A number of factors can contribute to a one-sided relationship. Past experiences, mental health issues, insecurity, and poor communication skills can all play a role.
A one-sided relationship, is a relationship in which one person invests more time, effort, emotions and even finances into a relationship. One-sided relationships are unbalanced and typically characterized by one person doing all the work to make things work.
Stonewalling, one of the Four Horsemen, is Dr. John Gottman's term for one or both partners shutting down when feeling overwhelmed during conflict. Rather than confronting the issue, someone who is stonewalling will be unresponsive, making evasive maneuvers such as tuning out, turning away, or acting busy.
One of the key signs that it's time to break up is if you're finding that you can't connect to your own emotions or feel strongly about your partner's actions. Emotional detachment can happen due to abuse but it can also happen when you're being ignored day in and day out.
Do you both care more about the relationship than about being right? Or do you struggle with communication, hold onto resentment, and feel like every fight could be the end of the relationship? If your closeness doesn't bounce back after arguments, you might be forcing the connection.
'Bulldozers are people whose aggressive behaviour often intimidates you, the person you wish you could stand up to but feel you haven't got the confidence or the know-how to deal with. People who behave in this punchy, aggressive way are out to get their own way regardless of what other people think, do or say.
According to the study, a back-burner is “a person to whom one is not presently committed, and with whom one maintains some degree of communication in order to keep or establish the possibility of future romantic and/or sexual involvement”.
The Four Horsemen: Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness, and Stonewalling. Being able to identify the Four Horsemen in your conflict discussions is a necessary first step to eliminating them and replacing them with healthy, productive communication patterns.
Say what you want directly.
Let him know exactly how you're feeling as soon as you feel it so you can address it right away. For example, you might say, “I feel like I haven't gotten as much attention as I need,” or “I feel that I've put more effort into our relationship lately.”
Relationship Destroyer #1: Keeping Your Attention on What's Wrong. Many people habitually keep their attention on everything negative that their partner does. By focusing on what's wrong, we create thinking habits that generate a sense of unrest and dissatisfaction within ourselves and the relationship.
It is love or emotional feelings that are not reciprocated by one person in the relationship. It is a one-sided experience that can leave us feeling pain, grief, and shame. You may think it would be easy to tell if love is unrequited, but it isn't always clear and can cause a lot of confusion and emotional turmoil.
Here's another term to know: breadcrumbing. Someone who breadcrumbs leads you on by dropping small morsels of interest — an occasional message, phone call, date plan, or social media interaction. These happen sporadically and usually don't have any followthrough.
Also known as "zombie-ing," submarining is a form of ghosting where a person drops off the grid, only to then get back in touch months later—perhaps just as you were finally getting over being ghosted in the first place.
Negging is a form of emotional manipulation whereby someone insults you with a backhanded compliment to undermine your self-esteem and make you vulnerable to them, in which you crave for their approval.
However, there might be at least one relationship that is particularly hard to get over, simply because you cannot take anything from it; in other words, the "unfinished relationship." An unfinished relationship is one that ends due to circumstances beyond your control.
It happens when you feel indifferent towards your beloved, and emotions such as excitement, motivation, passion, or concern for your partner are suppressed. It is quite common or normal for people to be feeling apathetic in a relationship.
Doubt often comes, for example, when a new level of a relationship presents itself, such as talk of moving in or of marriage. So some doubts are really just a stress response. They can be our brain's way of working through and preparing for the new challenges ahead.
Signs of a struggling relationship
You (or your partner) would rather do anything else but spend time with each other. You make each other feel unworthy or not good enough. You sacrifice being true to yourself for the sake of your partner and to avoid conflict. You don't like who you are when you're with your partner.