“Were we less in love?” wondered Dhruv in Little Things. “Or we had forgotten how much we loved each other,” replied Kavya.
Oftentimes, people assume that the precious moments shared by a couple in the past would be enough to sustain their love indefinitely, but sadly, that’s not how it works.
Falling out of love isn’t something that happens overnight. Rather, it’s the stockpile of events that makes you feel a little less in love with each passing day and you simply wait for the final nail in the coffin.
1. “When my ex told me I was a mediocre girlfriend and not wife material. You can’t bounce back from a statement like that.”
2. “When the small things he did really started to piss me off. I used to just shrug them off and consider myself picky, but no.
He was mean to my cat. She’s a very affectionate cat who just wants to be cuddled and he’d push her off his lap when she got up there. And he’d yell when she ‘talked’ to him. He said she was too loud.”
3. “We moved in together and I learned what a horrible slob he was. Sharing a bathroom was disgusting. I was constantly cleaning up after him because he refused to clean up after himself. It was unattractive and made me distance myself sexually. I moved out and we broke up.”
4. “I learned very quickly that he was incredibly lazy, and smoked way more pot than I had even realized. He spent most of his days in a stupor on the couch playing video games. He had no ambition, no desire to better himself. He rarely left the house, and I had almost no alone time.”
5. “I was REALLY sick with a sinus infection. He came in the room and said ‘are you going to make dinner?’ I said no.
He made himself some spaghetti and meat sauce and didn’t offer to make me anything to eat, or even get me a glass of water.”
6. “I was verbally and emotionally abused by my father throughout all my years of growing up. My boyfriend and I at the time got into a huge fight and he did some things that reminded me of what my dad might do in such a situation. It was at that moment that I realized that I was letting myself be treated poorly because of how I had been conditioned to be treated for most of my life. I left him after that because I just couldn’t see him the same way after that fight.”
7. “The effort on his side was minimal if not non-existent. Every day I fell a little out of love. I recently broke up with him. I’m shocked at my own lack of emotion toward the whole situation, but I was just giving so much and getting nothing back that there is nothing left in me for him anymore.”
8. “Kept making me choose between her and my friends. She’d demand I go to events for her that conflicted with things I’d set up months and months in advance with my friends. Eventually, I realized that this was going to be my life if she was in it, and so she had to leave.”
9. “When he demanded I give him my paycheck, stole from my mom, hit me, and told me I was worthless. To be fair I was never in love with him but within the week of that all happening, I noped out real fast.”
10. “When memories of how things used to be was the only part of our relationship that I liked anymore. I was spending time wishing things would go back to how they were, and knew they never were going to.”
11. “I no longer felt affection, I no longer wanted to be in his presence, things I’d thought were cute and alluring before I suddenly found grating and annoying.”
12. “After seven years I finally realized I was never in love with him. I just took the role of his mother and felt pity for him. He took advantage of my good qualities and dragged us deep into debt. I finally found my head and left.”
13. “He got too complacent and I ended up doing all the work. He told me it’s quite refreshing to meet a woman who takes the initiative. But come on now. Every fucking time? Shit gets old fast when you feel like you’re the only one invested in the relationship and he’s just going along for the ride.”
14. “It started the day I started finding little things annoying and bit by bit things just fell apart, both times. And what starts with a joke starting to annoy you ends with you realizing you have to completely different views of what future you want, and that you don’t enjoy sex with them anymore.”
15. “He became progressively abusive both physically and sexually and all he cared about was getting as much sex as possible, regardless of if I liked it or not. In hindsight, I should have terminated that relationship WAY earlier than I did.”
TBH, there are glaring signs of you falling out of love, you are just not ready to identify them.