like, what your preferences are is really important. They don’t have to look the same for both of you. The goal is to build something together that reflects what connection means to each of you.

Consistency matters more than perfection. Rituals should feel natural, not forced, but also intentional. You know, it might not be. Natural to wake up super early and walk the dog. We don’t want it to feel like punishment either, but it’s an intentional act. You might set your alarm that little bit earlier so you both can get up and walk the dog together, and that might be your ritual to start the day like that.

They can change over time and over different seasons of your life. So you might need to keep adjusting. So ask each other, you know, what kind of connection feels right for us right now?

So the key to this communicate, the key here is that connection isn’t built [00:14:00] on grand gestures. It’s these small, intentional moments that happen over time when those moments are missing. Relationships can feel empty, even if everything looks fine from the outside. It’s never too late to rebuild.

And start by noticing what you already have, protect what’s working, and talk about what’s missing, what you’d like, and choose a moment. And if you’re listening, I invite you to choose a moment this week. You can even tell your partner, I was listening to this podcast episode. You might wanna send it to them, not passively, aggressively, and then say, it gave me some ideas of things we might be able to do together.

Can we talk about it and say when you wanna talk about it? And have a conversation about this to ask each other, what’s one small ritual we can start or return to this week.