Building a relationship from scratch is tough work. It requires a lot of effort, patience, and understanding. That’s why most of us are in denial when we need to cut off the relationship. Ending a relationship, much like building it, requires a lot of work too. It requires tying loose ends and exerting effort to soften the blow. It also requires long hours of mulling over. It’s not the kind of decision that you can easily take back after putting it out. You need a nudge and reading this article will help you how to know when a relationship is over.
Signs that Your Relationship is Over
Relationship dynamics vary greatly from one another. What you consider as a red flag behavior in your relationship may not mean as much for another partnership. The signs that we’ll include in the list are general, signs that cut across different relationships. Evaluate the current situation of your relationship and see if staying together is more beneficial than growing apart.
Poor Communication
One of the most obvious signs of a failing or failed relationship is poor communication. Poor communication does not necessarily mean the lack of it. By poor communication, we mean the lack of quality conversations together. Sometimes, the Hellos and How are yous do not suffice. Romantic relationships need more than casual catching up question to make it strong and run for a long while.
Aside from the lack of quality conversations, poor communication also means an abundance of conflicts. Yes, you may be running your mouth all the time, but everything that spouts out is fights, baseless criticisms, and hurtful accusations that will only make matters worse. Days sometimes end without apologies, only with scrunched up faces and backs turned against each other. Letting the stubbornness prevail.
Not only that, but poor communication also means not understanding or refusing to understand where your partner is coming from. Poor communication stems from the refusal of listening and understanding. Long gone are the days where you try to understand your partner’s claims and statements. Instead of listening intently to ease their burdens, the intention behind listening now is to rebut and go against them because they’re being unreasonable, that they don’t understand enough.
Poor quality conversations leaves big cracks to the foundation that built your relationship.
Only One is Trying to Make it Work
When the relationship struggles, on the verge of crashing and burning, only the combined efforts of the couple can save it. But, if you find yourself doubling or tripling the efforts to save the relationship, then you might be at the point of no return. A relationship is between two consenting and conscious adults. Suffice to say, you both know what needs to be done to make the relationship work. It is a game of give and take, of compromise and chances.
Bending over backward just to avoid further conflicts in the relationship can drain you and strain your relationship even more. It’s no wonder that this is one of the main reasons why marriages end up in divorce. When you see your partner not giving the same amount of effort as much as you do, as much as they first did at the beginning of the relationship, it leads to several questions. Questions about your worth, the worth of your relationship, the worth of your love.
If you’re the only one left struggling to make the relationship work, is it even worth it?
Daydreams about Being Single
While other people daydream and imagine what it’s like to be in a relationship, you might be wondering what it’s like to be single and free from commitment. Another telltale sign that your relationship isn’t working is that you’d rather daydream about being single than to work on your relationship.
Thinking about what it’s like to be single again once in a while is acceptable. Sometimes, you just can’t get it out of your head especially when the relationship’s been rough and difficult to handle. That’s totally okay as long as you communicate it with your partner. However, if you dream about being single on a daily basis even if your relationship is going well and okay, then that may already be a pressing matter.
Daydreaming about being single isn’t the main reason why your relationship is ending. It is merely a more obvious result of other pressing factors that caused the end of the relationship. After countless fights, lack of intimacy, and avoidance, you already want to cut off the relationship. But for some reason, you just can’t do it or you refuse to accept it yet, so you result to imagining the scenarios once you get out of the relationship.
If you reached this point, then you might as well act on it. You’re only prolonging your agony, where in fact, your imagination seems to be better than your reality.
Avoids Plans
Date nights and couple quality bonding moments are needed to make the relationship exciting, fresh, and fun regardless of the years you’ve been together. But, if you find yourself making excuses to cancel plans or to run rainchecks on these plans consistently, maybe you want out of the relationship. Maybe you’ve come to a point that spending quality time with your partner or spouse feels like a chore, a mere responsibility that you need to fulfill out of respect and decency.
In line with this, you also begin to prefer the company of others—basically anyone who isn’t your partner. Spending time with others is easy as breathing, but when it comes to having some quality time with your partner it suddenly becomes a burden. Similar to having daydreams of being single, avoiding plans is a concrete manifestation of your feelings towards the relationship. It is a result of all relationship problems that are buried underneath the pretense of “Everything will be fine if we avoid this and that”.
It’s better to end your relationship if than to make more excuses to avoid interactions with your partner. Even if you continue the relationship, it will still not progress to something more.
Lost Interest
Your relationship is most probably over when you both lost interest in one another. Your relationship no longer has its spark. Losing interest in your partner may be shocking but it happens more often than we realize. And admitting that you want to end the relationship because you’re no longer interested is heaps better than making excuses and doing unforgivable acts just to get out of the relationship.
As hurtful as it seems, your partner may lose interest in you and you might lose interest in them. The things that made you love them may not be enough to keep the relationship. It might not even catch their attention anymore. Despite its negative implication, losing interest is something natural. Even if you work hard to light the spark again and again, it will only lead to other conflicts. It will require more effort too. At the end, both of you are working so hard to keep a half-hearted relationship. So, is it worth all the trouble.
It’s better to walk away from the relationship as unlikely friends remembering the reason of the breakup with a heavy heart, but with the intentions to be better for the next relationship.
Relies on External Factors to Make it Work
Your relationship is past the point of saving once you rely on external factors to continue it. Some people choose to continue the relationship because of their investment, both time and effort. While others continue because they claim that it’s difficult to start from square one with a new partner. Although these claims are true but if these are the only reasons that are holding your relationship together, then what is the point?
The building blocks of a relationship are strong positive emotions and factors that facilitate its growth. There no use in supporting a building with scaffoldings when the foundation is broken and unrepairable. If you continue to rely on external factors, you might feel suffocated in your own relationship. What makes it worse is if the only thing that keeps your relationship intact is the opinion of your friends and family. Engaging in a lackluster relationship that is managed by the opinion of others is a cage. A tight-fitting and suffocating cage.
Someone Cheated
The most telling sign that your relationship is over is if one of you cheats. Cheating is one of the worst things that someone can commit while in a relationship, there’s no doubt about it. Obviously, cheating destroys the relationship. For the person that got cheated on, it is traumatizing.
Cheating with another person is one of the most obvious ways that your partner wants out of your relationship. The cheater spouts a lot of reasons for doing it. However, one thing holds true, the act itself tells you that they enjoy the company of another more than you. It is also a clear sign that they have topsy turvy principles. Imagine lying and deceiving, making countless excuses to fool around with another, when they can just call of their current relationship. It takes a lot of work, but apparently cheaters are work hard.
Choosing to end a romantic relationship is a bittersweet experience. It’s difficult to let go of the happy memories and experiences, but, sometimes, it’s just necessary. Choosing to let go of a relationship also promises growth, especially when the relationship has turned sour and unappealing. It’s not always a selfish decision, it can even be selfless. If you realized that these signs are present in your current relationship, you might want to step back and think about it. Is your relationship worth saving and worth fighting for or not?
