Not every relationship you experience will be everlasting. Sometimes relationships are for a short season and then come to an end. While the breakup might be hard, you have to do what you feel is right. Below are subtle signs on how to know when your relationship is not growing. While some of these signs happen in a long-term relationship, at the end of the day, you’ll know if these signs are something that you can work on together or not. Listen to your instincts and follow your gut. The longer you prolong a break up the harder it can get. I absolutely love seeing long-lasting couples, but sometimes you just need to break it off.
How to Know When Relationship not Growing
Want Alone Time Away From Partner
If you find you are avoiding or even trying to get more alone time away from your partner it could mean your relationship has run its course. While alone time is vital in relationships when you try to avoid your significant other when they do ask to spend time together, that is not good. If you would rather stay in alone binging on Netflix over and over instead of going out it might mean, bye bye relationship.
Future
Do you find you have different wants and desires for the future? Or maybe you used to talk about your future together and now you just don’t. That can be a sign things are fizzling out if one or both of you are not interested in what is to come for your relationship.
Communication
There is always a honeymoon phase in any relationship. Once that ends you still need to have good communication for a relationship to be successful. Listening to each other’s hopes, dreams, and even struggles. Communicating helps connect you with your significant other. If there is no communication then it is easy to disconnect from your partner.
Fight More Often
Every couple fights, that is natural and can be healthy. You want to make sure that when you fight it is in a healthy way and you learn and grow from it. If you are fighting a lot more or about the same thing and not resolving it, that isn’t a good sign. Sit down and really talk to your significant other and see if you both are willing to work through this or if you are at the end.
Criticism
Relationships need to be about cheering our partner on. When you or your partner start breaking each other down over and over again that is unhealthy. Criticizing is not good and can ruin a relationship. So try to end the criticism before it ruins your relationship.
Trust
If you start losing trust, well then you may as well do something quick or say bye to your connection. Trust isn’t something that is easily rebuilt. If you don’t trust them now how will you trust them later? As long as you don’t generally have trust issues regardless of who you’re with, this can be a sign that something might be off in the relationship and you need to think if it is worth pursuing.
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If You Can’t Trust Your Mother, Whom Can You Trust?The SPEED of TRUST: The One Thing That Changes Everything
Building Trust 35 Success Secrets – 35 Most Asked Questions On Building Trust – What You Need To Know
I Love You But I Don’t Trust You: The Complete Guide to Restoring Trust in Your Relationship
Affection
Affection is a must in relationships. It is how we connect with our significant other on a special level that we don’t do with others. From holding hands, cuddling on the couch, to alone time. Affection can slow down as the relationship grows but if it stops altogether it needs to be talked about. You or your partner might be fully disconnected from the relationship, or you could work together and get back on course.
Just making sure you have a healthy relationship and that you feel happy with is important. If you are losing interest or see flags that you might not make it then really think about what is best for your future. Don’t stay stuck in a relationship, life is too short.
I was just listening to a podcast that was talking about the 5 Love Languages book. The each went through the experience with their significant other. It was so interesting to hear how it opened up even more lines of communication and made the couples more aware of what they weren’t and were doing for each other. I think this is important in any relationship and can hopefully prevent it from not growing.
I guess when affection and trust that are lost. It’s time to decide. It would be really hard but I guess ending is way better than just staying because you think of the time you spent with eact other.
I need to disagree about the alone time. Because sometimes in one relationship you need to have space or alone time but not literally away from your partner. Alone time means to do self-care like going to the spa and do some relaxation or just stay at home and have more time to meditate or to sleep.
I completely agree with you on the alone time. Another person said the same thing above. Alone time is for sure a necessary component to keeping yourself recharged for a relationship. I meant more along the lines of desiring to be away from your partner alone, in an unreasonable fashion 😉 To me, that is a sign that the relationship is fading when you desire to be away from them more often than not. I personally would feel that the connection was fading and it would be time to discuss that feeling with my partner.
I think I have to disagree with the alone time. My husband and I LOVE our alone time. We think it helps our relationship, actually and gives us some comfort that we could be feel secure enough to be able to have those much needed times for ourselves. I love the moments I could just binge watch Netflix without him because we all need that special time to reboot on our own.
I 100% get what you’re saying. The reference to alone time is more along an extreme version, meaning an unhealthy level of just having a desire to be completely away from your partner, often. I do agree that everyone needs alone time, it could be unhealthy to always want to be smothered by each other. I believe a happy medium is best, but it’s also whatever works for the couple. Each relationship and person is so different. Signs here may not be signs for you and so forth 😉
You can really tell that a relationship is not growing. Trust is really a big factor. My husband and I are together for 11 years and until now we are getting to know each other.
I think that a relationship can seem like it’s not growing at times and if the relationship is healthy then the couple can totally work on communication to fix that feeling. I really believe that anyone can make it work if there is a true commitment to the relationship and love as well as TRUST. That’s huge for me. I love that you have been married 11 years, cheers to many more years.
These are some really big signs that a relationship is not going to work. Trust is a huge factor in a relationship!
Trust is big for me. Once broken, I really can’t trust the person again. It’s never happened before anyways. I suppose it would depend on the trust issue broken, but I would be constantly walking on eggshells wondering if I really should let my guard down again. Actions would prove that trust could be rebuilt for me, but no one has yet to really break my trust and show in actions that it’s worth it to take that risk again.
As a fifty something year old woman who has been through 2 great until they weren’t relationships I’m telling you you are right on the mark!
There are many signs of a relationship that just isn’t healthy. I am no pro, at all, so thankful for your input.
Very informative post. Learned a lot from reading this alone. Amazing!
It can be so challenging to evaluate your relationship, but it’s important to keep tabs on it. These are great markers to consider when seeing if your relationship needs repair.
I think a healthy relationship is able to have two people who will meet up every so often and evaluate the status. Each should also feel comfortable enough to speak how they’re feeling without fear of backlash or being told they’re being ridiculous. Growth and learning is something I have seen for long-lasting marriages, I personally haven’t experienced that yet.
It’s so easy to over look the signs of a bad relationship when you’re in it. You have given your readers solid signs of what to look for.
I agree that it’s so hard to see from the inside. You’re emotionally invested and sometimes we simply don’t want to admit that something isn’t right for us. Thank you for your comment.
Such an interesting and informative post. All that you said are very important in a relationship and if one of them have lost it most especially the word trust it is definitely a bad sign of unhealthy relationship.
Thank you for your comment. I always trust someone until they give me a reason not to, sadly many people have given me a reason not to trust them anymore. I don’t hold that against anyone else, it’s that particular person’s issue for breaking my trust. I just don’t see why anyone would be deceitful or sneaky to another person, I mean if you’re confident, then be honest and forthcoming about everything – it’s that simple to me.