5 signs that Your Relationship might be over.
If it’s time to move on, you owe it to yourself and your partner to own up to how you’re really feeling, and a make a decision about your relationship.
If work commitments, a frantic social-life, or geographical distance is damaging your relationship, and neither of you can find a way to get around these problems, chances are you are not that committed to the relationship. If it was true love you would be blind to these barriers, and be together anyway. But if life keeps handing you excuse after excuse to put off getting serious, take it as a hint from the universe that this was not meant to be.
In a good relationship, you will spend the majority of the time feeling positive. Inevitably life will kick your backside occasionally, but your loving partner will help lift you right back up. If you spend much of your time feeling stressed, sad or anxious, then you really need to start questioning what you are getting out of this relationship.
As we get older, we all change. In a long-term relationship, the hope is that you both mature together, growing even closer over time. Maybe five years ago, you both enjoyed a Saturday night of tequila slammers and all night dancing. Now you are older, wiser, and less able to hold your drink a great Saturday evening is a takeaway in front of a DVD, and being tucked up in bed by 11pm. Perhaps you’d like to start a family or buy a house. If your passions, priorities and plans are no longer in alignment, it might be time to go your separate ways.
Relationships can survive affairs and deceptions. But what they can’t survive is a breakdown in trust. If one of you has betrayed the other, and the trust is gone from your relationship, the kindest thing for both of you may be to call it a day. It is not healthy for your both to live under a cloud of constant suspicion.
Disagreements happen in all relationships. In healthy relationships the argument is resolved, moves into the past, and in a few weeks time is replaced by something different to argue over. This is a healthy pattern of having differing views, finding a resolution, and moving on with the relationship. What isn’t healthy, is a relationship that has a set menu of fights, with the couple cycling through the same old arguments over and over again, without taking any positive steps to resolve the conflict.
In the heat of an argument it’s easy to get consumed by negativity and imagine that your relationship is all bad. This is not the time to instigate a break-up.
Instead, if you are having doubts about your partner, try keeping a relationship diary, in which you record all aspects, good and bad. Set a date in the future when you will review the diary and make a decision whether or not to continue the relationship. You may find that there are plenty of positive aspects that means you want to keep working at it.
However, if you do decide it’s time to move on, be honest with your partner as soon as you can, in a calm, blame-free manner. Continuing in a failing relationship in the hope it will recover is damaging for both you and your partner, so be decisive and take action.