It would be awesome if every relationship worked out and every couple that was once in love stayed that way forever. Unfortunately, that’s just not the way that it goes, and heartbreak is inevitable for some couples. If we’ve watched any romantic comedy (and of course we’ve all watched a lot), then we know that there are so many potential obstacles that can threaten to ruin any love story. From exes that get in the way, to family drama, to commitment issues, it’s almost amazing to think that anyone would ever be able to stay together.
As we grow up and get older, we realize that love stories are not always as simple as the end of the movies would want us to believe. Sure, we hope that we find our person and that nothing will go wrong, but it’s a lot more realistic to expect to have a lot of breakups before getting to that point. There are a lot of things that we have to remember about being in love as a grown-up. These things are not really that fun but they’re helpful and logical (which basically describes adulthood in general). Read on to find out 16 realities of adult relationships.
16Your Job Might Get In The Way
If we’re a workaholic and our boyfriend hates his job and complains all the time, that’s going to really wear on our relationship after a while. The same thing is true if it’s the other way around.
Maybe we want to work evenings and weekends so we can get ahead and get a promotion, or we’re determined to get our dream job and know that working super hard is the only way to get there. That would mean, of course, spending a bit less time with our partner, and he might not love that. If he’s not supportive at all and tries to get us to choose him or our career, we might have to say goodbye to him. It doesn’t get more grown-up than that.
15You Might Not Be Able To Travel Together
In a perfect world, we would have as much money as our boyfriend and we would both be able to do whatever we wanted. Expensive dinners out on a regular basis? Sure. Tickets to fancy events? No problem. What about twice-yearly vacations? Not a big deal at all and totally doable.
We might get some time off work and plan a trip, but our boyfriend might not be able to come with us. Maybe his finances aren’t in the best shape right now or maybe he doesn’t have any vacation time or things are too crazy busy for him to get away right now. It’s an unfortunate reality of adult relationships that we might not have the same travel budget as our partner, and it definitely sucks.
14You Might Dislike Each Other’s Families
We’ve all seen movies where the main character brings their girlfriend or boyfriend home for the holidays… and everything is perfect. Nothing goes wrong, everyone gets along, and there’s just no drama whatsoever. It’s all good food, fancy cocktails, soft music, and everyone is full of the Christmas spirit.
Just kidding. That never happens. Instead, the moms are too overbearing and the dads are kind of mean or checked out and the siblings are all super weird. We don’t always like our partner’s family and we don’t always want to spend time with them. And even if our families are awesome, our boyfriend might not like them all that much. The dream of big family dinners and fun holidays isn’t always possible, and that’s definitely a reality of adult relationships that we have to face.
13You Could Feel More Like Roommates After A While
It’s not easy to keep the passion alive in a relationship after a certain amount of time. It’s not totally impossible, it’s just not that simple. Although a lot of couples do manage that, a lot more find that they feel more platonic than romantic.
If a couple is living together, they can fall into a pattern of feeling more like roommates than actual boyfriend and girlfriend. We might have experienced this ourselves once or a few times. We started living separate lives than our partner and suddenly we saw them for a few minutes in the morning while we were grabbing breakfast and getting ready for work. And maybe we went out with our friends or went to work events at night and he did the same. It’s super sad when this happens and can make us wonder what happened to the romance that we once had.
12You Could Have Money Problems
There are a few things that stress couples out more than anything else, and money is for sure at the top of that list. If one of us loses our job and doesn’t have an income for a few months or even longer, that can really ruin what we have with our boyfriend or girlfriend.
We also might have some unexpected costs that really put a damper on our finances, and maybe we can’t go out as much or have as much fun as we once could. While we would hope that we’ve found someone who is right for us and who will help us get through anything, including money troubles, we never really know until we go through something like that. It’s anyone’s guess how we’ll fare as a couple.
11Your Opposite Lifestyles Could Change Things
Maybe we’re party animals and our boyfriend prefers to stay home and cook or read a good book. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Sure, people say that opposites attract, but honestly, do they really?
When it comes to realities of adult relationships, this is a pretty big one: we might have opposite schedules with our partner and that might ruin things. Having opposite schedules not only mean that we would rarely see each other, but it also means that we just don’t get along that well and like different things and have different hobbies and, basically, lives. The couples that really work well and stay together are the ones who enjoy doing the same things and spending quality time with each other. They would rather hang out with each other than anyone else.
10You Might Stop Seeing Your Friends
As we get older, it gets a lot harder to coordinate schedules and see our friends all the time. Sure, we hope that we can have the same friendship that we once did, but it was just so much easier in high school and college. We had more free time and we might not have been in the serious relationships that we’re in now.
When we’re in a relationship, we generally want to spend a lot of time with our boyfriend, and while that’s awesome, it definitely means that we say goodbye to Saturday nights out with our friends (most of the time, anyway). We might realize that two months have gone by and we haven’t had a real catch-up with our best friend. Even if we’re in the happiest, healthiest relationship, we still might go a long time without seeing our friends, and that’s just a reality.
9You Might Have To Choose Your Job Or Him
What if our boss asks us for a meeting and tells us that we just got an amazing promotion… but it’s in another city or country? What if we go after our dream job and it isn’t in the place where we live?
If this happens, we would hope that our boyfriend would go with us. But maybe he’s not willing to just pack up his entire life and go, and maybe he realizes that he’s not in love with us enough to justify that big move. It sucks but it’s a reality of adult relationships that we might have to choose between taking a really incredible job opportunity and staying in our relationship. It’s not a position that anyone wants to be in, that’s for sure.
8You Might Lose Who You Are
If any of us have lost who we were after dating someone, let’s raise our hands. We definitely all have our hands raised. This is more common than not and it’s something that we tend to do when we’re younger, but we can definitely do this in our 20’s and maybe even into our early 30’s.
Maybe our boyfriend changed somewhere along the way and so we figured that we had to change, too, and we started copying his personality and lifestyle. Maybe we just stopped doing the things that we love in order to spend more time with him, and then we blinked and realized that we didn’t even recognize ourselves anymore. This is not something that any of us should be doing, yet it’s all too easy.
7You Might Be Better Off As Friends
There are some couples who honestly and truly would be better off as friends. They just don’t have that “thing” that makes the greatest couples so, well, great together.
This is a really annoying reality of an adult relationship that we might have to deal with. It’s something that we wouldn’t want to admit to ourselves at first, especially if we had been dating our boyfriend for a few years. It sucks to admit that we wasted all that time with someone who wasn’t right for us, even though of course, nothing is really a waste of time and we should look at the relationship as a learning experience. Even though we care about this person, they’re not the right boyfriend for us, and chances are, everyone that we know has already figured this out.
6You Might Disagree On Important Issues
A lot of couples feel the same way about topics like religion or politics, but of course, there are a lot of couples that don’t. This might be okay in the beginning if we have other things in common and if we like other things about each other, but these subjects will for sure come up after a while. And they’re most likely going to lead to quite a few serious, heated discussions and maybe even more than a few arguments.
There are some important issues that we’re not willing to change our minds about and feel super strongly about. If our boyfriend doesn’t feel the same, that’s going to color how we feel about him, and it just might break us up. This is one of those “love just isn’t enough sometimes” situations.
5You Might Not Actually Have Chemistry
Having chemistry is probably the most important thing when we’re getting into a relationship. If we don’t feel that passion for our boyfriend, it’s honestly not going to magically appear. We have to be crazy about him from the very beginning or else it’s just a big disaster.
A lot of people start dating someone without those fireworks because they figure that it’s immature to hope for that or they don’t think that it exists. But we deserve to feel super passionate about the person that we’re dating and we should never, ever settle for anything less. A reality of an adult relationship is realizing that we don’t have chemistry with someone and walking away so we can find someone that we’re nuts about (and so they can too).
4One Of You Might Not Want To Get Married
If we really want to get married and our boyfriend doesn’t believe it in it for whatever reason, we might love him enough to say, “Okay, whatever, let’s just keep things the way that they are.”
It’s possible, though, that getting married is something that really matters to us. And the fact that he won’t marry us or even talk about it might be enough to make us go our separate ways. Yes, that absolutely sucks, and it’s a super painful thing to experience. It’s just another reality of an adult relationship that some of us just have to deal with. Is it worth it to stick around even if he won’t get married, or do we feel that we have to walk away and find someone who will? It’s not an easy choice.
3One Of You Might Not Want To Have Kids
Just like the marriage thing, whether or not our boyfriend wants to start a family of his own is another big issue that could totally derail our entire relationship.
No one really likes talking about these kinds of things but it doesn’t really get more serious than this. If we want to be a mom and our boyfriend doesn’t want to be a dad at all, there’s really nothing that we can do about that. We can’t change his mind, and although there’s a super slim chance that he might decide later on that he wants kids after all, we shouldn’t hope for that or we’ll just set ourselves up for disappointment. Do we leave him or do we love him enough to stay and not have kids? It’s a pretty bad situation to be in.
2You Might Fall Out Of Love
We never want to believe that we could someday fall out of love with our partner. That sounds like a nightmare and the worst thing ever.
And yet it happens to a lot of couples. Maybe they go through something super difficult that is too much for them to handle, and it makes the relationship feel different than it did before. Maybe one of them changes and the other one doesn’t, or it just doesn’t seem like a good fit anymore. No matter what the reason, it’s always hard and sad and pretty awful to end a long-term relationship. And that’s just another reality of an adult relationship that we have to deal with: sometimes love isn’t enough, and sometimes good people have to go their separate ways.
1 Just Because You’re In Love Doesn’t Mean He’s The One
Oh man. This is a huge thing to realize about adult relationships… and probably the most difficult thing to come to terms with.
When we’re younger, we think that a guy who loves us and who we love is definitely going to be “The One.” You know, that mystical, magical idea of that one person who gets us more than anyone else and who is always so fun to be around. When we first meet a great new guy, it’s impossible to think that in six months or even after a few years, we’re going to realize that despite our feelings for him, we have to let him go and be on our own. There are so many things that go into an adult relationship, and unfortunately, love isn’t always enough to keep a couple together.
