A Zombie Relationship Can Come Back to Life
When you see the word ‘zombie’ it can conjure up all sorts of weird and scary images in your head. We have seen films where the ‘undead’ return. Caught somewhere between life and death they have a ‘non existent’ existence if I can put it that way. These films give us a couple of hours of entertainment and a fright or two along the way.
Sometimes people who are either single or in a relationship, can sometimes feel they are living a sort of zombie life. They feel if they are just existing, making do and just getting on with things. This is sometimes called a ‘Zombie Marriage’ or ‘Zombie Relationships’.
This can be a common feeling and most of us can identify feeling like this a few times in our life. Life becomes routine and we are on automatic pilot. We lose those fresh feelings that made us appreciate our life, and partner. This just doesn’t happen to our relationships; it can happen in our job as well. We turn up at our job, ‘go through the motions’ but with little or no real joy or feeling. This can also happen when we go home to our partner.
If we are in a relationship and we feel like this, it can be very disconcerting to say the least. Sometimes we don’t know why we have ended up feeling like this and we don’t know how long it will last or what to do. If you’re in a relationship like this you may know the signs: apathy, routine, familiarity, empty interactions, irritability, indifference and usually no sex. You don’t actually dislike each other and you may say you are best friends but there is no spark or emotional intimacy.
This may sound scary, but it does not necessarily signal the end of the relationship. This is a phase, maybe a long phase, but it is a phase that can end. We may have lost sight of our partner because of ‘life’ really. Maybe we expect too much of ourselves, our partner and life in general. Instead of looking for someone else to ‘fix’ us we need to ‘fix’ ourselves. Often we only appreciate something when it is taken away. For example, we really only appreciate a good night’s sleep when we haven’t slept properly for a night or two. Deny yourself your special treat for a few days and when you return to your ‘treat’ it will taste fantastic. Maybe we can be guilty of sometimes taking too much for granted and we end up not appreciating what we have. Sometimes in my counselling sessions when faced with these issues we may spend a session just talking through ‘appreciation’. This can consist of the ordinary things of life we never think of twice like taking a shower, hot tea or coffees, being able to walk, talk, see and hear. I sometimes help out a friend of mine in his work. He is blind and has a hearing problem. He was giving a talk one day and somebody from the audience asked him what he would most want. He answered “to see my children”. Maybe it is best to wake up from the zombie phase and see just how good things are and can be with your partner.