Is Not Moving Forward in a Relationship the Same as Moving Backward?

The worst thing with romantic partners is when things grow stale. We all want to feel that we’re moving forward in a relationship, not falling backward.

In this article, we will share our views on how to keep making progress rather than staying the same over the years.

Cassie’s View on Moving Forward in a Relationship

My parents were proud of me and my sister. I distinctly remember my mother telling this to a group of her friends after a couple of glasses of wine at a bridal shower.

It wasn’t because we had done anything heroic. It wasn’t because we both had successful careers. Nor was it even because we were both just good people. It was because (her words) we had done things in the right order.

We had both gotten married, then had kids. The bride we were celebrating had a child at home. It didn’t matter that she was marrying the man who had fathered the child. Her virtue was no more.

I hung my head as everyone else at the table nodded in agreement, the mother of the bride luckily nowhere in sight.

Changing the Sequence in Life

I thought about that moment recently and wondered if my parents were still proud of me now that I am no longer in that marriage. Did I mess up the order, or does it still count because I did it right the first time?

The whole thing seems so old fashioned and absurd, yet I know my parents are not alone in their views. It’s not even necessarily generational. No matter how relationships have evolved and how many different pictures of love have become accepted, there are certain steps that are universally expected.

If you don’t follow the order, or if you don’t move on to the next step, it is viewed as not progressing correctly. If you are not moving forward in a relationship, are you in fact, moving backward?

The Expectations of Other People

You meet, you date, you move in together, and then you get married and start a family. The moving in step is considered optional but is more common than not as most couples like to see if they can compatibly cohabitate before shelling out thousands on a ceremony.

This is the accepted path a life should take. Any deviation shall leave you open to questions regarding the stability of your relationship, or worse… yourself. This path may well be rose lined for three quarters of the population and they enjoy walking along and taking in the view. For those other twenty-five percent, those roses have thorns.

Pressure to meet the expected milestones is probably the reason that so many marriages either end in failure or continue in misery. So many people feel like if they are not married, not a parent, not whatever-I-am-supposed-to-be or wherever-I-am-supposed-to-be in life that they have failed.

What I would like to know is who made up these milestones? Who gets to decide what is considered success and failure in a relationship? That last question is one I can answer. I do. You do. We all do.

Relationship Success is How You Define It

If you are happy in your relationship, it is successful. If you are unhappy in a relationship it has failed. As far as I am concerned, we don’t need criteria beyond that.

If it makes a couple happy to be married and have children because that is genuinely what they want to do, I will buy the gift, lift a glass of champagne and deliver the toast. If it is being done because the bride wants to wear a sparkly dress and the groom felt pressured because it is expected, then it is over before it began.

Why have we become more accepting about what a family may look like, but we still expect the journey to become a family to remain the same?

A family can have two moms. It can have stepchildren, or no children at all. We embrace blended families of all races and religions.

Why would it be a stretch to have a married couple live permanently in two separate dwellings because it works better for their lifestyle? Would that be more or less odd than if they never married at all? Because to never marry would mean to society that they were not committed. It signals that something must be amiss, doesn’t it? No. Sometimes you stand still because the view is spectacular.  Sometimes standing still is the most peaceful thing you can do.

Take Back Ownership of Your Relationship

What we need to remember is that our romantic relationships are ours. They need to satisfy only the needs of the people within them. They do not need to please the masses, or even those closest to us.

If we can learn to embrace a lifestyle that makes us happy, conventional or not, we become healthier and better people. I challenge you to not let the expectations of others guide the decisions you make in your life.

Find a love that works for you.

Find other reasons to make your parents proud.

Nick’s View

Life is best enjoyed when progress is made toward meaningful, self-defined goals. Setting targets and meeting them forms the foundation on which confidence is built and happiness is experienced.

The challenge many people are confronted with is to recognize which are their own goals and which are societally imposed. The societal laundry list manifests itself in a variety of ways, but can be seen in the following common remarks and questions:

• You’ve been together that long? When are you going to get married?
• When are you planning to have kids?
• Why haven’t you moved in together?

Each of the above presupposes a natural progression that each couple must seemingly follow. This is the accepted checklist driven into each of us that suggests:

• Dating
• Marriage
• Buy a Home
• Children and then Children to Post-Secondary
• Retire
• Die

Any variation to this checklist is a direct challenge to the accepted order of things, and if there is one thing most people can’t handle, it is for their understanding of the world to be called into question.

Moving Forward in a Relationship at your own Pace

The irony of it all is that the majority of people are in unhappy relationships to begin with. This is easily demonstrable by the huge divorce rate which continues to climb. Likewise, it isn’t hard to open one’s ears to hear the multitude of people who lament the plight they find themselves in. Most people, looking back, would like to have changed a number of things along the way. It would be for naught, though, as without a change to their system of beliefs, their outcomes would be the same, aside from the names and faces.

To answer the question related to moving forward in a relationship, I believe doing so at a healthy pace requires redefining what forward actually is. If it means moving along the societal checklist, then I am okay being considered a backward-thinker. I don’t require any of the things hoisted up on someone else’s pedestal in order to consider myself satisfied with my life.

My definition of forward implies only that I am content with where I am. I don’t need tangible milestones to prove anything, as if those I might prove myself to would even actually care. Needing others to recognize progress is both vanity and insecurity, all at once. It is enough to live to my own standards and let the dust settle around that. If people are able to see it, that’s fine, but doesn’t motivate me to act one way or the other.

All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

Blaise Pascal, Pensees

I like to think that one of my greatest strengths is my ability to let my own principles guide me, free from the shackles I might feel if I let others dictate terms for my life.

Final Thoughts on Moving Forward in a Relationship

The best relationships are ones where 1+1=3 or better. You want someone who understands you and actually makes you better. That’s the sweet spot.

Still, you need to remember that developing a great relationship is as much your responsibility as anyone else’s.

If you’re stuck with your relationship not progressing after a period of years and you’ve been doing everything right, it may be time to consider using an ultimatum to move forward. That way you can find out whether things have a chance to progress or whether it’s time to move on.