How to Deal With Apathy in a Relationship: 5 Steps to Follow

Most marriages and romantic relationships go through different phases of peace, happiness, conflicts, and other lows and highs. A lesser-known phase in romantic relationships and marriages is that of apathy.

Apathy in a relationship is quite common. This phase may be experienced once or a few times throughout the course of a romantic relationship or marriage.

It usually happens when both the people in the relationship feel settled into a regular and comfortable routine. Learn how to deal with apathy.

Are you wondering whether you’re going through this phase of apathy in your romantic relationship? How to deal with apathy? Learn about everything related to understanding apathy by reading on!

Also Try: Am I Happy In My Relationship Quiz

Apathy: Meaning and cause

To learn how to deal with apathy, it’s crucial to have a clear understanding of what apathy even means. Apathy is what one feels when they’ve lost interest in things or activities that they once enjoyed.

It is a state where you feel no motivation. When you’re going through a phase characterized by a strong lack of interest, concern, emotion, or feeling, it is apathy.

When it comes to marriages or romantic relationships, phases of apathy are characterized by the absence of interest in the significant other. If your relationship is going through a phase of apathy, you may feel a lack of concern for your partner.

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. People do go through phases of feeling apathetic on their own and in their romantic relationship or marriage.

Understanding what causes apathy is a pivotal part of learning how to deal with apathy.

Here are some common causes of apathy:

• Experiencing major life events

If you or your significant other are experiencing a major life event, especially some sort of a crisis such as dealing with sudden unemployment, an unexpected financial crisis, loss of someone close to you, and so on, it may cause apathy.

If you’re experiencing something major and negative, it can lead you to feel useless, worthless, incompetent, and pessimistic about your abilities and life outcomes.

Related Reading: 5 Things That Are Keeping You From Opening up to Your Partner

• Feeling overwhelmed or worn down in life

If you’re experiencing an event or situation which is taxing for you, either mentally or physically, or both, you may feel overwhelmed. You may start feeling defeated or worn down.

Don’t confuse this with feelings of boredom. That’s different. When you’re experiencing events that are making you feel overwhelmed, you may then feel a strong sense of detachment, even from your relationship.

• Going through issues related to mental health

Mental health issues are a major cause of apathy. Apathy can be one of the symptoms of a psychiatric, psychological, or neurological disorder such as Alzheimer’s, depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, stroke, Parkinson’s, or frontotemporal dementia.

This is why it’s crucial to identify apathy and seek professional help for dealing with apathy, especially if it is impacting the different aspects of your life such as your work life, productivity, and relationships.

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• Negative thoughts and negative feelings about yourself

Progressing from feeling pessimistic about life outcomes, incompetent, worthless, and unhappy to a place of detachment and apathy may be another cause.

• Feeling stuck or stagnant in your life

If different aspects of your life feel very mundane to you, feeling apathetic in a relationship and your life is a common consequence.

This means that if your romantic relationship has fallen into a very predictable or mundane routine or your work-life seems very boring and routine. You may feel detached from the same.

Related Reading: 6 Signs Show You Are in a Dying Relationship and Is Time to Let Go

Understanding what it means to feel apathetic

To figure out how to deal with apathy, let’s take a deeper dive into what it means to be feeling apathetic and detached from everything and everyone, including your significant other. 

As already mentioned, apathy is a strong feeling of detachment. When you lack motivation or interest in your interpersonal relationships and/or other activities that interested you previously, your ambitions or goals in life, it may be apathy.

Apathy is not just an emotion or feeling. It is also an attitude. It is an attitude characterized by unconcern, indifference, listlessness, dispassion, and detachment. It’s sort of like living passively. By definition, empathy and apathy are opposite feelings and attitudes.

Learning how to deal with apathy also involves understanding the symptoms related to apathy. These symptoms have been listed as follows:

• Experiencing an unexplained dip in energy to perform tasks related to everyday life.
• You’re in a mindset where you always expect the other people in your life, such as your close friends, family members, or other loved ones (including your partner) to initiate activities or plan activities.
• You don’t experience any emotions if something significant, be it bad or good, happens to you.
• You lack the motivation required to deal with your problems.
• You’re possibly feeling this lack of desire to make new friends, learn new skills, pursue your goals, or have new experiences.

Understanding whether apathy within your romantic relationship is the problem

There is a high possibility that the reason you may be reading this is that you may have a hunch that something is wrong between you and your significant other.

You may be wondering whether you’re feeling apathetic in a relationship, especially your marriage or your romantic relationship.

If apathy is the source of your relationship problems, then it may be due to feelings of boredom or feeling like you’re both stuck in a mundane routine in your relationship.

Talking to your partner is key to figuring out whether apathy is the real problem. Try to introduce some excitement or fun activities in the relationship, such as planning a road trip or romantic getaway, going out for fun-filled date nights, planning game nights, and so on.

However, apathy might not be the issue in your romantic relationship. Here is a list of some issues that may give you the impression that it’s an apathetic relationship phase but in reality, it may be:

• You and your partner have very different interests or hobbies.
• Your partner and your communication styles and preferences may be different.
• Your significant other may be dealing with mental health issues that they’re unaware of.
• Your preferred love language may differ from your spouse’s love language.

5 ways to deal with apathy and overcome it

If you and your partner feel that apathy is the primary cause of the relationship problems you both may be facing, then consider implementing these 5 ways on how to deal with apathy.

1. Face and communicate

The first step for learning how to deal with apathy is facing this situation head-on. There won’t be any productive outcome from running away or ignoring or denying this situation.

You and your beloved have to acknowledge the reality of this situation or phase in your marriage or romantic relationship.

Have an open and direct conversation with your partner where you both identify apathy and speak about how it is impacting your romantic relationship and hurting you both.

Try to do this in a way that does not feel threatening to your partner.

Related Reading: How to Communicate Your Needs in a Relationship?

2. Allow your partner to have the space 

If you initiated this conversation about dealing with apathy in the relationship, and your partner did not seem quite aware of this realization of yours, it is crucial to allow your partner to have that space to process this important conversation.

Let your partner process everything you said to her/him/them. Make sure you’re not pestering your beloved for attention or opinions at this point in time.

3. Identify the underlying issue

Another key part of knowing how to deal with apathy is to figure out what may be causing the apathy in the relationship. Do this together, with your beloved.

Figure out whether you’re both feeling bored in the relationship or whether it’s the mundane routine that you’ve both grown complacent with that’s causing you both to feel apathetic.

It’s important to counter the passivity and indifference with meaningful actions in the relationship.

Related Reading: How to Identify and Deal With a Man With Commitment Issues

4. Consider your beloved’s point of view 

Maybe what you’re considering to be apathy or the reasons you’re attributing to feeling apathetic in your romantic relationship may vary significantly from your beloved’s point of view. 

So, make sure to listen to each other’s perspectives and then come up with an explanation and plan of action that is an amalgamation of both your perspectives. This is essential to effectively implement how to overcome apathy.

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5. Enjoy your significant other’s company

A big part of navigating your way through how to deal with apathy in your romantic relationship is by reminding yourself and your beloved of what you both enjoyed doing together in the relationship.

Think about the activities you both previously enjoyed doing together and take the necessary action to do those things together. This may reignite the excitement and passion in the relationship.

You can also check out this video to understand how you can deal with emotional neglect in the relationship:

Conclusion

Apathy in relationships is something that should be dealt with quite early on to avoid it from affecting other important aspects or dimensions of your life. Remember to listen, communicate and take action!