Are you and your partner growing apart? Have you looked at your partner lately and wondered what brought you both together in the first place? Do you feel you both don’t understand each other anymore?
Are you always arguing and fighting with the man who once made your heart skip many beats? Do you find excuses to stay away from home so you won’t put up with the woman who once made you go against the whole world?
Do you often wonder where the love you once professed for each other vanished to? Do you look at your partner and think you both no longer have anything in common except your children?
You both may be growing apart. Relationships have a natural ebb and flow, but if you feel like you are growing further apart from your partner and nothing they do makes you happy, your relationship may need some work.
Knowing the signs you and your partner are becoming distant can help you take a step back and re-evaluate your relationship. You just need to work through your relationship challenges together.
It’s not pleasant when you no longer feel or your partner what you felt for them in the beginning. It can be heartbreaking when a relationship stops being all rainbows and butterflies. You no longer do the things you enjoy with each other in the past.
Relationships require work and efforts from both partners. This is why I get angry when women are hounded in this part of the world to keep their marriages no matter what and build their homes even when their husbands are doing nothing to build the homes with them. Men and women should build their homes.
When you stop having sex with your partner, something is wrong. It is not a good sign if you and your partner aren’t spending time together in the bedroom. If there is no sex, no affection, no nurturing, and no intimacy, your relationship is headed for the rocks.
You are growing apart from your partner if you spend more time apart than together. If you notice you are spending more and more time in separate corners of the house rather than together, this can be a signal that you may be at an impasse with each other.
I pity men who are always leaving their wives alone; they are just setting themselves up for heartbreaks later on. If you prefer to spend time away from your wife all in the name of making money and spending time with friends, have you asked yourself who is filling her emotional tank?
If as a couple, you don’t do anything new year in, year out, you are gradually growing apart. If all you do is come home, watch TV, go to sleep, and repeat, your relationship might be stuck in a rut. I am not saying you must be in each other’s face all the time, but research shows that couples who try new things are happier together.
You can check into a beautiful hotel for a weekend and spend time holding hands and feeling each other’s bodies. You can go to your favourite restaurant and enjoy a good meal. You can register at the gym together and sweat it out as a couple. You can also go for date nights just to spice things up. Who says marriage should be boring?
If you don’t talk to your partner but feel irritated by their actions all the time, you are growing apart. The honeymoon phase of a relationship generally goes smoothly, but couples who make it in the long run have healthy communication skills.
This does not involve only talking about food, what to buy at home and how to pay for the children’s school fees, healthy communication means active listening to your partner without interrupting them or trying to force your opinions down their throats.
Fighting all the time is a sure sign that something in the relationship has changed. This may be a sign of overall dissatisfaction in one partner with the other or it can be mutual discontentedness. You need to sit down with your partner and have a honest talk about your relationship.
On the flip side, feeling indifferent to your partner’s actions is also a sign that you both are growing apart. If you don’t react when your partner says or does something bad or they don’t engage when you try to talk about a problem, you should know that as soon as indifference comes into the relationship, it won’t last long. If you think fighting is bad, well indifference is worse.
Feelings of defensiveness can indicate feeling attacked, or even an unwillingness to see each other’s viewpoints. If a relationship is going to be successful, then each person has to be able to take responsibility for individual actions and to be able to communicate openly about shortcomings. When defensiveness takes a stronghold in relationships, then communication is hindered.
If you feel yourself losing trust for your partner, it may be that you are drifting apart. Do you trust your partner? What is the level of trust in your relationship? In many struggling relationships, there is manipulation, and jealousy. If either of you is having difficulty with trusting the other person, your chances of having a healthy relationship are lowered.
You are growing apart if you care more about your friends than your partner. Having friends is important, but if you care about spending time with them more than your partner, this could be a sign that you and your partner have drifted.
It’s important to strike a balance between spending time with your partner and your friends, and it may be a red flag if you don’t want to bring your partner around your friends.
Just because you and your partner are growing apart doesn’t mean that your relationship is necessarily over. Take time to discuss what is happening. It takes efforts to build great relationships.
You can go for counselling together. I don’t mean church counselling where the woman will be commanded to submit and become a fool for her husband to feel like a demigod. Meet a professional marriage counsellor and talk about your issues freely.
Then work on your challenges and start doing those things you did while you were dating all over again. Sometimes, it takes little efforts to keep your relationship on track once again.
