Everyone should enjoy a robust, thriving, and healthy romantic connection. If the person you love isn’t as vibrant in the partnership as they once were, you owe it to yourself to find out if this is him falling out of love or just a rough patch in the relationship. Regardless of where his head or heart might be, you always deserve to be respected, treated as a priority, and feel cared for.
If those things are missing, it’s time to consider walking away from a union that’s not serving your well-being. Ending a relationship where you’re still heavily invested is difficult, but putting yourself as the priority is essential.
Unfortunately, people can often develop a rose-colored vision of their mate and the couplehood they share. Instead of recognizing faults and flaws, they see only good, even if that’s not the reality. Sometimes, close friends and family will see the possible demise before the realization kicks in for the person still invested.
The problem is if the man has started falling out of love, it has likely been happening for a while but has gone unnoticed and without him communicating his feelings. Perhaps you felt a distance or as though you were being pushed away but always made an excuse.
The thing to remember when part of a relationship is you always deserve to be a priority, to be given full respect, and to feel as though you’re cared for regardless of what the man might be dealing with. If that’s not the case, consider the healthiest choice for your life and do that even if it means ending the partnership while still in love.
How will you know if he’s genuinely falling out of love or if you’re misreading the signs? Here are red flags to pay attention to:
When discussing your day-to-day, he’s obviously distracted or disinterested. The lack of questions, paying more attention to his mobile, even moving around the place, and involving himself in other activities is a sure sign that he could be anywhere else except participating in the conversation.
When he’s not engaged with you, instead of making excuses, address the issue. This isn’t a sign that he isn’t in love anymore; it’s a blatant lack of respect for your feelings, and that’s really not okay.
These are necessarily milestone events like anniversaries or birthdays because if we’re honest, even men in love tend to forget these occasions. The other priorities are things that a guy shouldn’t forget, the big deals that you talk about for days. Those that have you in nervous knots waiting for the outcome.
The meeting to decide if you’ll receive a promotion, the interview for a new career opportunity, meeting a friend to find out the gender of her baby, things he should immediately reach out to you about as soon as it’s over to find out how it went. The only problem is it slipped his mind, and it doesn’t happen once or twice, but it’s something that he’s doing all the time.
The future doesn’t have to include engagement or marriage, but if his plans never include you, that can be a major red flag. If you know he’s considering a weekend away or has scheduled a cruise for the upcoming holidays but didn’t invite you for these events, this is the time for a conversation about the relationship and whether his feelings have changed.
If he shuts down and won’t discuss the situation, that’s essentially giving you the answer you need to move on from the partnership. You should never have to push someone to spend time with you or show you attention and affection.
Life’s hectic pace means much of the time, couples are apart throughout the week and sometimes on the weekend. Maintaining a healthy, thriving relationship nowadays takes effort. When you’re not together, communication sustains the partnership.
That can include video chats, messaging, or texting, any method for staying in contact and keeping up with what’s happening in the other person’s life. If you don’t hear from your mate when you’re apart at all, it’s difficult to maintain a strong connection and establish a more meaningful bond.
If the man chooses to only interact while in the same zip code or, more narrowly the same household, he’s limiting the amount of intimacy you could possibly have, how far you can develop the relationship and if you can even establish love between you.
If you had love at some point, it can withstand distance, but only if there’s an effort to feed that love. If he doesn’t want to feed it, he’s likely lost it.
When falling in love, flaws are a bit part of what makes a person fall in love with someone else. These quirks and eccentricities make each person unique from everyone else. When you love someone for their differences, the love is deep and unconditional. If a man finds fault with you, puts you down, criticizes you for these quirks, or is unaccepting of them, he doesn’t love you.
That couldn’t be more true if his criticism is blatant and public. Putting the person you’re supposed to love down in front of other people is extremely disrespectful and plainly mean. It’s not something that should be tolerated but instead addressed immediately. If there’s little disregard for how the behavior makes you feel, you should walk away from the relationship.
No matter how slight the issue, your partner is ready to have a disagreement or argument over the problem. Instead of stepping away to gather rational thoughts so there can be a reasonable conversation to work through the details and come out with a sensible solution, he prefers a confrontation.
It’s almost as though he needs to win a battle instead of valuing the quality of the partnership. This is a sign that he doesn’t love and respect you enough to listen to what you have to say but instead prefers to have his way. If he’s falling out of love with you, nothing you say or do will be right; more quarreling will be the course of the relationship.
In that same vein, there will be fights with name-calling and belittling. When a man loves you, these are abusive behaviors that no couple uses to settle a dispute.
When there’s love on both sides if an argument starts to spiral out of control into that territory, usually one or both people will step away from the conflict to regain their composure, maybe sleep on it, and come back to communicate after each has calmed down.
Regardless of whether the guy is wrong, he doesn’t typically apologize if he is falling out of love with you. It’s not easy to admit being wrong or telling someone that you’re sorry, especially for men; their pride usually gets in the way. But when that pride is more important than the partnership, it shows that he’s not as invested.
When you can accept that you messed up, feel bad about the situation, genuinely feel remorse, and want to apologize for hurting the other person, emotions are involved. Love is an important part of apologizing to a romantic partner; it shows that you value and respect them and the partnership.
When he can’t bring himself to show remorse or feel bad about what happened, or take fault for the incident, he’s being selfish. Selfish people haven’t found the person they love unconditionally yet. If he did love you like that, he’s lost those feelings.
If you’ve progressed through several stages of dating, but the relationship hasn’t gone public, this is a major red flag. That is especially true considering digitization like social networking, where everything, including a person’s dating status, is announced for family, friends, and virtual strangers. There’s almost always at least one photo of you as a couple somewhere.
If the man doesn’t speak about you publicly, doesn’t share photos not only online but with close friends or family, around his work, hasn’t introduced you to those he’s closest to but instead wants the partnership kept private, he isn’t in love.
A man who’s in love will want to shout it from the rooftops. He’ll carry a photo and pull it out to show everyone, regardless of whether these people want to see it or hear about his relationship’s happiness or not. He will post photos and blurbs about it on social sites and be proud of the love he’s found.
When you notice you’re a secret, you should question the reason for this. No one wants to be hidden away like there’s something wrong with them. If he did love you in the beginning, this should have progressed by now, instead, he seems to have lost the feelings.
While the expectation is that you will support what he sees for his future, his life, and what he finds important in his life, he may not offer the same support for the dreams you have. Your aspirations are equally important and deserve the same consideration as the encouragement you offer him when he achieves a milestone and moves forward to the next.
When you discuss what’s happening in your life and how you hope things will progress only to have the subject changed to discuss his achievements and what’s next for him, that means there’s little interest in what’s going on in your life and the likelihood that any love he may have felt has diminished or fallen away. He’s more concerned with his own life at this point.
When he loves you, his face will light up as you walk into the room. You can see it in his eyes and his body language. These readily give away someone who’s in love. They also let a partner know when their mate has fallen out of love. When a man looks almost through you with a cold stare, he’s fallen out of love with you. There’s no animation or sparkle.
He doesn’t feel an incessant need to hold your hand or hug you, put his arm around you, or just touch you. He’s distant with his affection, almost cold. It’s a stark contrast to the vibrancy he had when he loved you.
If you don’t immediately notice it, it’s important to try not to excuse it based on his life stresses. Eventually, you have to come to the realization that life can’t remove love from someone’s heart. It’s just something that happens over time through no fault of anyone. The priority is to recognize that you’re deserving of more, better than he’s now able to give.
You want to avoid attempting to force what’s gone, and prevent yourself from trying to prove that you’re worthy of his attention and affection. Instead, prove to yourself that you’re worthy of respect, being a priority, and cared for as the vibrant, independent, and strong person you are by someone who will appreciate your individuality – and love you for it.
Men can fall out of love, and that’s okay. As their partner, it’s difficult to choose to end what is no longer a healthy, thriving partnership, regardless of the fact that you’re still fully invested. It’s important to do so, though, for your greatest well-being.
A priority before making any moves is to be sure you’re reading the signs accurately. Communication is key. If he shuts down when broaching the topic, that’s a response without verbally answering the questions.
Healing from someone falling out of love with you when you thought everything was great can take time. It can make you question your own judgment moving forward. But one thing to hold onto is it’s not your fault, nor does it diminish who you are. This match just wasn’t the right one.