Is It OK To Fall Out Of Love? And What To Do Next?
“Love is less of a fall and more of slowly wrapping your arms around someone and never letting them go.”
But if you hold them for too long, you will just start suffocating them. It starts to get painful. Trying to hold onto them forever will make your hands bleed if you are the only one trying to hold onto a relationship that had ended long back.
Love is beautiful till it is not. Falling in love may feel like a dream, but falling out of it is nothing but a nightmare.
Imagine waking up one morning, wrapped in the arms of your lover; only it doesn’t feel like home anymore. It feels like chains and ropes suffocating your neck while you just can’t breathe anymore.
Their voices don’t calm you anymore. They just make you mad. Talking with them doesn’t feel like a comfort. It is more of a pain, a guilt, mostly remorse.
Have you been feeling any of these recently with your partner? Have you been feeling suffocated with them around you? Well, I just have some sad news for you in that case.
You have started to fall out of love.
Before you freak out and make a mess inside your head, it is very normal. If you have once fallen in love, it is pretty normal for you to fall out of love as well.
Did I Fall Out Of Love?
It is a strange question to ask ourselves, isn’t it? People tell so many stories about the princess falling in love with the prince, but no one ever has the guts to talk about the truth of falling out of love.
The one person that we thought was everything to us. Our life. Our love.
In the blink of an eye, it is all gone.
They don’t feel at home anymore. They are more the people that we want to run to at the end of the day. Their hugs don’t calm us. Their kisses don’t feel warm.
It feels like we are seeing our house break down in front of our eyes, and we can’t seem to do anything about it. We just stand there and watch it break from brick to brick. The house that was once our most beautiful possession, and now it is all gone.
Every morning we wake up feeling empty. Not sad. Not depressed. Just empty. Feeling sad would still be fine, but this feeling is intolerable. Waking up every morning and not being able to feel anything is the worst of them all.
How Is It Like To Be On The Other Side Of The Table?
Unfair! It is just unfair to be the one on the other side of the table.
It is not always their fault that someone they love chooses to fall out of love with them.
And It hurts. I will not be using a tough word from my vocabulary to justify the feeling of being that person; all I will say is that it genuinely hurts.
It is always painful to be in love with someone who loved you with their life till they didn’t anymore. You start blaming yourself. Cursing yourself.
You keep doubting your worth.
“Did I do something?”
“Is there someone else?”
“Am I not enough?”
While the answers to all these questions may vary from one person to the other, falling out of love is something no one can control. You can not just blame yourself your whole life just because someone decided that they don’t love you anymore.
Sometimes, the problem lies within them, and you are just caught in the middle of the war. Trust me; you don’t need to bleed for someone who left you alone on the battlefield. It’s okay; you can give up too.
Signs That You’re Falling Out Of Love With Your Partner
Nobody should ever have to face this situation in their life. But, sometimes, it is inevitable. You can’t control what someone else feels about you.
Love will never be a Jane Austen novel; for many of us, it is just a Shakespearean drama. Tragic!
And we just stand here and accept how the only person that we ever loved doesn’t love us anymore. Watching them leave is the toughest thing in the world, but all we can do is bid them farewell with a smile on our faces pretending to be content while it feels like a thousand knives constantly stabbing in our chest.
I may sound crazy, but it is always better to look out for the signs and slowly prepare yourself than have it all hit you like a truck.
Here are some of the signs that your partner might be falling out of love with you:
You Feel Apathetic About The Relationship And Its Future
Remember the first few months of the relationship? Those days when you couldn’t keep your hands off of each other? Canceling plans because you both just wanted to spend time with each other? That is commonly called the honeymoon phase.
However, when you fall out of love, it is known as relationship fatigue, a stage where the love becomes more apathetic and ambivalent. You just feel drained, and all motivation to keep up with the relationship is lost.
“Over time, we may start to feel overwhelmed by our relationships, leading us to become tired or apathetic about investing energy in them,” – Kalley Hartman, LMFT, Ocean Recovery.
Relationship fatigue may look like a disengagement with your partner, usually uninterested or even getting cynical about the future of the relationship. Milestones are forgotten, spending some quality time becomes the last priority, and putting in effort becomes a chore.
If you are witnessing any of these within yourself or your partner, it sounds like bad news.
Communication Becomes A Burden
If you see that your partner is continuously avoiding proper conversations that involve emotional topics, or any lighter topic in general, or just avoiding you, that is a bad sign.
“This may show up as avoiding conversations, not making time to spend together, or having difficulty communicating feelings and ideas,” – Hartman adds.
People that fall out of love often tend to shut themselves off or just start hiding their true thoughts, which in the long term can create an emotional distance and, even worse, resentment.
The Need For Physical Distance
“When someone is falling out of love, they may become emotionally distant, avoid physical intimacy, stop expressing affection, or appear detached and unresponsive to emotional needs,” – Brandon Santan, Ph.D., Chattanooga-based licensed therapist.
Couples that are completely in love with one another will always look for some alone time to share at the end of the day. It doesn’t even have to be sexual intimacy. Just their physical presence is enough to make you feel at home. If this changes, then probably your relationship will too.
“A noticeable decline in enthusiasm and interest in spending time together, engaging in shared activities, or discussing future plans may suggest that feelings are fading,” Santan further adds.
An Increase In Conflicts; More Like A Lack In Solving One
A conflict is a constituent part of a relationship; however, too much of it may indicate a lack of love in the relationship.
“When there is more conflict than connection, it is time to look at and address what has changed and get curious about why that is.” – Nikki Coleman, Ph.D., Licensed Psychologist and Sex Self Confidence Coach, Texas.
If an individual is falling out of love, they are more likely to pick up fights as a way to create more distance in the relationship. They may not be doing it intentionally either; it’s just their subconscious.
“Although ongoing conflicts are never a good sign in a relationship, a lack of interest in resolving the root issues is often a sign that feelings of love have waned—or that there was an inability to create lasting love from the onset,” she further explains.
Quality Time Becomes The Least Of The Priorities
The days they would plan dates for you or those fun weekend trips would gradually start decreasing. There would be lesser planned dates or vacations.
Even house dates will significantly decrease. It would feel like they are running away from you most of the time like they would do anything else than spending time with you anymore.
If you see that in your partner, consider it a red flag!
“Maybe you used to enjoy activities together, but now find yourself not wanting to engage in the same way,” Hartman suggests.
You may even feel the disconnect when you just realize how oddly quiet they are on an everyday basis.
“When you don’t feel excited about your partner or the idea of spending time with them—especially doing the mundane tasks of life—it is likely that you are not feeling as in love anymore,” Coleman adds.
Sex And Intimacy Are Just Non-existent
Intimacy comes in various forms, including non-physical intimacy. Intimacy can, after all, strengthen the foundation of your relationship. Once the intimacy is gone, experiencing love becomes impossible.
“If the idea of physical touch or intimacy feels like something you’d rather not do and you don’t have much desire to engage in it, this could be a sign [you’re falling out of love].” – Surabhi Jagdish, LMFT and owner of Revolutionary Reflections.
However, the lack of interest in having sex or getting intimate doesn’t necessarily mean that your partner is falling out of love. There may be other reasons, like a total loss of communication or zero interest in catering to other forms of connection.
“Partners who are deeply connected on an emotional level tend to move through the natural highs and lows of sexual intimacy with grace.” – Carla Marie Manly, Ph.D., author of The Joy of Imperfect Love.
The Thought Of Being Single Or Being With Other People Excites You
Simply said: “Constant daydreaming or expressing a desire to be single or explore other options may indicate that [you are] contemplating a life outside the relationship,” Santan explains.
For example, the thought of being single, feeling jealous of their single friends, or the thought of seeing other people may as well be a hint that you or your partner is falling out of love or slowly losing interest in the relationship.
See, being in a monogamous relationship for a long time may get boring, and developing a crush is normal. We are all humans, after all. But if you keep on entertaining the idea of having a life without your partner or just spending it with someone else, it is a sign that your love is fading away.
The Future Is Blank
As long as the honeymoon phase is there, both of you may not even imagine a life without the other.
However, things get a lot different when one of you starts falling out of love.
It becomes too painful to face the future together or even think about it.
“Partners who are falling out of love often stop making plans for the future,” Manly adds. “For example, a partner who shows no interest in planning future vacations or creating shared goals may be signaling that they have one foot out the door.”
Their Quirks And Habits Just Become Annoying
It is pretty normal for couples to get on each other’s nerves; no one is really perfect, after all. But it is the constant annoyance that you must look out for.
If your partner is constantly getting irritated with your partner’s behavior or quirks, it could hint that they no longer feel love towards you.
“Growing disinterest or dissatisfaction in the relationship can lead to more frequent arguments, nitpicking, or a general sense of frustration and tension between both partners,” Santan describes.
Your Lives Are No More In The Same Direction
Many times love just loses its existence because your lives are moving in different directions.
“Loving partnerships rely on communication, togetherness, shared ventures, and connective play. If partners routinely take paths that leave each person feeling separate and alone, the loving bonds often fade away,” Many says.
Can I Possibly Fall Back In Love?
Well, this might be good news for you that you can fall back in love with the one that you once did fall out of love with.
You can absolutely fall back in love with your partner,” Coleman explains. “As much as you change and grow over time as a person, so must your relationship. The goal is to find new ways to rediscover each other and pursue the experience of being in love with them over and over again.”
Experts accept the fact that a sheer combination of communication, self-reflection, and effort is the best way to rekindle the love that was once lost.
“Falling back in love takes time and effort from both partners. It may not happen overnight, and patience, understanding, and commitment are key,” Santan further adds. “However, if both individuals are willing to put in the work and are open to growth, it is possible to rediscover the love and connection that initially brought them together.”
The Bottom Line
“If you’re a lover you have to be a fighter, because if you don’t fight for your love what kind of love do you have?”
Remember Keanu Reeves saying this, and the whole world just going crazy over it? Well, just going crazy won’t prove anything as long as you are not applying it.
If you love them, you better learn to fight for them, even if the fight is with yourself.
I hope this article was helpful for you and provided you with enough insights. If there is anything else that you need to ask, do drop a comment; I will be here to answer it all!
Read Also:
Post Your Comment