Micro-rejection

and what's ruining our marriages

Did you know - having sex less than 10 times a year with your spouse classifies your marriage as sexless?

Well, at least that’s what this TED Talk with 34 million views claims.

I don’t think these things happen overnight. It’s usually a result of a series of harmless “no, not tonight”. It’s what I’d like to call chronic micro-rejection.

We reject our partners in so many ways EVERY single day. Whether it’s an invitation for a physical, emotional or an intellectual connection, we reject them without even realising it.

Do you want to go to bed? You go ahead, I am not sleepy yet.

Do you want to have dinner? Not hungry yet, you go ahead.

Coffee? Oh I’ve had too many already, but you go ahead.

Over time, we create this enormous distance between one and another in our marriages. Then, when we try to communicate, we can no longer hear each other.

Every relationship starts off being deeply connected - where we are both curious, interested in new experiences and learning about each other. Over time, we start drifting. We re-distribute the energy we spend on our partners on other pursuits.

Career, hobbies, health, children and so on.

When we are single, our brains have a single minded pursuit - partnership. But once we’ve “nailed it”, our brain shelves that aspect of our life as “having dealt with” and moves on. It’s simple conservation of energy.

Except, its really not that simple. While getting into a partnership, we are at our best behaviours in order to secure a mate. It’s evolution. We see it in animals too.

As humans, we have created an institution called “marriage” to sustain this connectedness in order to give our babies the best chance for survival. But it’s (hu)man-made, so nature does little to preserve our marriages. So, our societies are responsible for upholding this institution.

As our societies become more individualistic, it’s upto each of us.

Sometimes people say, if we’re meant to be together, we will be. But the reality is, we are not naturally wired to stay in partnerships. When we go against nature, it takes enormous effort to do so, let alone sustain it.

As our energy for the relationship begins to fade, we become less receptive to each other. We struggle to appreciate each others’ efforts in a marriage, we’re easily hurt and when we’re hurt, we reject each others’ invitation for connection.

Sustained back and forth micro-rejection creates a vicious circle that threatens our sense of security. So, we start to raise the fort around us and assert our boundaries harder. We start prioritising our independence over building the relationship stronger.

Relationships aren’t zero sum games - it’s not you versus me.

We cannot build a strong relationship without strong individual boundaries. Yet, when we start building these boundaries while in the relationship, as a result of fear, it is at the cost of our relationship.

Chronic micro-rejection is far more dangerous than explosive fights because you don’t notice it building up until its damage is impossible to contain.

It erodes trust within a relationship. We stop being vulnerable with one another because we no longer believe that our partners will listen to us or reciprocate to our needs. The real danger is when our interactions go on auto-pilot, and it becomes almost impossible to reset the pattern.

It takes enormous effort to actively listen, and recalibrate our behaviours. We become rails of the same train track, carrying the burden of our relationship, yet unable to ever meet each other.

If I could end on one thought before I go, it’s this…

Relationships stray over time. When we acknowledge that, we can begin to repair them. We may each have our individual versions of how we got there, it doesn’t matter. Our stories don’t need to align.

We only need to hear each other out.

I am leaving you with an interesting exercise I found on rejection, which I hope will inspire you to reset.