Languishing Syndrome in Long-Term Relationships.
In December 2021, Adam Grant wrote what became a viral article in The New York Times, giving language to a collective experience people were having: the feeling of “languishing.” The stagnation, aimlessness, and lack of joy that make you feel as though you’re simply muddling through life—the feeling of “blah,” or “meh,” as the kids say. (Wait, are the kids still saying that? I’m forty-three. I have no idea what the kids are saying.)
When Grant wrote that article, he was speaking to the interminable stagnation of COVID; the feeling that we were stuck in a state we might never emerge from. The world as we knew it had fundamentally changed, and we didn’t know if we’d ever get back to the way things used to be. Harder still was the realization that there was no going back, without any clear direction forward. It was a dark time, and the article struck a collective nerve because it gave people language for what they were experiencing.
So what does this have to do with marriage and long-term relationships?
Languishing in a marriage or long-term partnership is also an experience many people feel ten, fifteen, or twenty years in. It can be the precursor to the midlife crisis, the eruption, and the eventual destruction. Languishing may help explain the rise in grey divorce, which seems increasingly common each year.
That feeling of “meh.” The aimlessness. The listlessness.
Do you feel that in your relationship?
If you were brutally honest with yourself, how would you answer:
“Am I still in love with my partner?”
“Do I want to have sex with my partner?”
“Do I relish the time my partner is away?”
“Do I wish I could escape this obligation?”
“Do I still have any lust, desire, or drive for my partner?”
If you wrote those answers in a journal that would immediately be lit on fire, never to be read again, how would you answer?
There are many people in lovely, loving relationships who would respond negatively to those questions. There are a lot of relationships languishing. Despite affection, care, shared assets, children, and white picket fences, these relationships are languishing.
When Grant wrote his article in December 2021, he was speaking to a reaction to a specific event: COVID.
In couples and long-term relationships, there is often no such clarity. The languishing seems to emerge from nowhere, seeded by the winds of time and nourished by the passing years. The languishing of COVID was horrific, but knowing what caused it allowed us to better understand it and respond to it. Without a clear causal event, the languishing of a relationship can feel uncontrollable and impossible to identify—an essence rather than an event. Solving for an essence is much harder.
In clinical practice, we often create interventions by identifying triggering events. The pain started two hours after the fall from the slide. The nightmares began on the anniversary of your father’s death. The anxiety started one month before university entrance exams. These experiences have identifiable points of origin that can be contained, understood, and addressed.
Languishing in a long-term relationship is rarely that simple. Reverse-engineering the symptoms to arrive at a diagnosis and treatment plan is often faulty logic. Seeking a single point of origin is futile. If there are two people in a relationship and fifteen years of shared history, there are simply too many variables to identify one cause.
Languishing Syndrome
Languishing is not an event, it is a syndrome. Like chronic fatigue syndrome or metabolic syndrome, it is a collection of recognizable signs and symptoms that tend to occur together without necessarily sharing a single known cause.
What often happens is that we don’t identify Languishing Syndrome until after the eruption, affair, midlife crisis, resignation, or move to Costa Rica.
When those events occur, we tend to blame the person who initiated them. We identify that individual as the cause of the problem. And while I wholeheartedly believe people should be truthful, forthright, and honest—that partners deserve respect, and that people should not blow up shared lives through deception or cowardice—I also think that diagnosis is frequently incomplete.
Languishing Syndrome is causing the catastrophe. The catastrophe is not the origin of the disorder; it is a symptom of it.
Medical syndromes are treated with a constellation of interventions. Metabolic syndrome, for example, may require changes to exercise, nutrition, alcohol consumption, sleep, stress management, and sometimes medication. A similar multi-pronged approach should be taken when addressing Languishing Syndrome in a long-term relationship.
Communication. Physical intimacy. Work priorities. Sleep habits. Alcohol and drug use. Friendships. Childcare. Finances. All of these areas are fair game for adjustment.
Languishing Syndrome in a relationship may be difficult to reverse-engineer, but it is not difficult to diagnose. Do you feel stagnant or listless in your relationship? Okay. Then it’s time for intervention. Just go for it.
Most relationship-enhancing interventions are far more likely to help than harm. Don’t worry about assigning blame. Don’t spend months determining who withdrew first, who disappointed whom, or who started the cycle.
Start prioritizing one another; start taking action. Blame won’t resolve the syndrome, but action might.
Start having sex. Start flirting. Start talking. Start dating. Start prioritizing your partner’s pleasure. Start communicating your needs and boundaries. Start respecting one another and the relationship you’ve built together. Start making time for each other. Start finding humor, joy, and fun again.
Create space for novelty and reinvigoration. Don’t assume you know everything about the person beside you. Become curious again. Engaged again. Open again.
Don’t let Languishing Syndrome destroy what you’ve created.
