Relationship Boredom Can Be Deadly

It is very disquieting when "perfect" marriages end. The ones that are agreeable, orderly, peaceful, the ones that display no rancor, no rages, no infidelity, no egregious acts of galloping selfishness — when such marriages end, everyone is dismayed. How is it possible? They had no troubles at all, we say in disbelief.

Maybe that's the key: "No troubles at all" may mean — no challenge, no emotion, no surprises, no change; in other words — boring. Some marriages do die of boredom.

Boring marriages are much more likely to suffer from sins of omission than from sins of commission. What isn't done gets such marriages into more trouble than what is done.

Boring marriages are minimal marriages, not marriages of excess — minimal because they exclude all the excitement of relationship — conflict, differences, spontaneity, feelings, irrationality, passion.

For example, one cause of boredom in marriage is the effort to exclude feelings that might cause trouble.

The process goes something like this: I am angry at my partner. Yet, if I let that emotion show, my spouse may withdraw or otherwise punish me. I don't want that to happen; so, to protect myself, I will more than keep my indignation quiet, I won't even experience it myself.

However, since feelings are spontaneous and go in unpredictable directions, any feeling for my partner that I allow myself may stimulate my anger. Consequently, I decide not to feel anything, and I allow myself only the most superficial, meaningless contact with my partner, lest I feel.

So, in the interests of maintaining a controlled, untroubled marriage, I choke off all feelings and withdraw from caring. All passion dies; and the marriage, for me, becomes boring and nearly meaningless. Why? Because I don't live in it anymore.

Another source of boredom results from converting your partner — someone who used to excite and interest you — into little more than a function in the background of your life. In this manner, for example, the woman you once pursued with such ardor now becomes "the mother of my children."

Marital boredom is also likely to follow when you withdraw your commitment of time and energy from the marriage and disproportionately invest those valuable resources elsewhere, e.g., in your work, your relationship with your sisters or with your buddies.

In the beginning, the relationship with your spouse was interesting without effort — sort of a gift from the universe. Now, if it's to continue interesting, you have to make it so — given the inevitably negative effect that familiarity and routine have on initial excitement. If you're over invested elsewhere and under invested in the marriage, you won't make the relationship interesting; and it will be boring.

You also experience the marriage as boring when you are bored with yourself and feel you have nothing to give. For example, your interest in the marriage suffers when you are bored with your work and have nothing else to stimulate you.

Also, your interest in — and your contribution to — the marriage suffer when you cease to energize yourself with new interests or challenge yourself to grow personally — as when, for example, your leisure time is spent passively, medicating yourself in front of the TV.

Finally, you are forced to suffer a boring marriage when you don't know how to make it interesting. As a nation, we have become so dependent on the "entertainment industry" for stimulation that we have lost the ability to stimulate ourselves and, thus, to draw forth what is interesting in our partners.

Relationships that are one-dimensional (we are parents together, we have sex together or we manage the house together — but little else) are bound to be boring. Relationships that are dominated by routine and utterly predictable are boring. Relationships in which conversation never soars higher than What's for dinner? are boring, too.

In short, if you don't put much in, you don't get much out.

Listen, are you willing to admit to yourself that you have been so perverse as to once marry someone who genuinely interested and excited you and then conspire with that person to create a relationship in which you ended up bored stiff?