Is This Just How Relationships Are? (Ep #9 Relationship Series)

Have you ever found yourself thinking, “This is just how relationships are” - and secretly wondering if there could be more?

In this episode of the Relationship Series, we explore the belief that often settles into long-term relationships and life without us even noticing: it is what it is. Not from a place of blame or fixing, but from curiosity, honesty, and self-connection.

We talk about how disconnection often begins internally before it shows up in our relationships, why many of us stop expressing our needs, and how choosing comfort over truth can slowly dim intimacy and aliveness. This episode is an invitation to question old stories, reconnect with yourself, and open space for something different - without needing immediate answers or outcomes.

This conversation includes reflection questions and a Magic of What If card pull to support awareness, curiosity, and gentle self-inquiry.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• “This is just how it is” is often a protective belief - not a truth
• Disconnection frequently starts within before it shows up relationally
• Reigniting connection begins with reconnecting to yourself
• Curiosity creates possibility; avoidance keeps patterns in place
• Willingness on both sides matters - and lack of it is important information
• Awareness alone can begin to shift long-standing dynamics
• You are allowed to question the stories that keep you small or stuck

✨REFLECTION QUESTIONS✨

• Where in my relationship or life have I quietly accepted, “this is just how it is”?
• Where might I be abandoning myself to keep things predictable or comfortable?
• What would curiosity look like here - without needing an immediate outcome?

Chapters

• 1:57 Questioning This Is Just How It Is
• 3:28 Modeling And Beliefs About Long-Term Love
• 5:13 From Fine To Roommates
• 6:58 Disconnection Starts Inside
• 9:28 Self-Focus, Projection, And Pushback
• 12:28 Willingness As Information
• 14:18 Speaking Needs And Difficult Stories
• 16:58 Curiosity And Support Go Both Ways
• 19:18 Presence Over Performative Fixes
• 21:08 Awareness Practice And Reflection Questions

Transcript

Shannon: 0:59

Welcome. You're listening to the Pure Possibilities Podcast. I'm your host, Shannon. And today's episode, you know, it's more about relationships. We're not fixing anything, and I'm not here to tell you what to do in your relationships. What I would like to do is invite you to question something that, you know, a lot of times we get into long-term relationships and we get to this space without even realizing. And that belief of this is just how it is. This is just how relationships are. This is just what happens over time. This is just what being busy, being an adult, being in a long-term partnership, it's just what it's all about. And it's just how it is. And honestly, that belief makes sense for many of us. It's a way that we protect ourselves. We accept that this is just how it is. And it keeps us hoping for more. It helps us to avoid the risk of disappointment. It keeps us from being vulnerable in our relationships. And so if that resonates with you, you are not alone, my friend, and there's nothing wrong with you. But today, let's get curious about that belief. And not just in relationships, but in life. They can reignite the spark in their long-term relationship. And they said, I didn't even know that was possible. And that really stayed with me because they weren't trying to be negative and they weren't in a state of resistance, I don't believe. It was more about being honest. And if that hasn't been modeled for us, then we don't necessarily realize that it's possible. And I mean, honestly, I have to say that there's, I know a lot of people in long-term relationships. And I don't know that I see as an outsider people that are really happy and that seem really connected with each other. I would say that that was modeled to me growing up. I mean, my parents were functional, but I wouldn't say that I saw them having a lot of fun together. I wouldn't say that I saw really great communication. And so that was the environment that I was raised in. And I'm not, I'm not shaming my parents or anything. They were moving through life in a space that they were in during that time. And so if you've never seen it modeled and you've never been able to experience reconnection with your partner, it of course feels unrealistic. And again, a lot of times people are living inside relationships and inside life where they get to that space of it's just fine. Things aren't bad enough to leave, not good enough to feel super alive. Just fine, you know, and then people will often move into over time, like the roommate phase. And sometimes that's literally sleeping in separate bedrooms. Sometimes it's just like two ships passing in the night. And life gets busy, and we have responsibilities and work and kids and household chores and things like that that we talked about last week. And suddenly you're living like this parallel life instead of a shared one. And it doesn't mean that anybody's failed anything. It just means that the aliveness and the spark has dimmed. And something that I'd really like to bring up is that that disconnection often starts internally before it shows up relationally. But instead of asking, what's wrong with my partner? What if you asked, when did I stop listening to myself? When did I stop expressing my needs? When did I, when did I start choosing comfort over truth? Where do I shrink, numb, or overfunction to keep things smooth, to keep it comfortable, to keep the peace? And this isn't about blaming anyone, not yourself, not your partner. It's about reconnecting with yourself first, because when we lose touch with ourselves, intimacy, emotional or physical, will often fade also. I know for me personally, when I when I wasn't feeling good about myself, I certainly had no interest in being intimate with my partner. If I didn't feel sexy, I didn't want to have sex. If I felt yucky inside, like I wasn't interested. And then I would go down this path of I feel so disconnected from you. We hardly ever talk, yet you want to have sex. And that was not about them. That was not about them, that was about me. And so it's so much easier to go into that, we're just doing our own thing. I'm just doing my own thing, and they're doing their own thing, and it's fine. So I would like to invite you because what I have realized over the last several years is that it really starts with the relationship with yourself. And I'm not saying that willingness isn't important because the reconnection isn't just a solo project forever. The curiosity and willingness creates possibility. But if one partner is completely unwilling, dismissive, or shuts down, I mean, that's information for you. And I've also noticed that what can happen a lot, whether, you know, I've been a health coach and now I'm a life coach. And what I've noticed is that when one person does start to focus on themselves, which doesn't make it wrong, and this isn't just in intimate relationships. It can be, for example, if you're focusing on your health, other people, again, intimate or not, just people in your life might, you might feel judgment from them. And most of the time, that's a projection coming from them because maybe you're doing something, maybe they don't feel good about themselves, and they see you eating healthier and working out and doing all these things. And so it's easier to project their self dissatisfaction with how they feel, maybe what their weight is, or wherever they're at in their life, it's easier to maybe tease or make fun of, body shame all the things on you rather than saying, Hey, I actually have control over my own choices, and I could also choose to make these choices and decisions, yet I'm choosing not to. Or maybe you go down a path of, you know, you decide that you do want to reconnect with yourself and get to know yourself again. Like we change over the years, of course. And you're going through life on autopilot, and then all of a sudden you're like, what the hell happened? Like, where am I? And then you start to reconnect and you start to, I don't want to say level up within yourself, but you start to prioritize how you feel and what's important to you, and maybe start setting boundaries. And that's uncomfortable for people, especially when they're not used to that version of you. It can feel threatening. I had somebody tell me once that they were afraid to focus on their health because they were afraid that their spouse might leave them. And I've also seen where people do start to focus on their health, and then their partner's like, oh, I better, I better start working on me too. You know, and so sometimes people will step up and move along with you on your journey. And it's like you taking that step gives other people the permission to do the same. I'm getting sidetracked. So I would just invite you to, if your partner is unwilling or completely unopened, then you know, just look at that as information for now. And this doesn't mean that your relationship is necessarily broken. It just means that some relationships aren't met honestly. And sometimes others deepen because not because everything was perfect, but because both people are willing to stay curious and move forward together. And I would like to ask you a question, not from a place of judgment, but from a place of honesty. When was the last time that you sat down with your partner and truly expressed how you were feeling about your relationship or how disconnected you felt from them? How you felt like two ships passing in the night? You know, we are not mind readers, and sometimes we think our partner must know how we feel because how could they not? But do they really have you sat down with them and said, This is how I'm feeling. I'm feeling disconnected from you. I would love to spend more time with you. Could we schedule a date night? And sometimes they'll be open to it and sometimes they won't. I remember when my partner was frustrated with me because we weren't having sex very often. And I was reading something, I don't remember what it was, some book. And he used to refer to my self-help as self-help bullshit. And I said, What if we were to schedule nights to have sex? Because I was like trying to force that reconnection. Like I wasn't interested, but I was like, what if this helped? And he was like, No, we're not gonna schedule nights to have sex, you know, and so that relationship is no longer, obviously. But that relationship taught me so much about who I am and what I want. And anytime I would try to focus on myself because I I felt like shit. I really did. I was not feeling good in several ways in my life. I wasn't happy with my weight, I wasn't happy with there were some medical things going on with me that I wasn't feeling good about. And my partner was not supportive. They weren't. He ended up choosing to end our relationship, but I learned so much from the ending of that relationship, and it truly has brought me where I am. At the time, it was very difficult and it was very jarring for me. And I know now that it's like, you know, we have lessons that we need to learn in our life, and we don't get to decide how those lessons are delivered, but we were both unhappy and we didn't know how to communicate with each other to move through it. And so I'm not saying that ending a relationship is always the answer, but we were very clearly not meant to be together. And that took me down this amazingly beautiful path of getting to know myself, figuring out what was going on with the continued patterns in my relationships and learning how to love myself again and figuring out what I actually want in my life. And I don't know that that would have happened had we stayed together. And I have no idea what he's up to these days, but I hope that he's happy because I don't feel like people should stay together just for the sake of staying together if it's actually not meant to be. And communication is a huge part of relationships, and I didn't know how to do that, and I do now, and I'm very grateful for that. At the time, I felt like I just had to stick with it and stay, I didn't realize that were there were other choices that I could make, and I didn't know how to connect with myself, especially when I had a partner that I didn't feel was supportive, and I also didn't necessarily check in with them because we didn't know how to communicate. And so, anyway, everything has brought me to this place where I am now, and I am super grateful for that. And sometimes it takes a little bit of time to get there, but the massive amounts of growth that I've had over these years, I wouldn't give it up for anything. So, that being said, it also brings me to another question that you could ask. What if you check in with your partner and say, Hey, what's going on with you? Is there something I could support you with? I mean, maybe they're feeling disconnected from themselves. Maybe they're feeling disconnected from you. Maybe it has nothing to do with you. It's about getting curious. Maybe they're in their own rough space. And maybe there's something that you could do to be supportive for them. I mean, it really does go both ways. What can I do to check in with myself? What can I do to check in with my partner? Maybe they're not feeling good about themselves. Maybe work is stressing them out. Maybe kids are stressing them out. Maybe they just don't feel good. We have no idea what's going on with other people. And so, what if you just ask them, hey, what's going on with you? Do you want to talk about it? Is there something I can do to support you? That's always an option, too. And I get it. These are not always comfortable conversations to have. It's the uncomfortable conversations that we choose to not have because they're uncomfortable. And yet they can be the ones that make the biggest impact in our relationships. Okay. Again, I'm not telling you what to do in your relationship. I'm just inviting you to get curious and have conversations. So let's get back to reigniting the spark. So this isn't just about having date nights and doing more and being more intimate all the time. It's about presence and honesty, creating that safety in your relationship, about aliveness. I read a quote the other day. It said, you never know when you're gonna die. So why not? What was it? We never know when we're gonna die. So live every day to the fullest or something like that. I don't remember exactly how it went. Um, but it's true. Like we don't know how much time we have. And so let's create the life that we actually want to be living and not live in this is just how it is. It can be scary to change things up and get uncomfortable and try new things, but you really do have that power within you to create change in your life. So often the desire within your relationships to reconnect, to be intimate, that will usually happen after you reconnect to yourself, not before. And sometimes the most powerful shift isn't changing the relationship itself, it's changing how you relate to yourself inside of it. So I've got a couple of reflection questions here. I will also put them in the show description as I do. And take a moment. If you have time now, that's amazing. If you want to come back to it, you're certainly welcome to do that too. So if it feels safe, please soften your gaze or close your eyes. Take a slow deep breath in and release. This is about noticing. Where in my relationship or my life have I quietly accepted that this is just how it is? Number two, where might I be abandoning myself to keep things predictable or comfortable? And number three, what would curiosity look like here without needing an immediate outcome? Please allow whatever comes up to just be information right now. You know, I do talk a lot about awareness and when we're consciously aware of what's going on in our lives, it really does shift things. And eventually you might realize that you do actually need to take a step to shift something. But right now, we're just talking about awareness with this. Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and pull a card from the magic of what if card deck. During our live QA in the private community this week, they asked for deck number one. And so I'm going to continue with that today as well. So the card decks are available on my website, purepossibilitiespodcast.com, under shop. And the message for today What if my next chapter is more magical than the last? I heard somebody say the other day, what if you lived your life like a movie? It's like, that's so fun. What would happen if you experienced your life like a movie? Like, you don't necessarily know how it's gonna turn out, right? Sometimes we think we know how it's gonna end, but we really don't. But you're the leading role. You definitely get the leading role in your life. All right. So again, you don't have to decide anything today. You don't need to fix anything. Awareness itself is movement. And just because something has been one way doesn't mean it has to stay that way. And like I said, this isn't necessarily just for partnerships. This is also everyday life. We don't have to live in this is just how it is. You are allowed to question the stories that you've been living inside, especially the ones that tell you this is all there is. Thank you for being here. Thank you for your openness, your curiosity, and all of your love and support. I hope you have a beautiful, beautiful day and an amazing week. Much love.