Falling out of love doesn’t happen in one go. When you’ve spent a significant amount of time building a relationship, you don’t wake up one day and find yourself not in love anymore. It’s usually the gradual drifting apart, months or even years of unresolved issues that push you to the edge day by day until you realise you can’t take it anymore.
The degradation is, more often than not, usual. Having said that, there can also be a deal-breaking moment when your partner does something or says something so immensely problematic, and you wonder whether you even know them.
After Redditor u/Educational_Ant_3245 asked women on the renowned r/AskWomen community about what made them fall out of love, the thread got flooded with responses that reminded how a healthy relationship is a two-way street and falling out of love is as natural as falling in love.
1. “Finding out he was a huge people pleaser. I loved him when he was with just me but when anybody else — and I mean ANYBODY ELSE — was in the mix, he was obsessed with how they were feeling and how they perceived him. he couldn’t say no to anybody…except me of course, because he could be real with me. got tired of being abandoned so he could make some loser burnout’s day better.”
2. “Knowing if I continue being in this relationship, things will be ‘fine’. But, in order to be fine, I would need to make myself smaller. Make my desires and life goals smaller. Convince myself that I am happy too much (which should require no convincing).”
– fuzach
3.”Started to kind of feel like we were interacting out of obligation instead of enjoying each other’s company.”
4. “When he stopped trying, period. Stopped showing me affection, giving compliments, planning dates, helping around the house, and just being present. I still love him but no longer IN love with him. Pretty sure he feels the same about me, not that he’d ever say it out loud. Love takes effort, and I’ve shown exponentially more. I’m just tired now.”
5. “Gaslighting, being bullied, being harangued for sex, being yelled at, walking on eggshells all the time.”
6. “When the guy said to me, ‘You’re the woman. You’re supposed to cook for me!'”
7. “When he’d make fun of my hobbies/the things that I was interested in. Now I don’t want to tell anyone anything, for fear of them laughing at me like he used to.”
8. “Being taken for granted. Lack of communication & affection.”
– clayh8
9. “The entitlement, deliberately being a burden, the double standards, the superiority complex, the sick joy they got from upsetting/triggering others… the list goes on.”
10. “When I asked him if he really expected me to work full time and do all of the household chores, and he replied with “well, yeah…”
11. “No one thing. General drifting apart. Apathy. Feeling things were kinda one sided.”
12. “When he is not able to support me emotionally, dismissive and essentially just not interested in me as a person except for sex lol. Countless times of reminders, i started with 100% love, but the % went down over the years and he doesn’t seem convinced that he was the one that affected it. So happy it’s over.”
13. “When I realised I had to nag him for almost everything(which I despise doing) combined with him trying to make decisions about my life without discussing with me and also there was no passion left the last year of the relationship. It literally felt like we were roommates with no romantic involvement(we lived together almost 3y).”
– AnnaCibi
14. “Only caring about themselves in bed. Never being interested in my date suggestions, even if free. Always a critic, no matter what we are doing. Placing judgment on me for things they do all the time. No longer trying to romance me.”
15. “Incompetence. I don’t need someone who works at NASA, just please for the love of God, I can’t stand when I have to mother someone in a relationship to the point I HAVE to lay their clothes out every day, or tell them to shower. Immediate resentment.”
16. “When I realized that he was present, but never really ‘there’ for me during the few substantial times that I needed his support or protection.”
We gotta love ourselves enough to let go of people who don’t value our time, energy, and love. While breakups are sad, they are also inevitably important at times for our own growth.
