5 Signs You're Slowly Losing Interest In Your Partner, No Matter How Much You Deny It

Losing interest in a partner can be just as difficult a loss as realizing that your partner isn't involved in the relationship anymore. Whichever way you want to cut it, the relationship has taken a major hit, and both of you are going to feel the impact. Recognizing the signs you're losing interest in him can lead to feelings of guilt or remorse, but it's important not to assign fault for why the relationship ended. There are reasons you lost interest, and both parties share responsibility.

If you recognize that you are losing interest in your partner, then you need to think long and hard about where you want the relationship to go. Do you think that you can recover from this and reconnect with your partner again? Or would the more respectful and healing route be to break up and allow both of you to move on? There are no right or wrong answers, and you are really the only one who can decide what you want to do. Both ways forward require a lot of work, whether that is work reinvesting in your relationship or work moving on.

If one of the following statements resonates with you, then you know it's time to make some hard choices:

1. You Don't Want To Make Time For Them

At the beginning of the relationship, you weren't even aware that you needed to make time for your partner. Being with them flowed easily, and you looked forward to the weeknights and weekends you would spend together. Entire lengths of time would evaporate easily, and you'd often stay up chatting long into the night.

Now, making time for them feels like work. Maybe your career has advanced, and you're spending more time at the office; maybe you're just not as invested in the relationship as you are in your friends. You feel like you have to change around your schedule in order to see your partner, and when you do, you feel frustration. You know that you should be looking forward to spending time with your partner, and maybe don't know how or why or when that feeling stopped.

Your partner probably already senses that you feel burdened by hanging out with them and might even be tiptoeing around asking you to hang out. Or, maybe you two have had long arguments or discussions about why you don't want to hang out with them anymore. Nobody wants to feel like they are imposing upon someone else or getting rejected, but avoiding your partner will lead to long-term resentment — from both of you — if you don't figure out WTF is going on.

2. You Get Easily Annoyed

You used to be able to compromise with your partner and back down from arguments that you knew weren't worth fighting. Now, it seems like everything your partner does gets under your skin. Even simple things that you should be happy to provide for them — a snack, a drink, volunteering to get the bill — bother you. Maybe you beat yourself up for being selfish, or judge what you are feeling and try to repress it out of fear of hurting them.

If you're getting easily annoyed with your partner, it might be because you are tapping out of the relationship. Maybe now that the infatuation phase of your relationship has worn off, you see their flaws and don't like them. Or maybe you aren't able to give to a relationship right now because you need to focus on yourself.

There could be a million other reasons you're getting easily annoyed with your partner. Hey, one of them could be that your partner is kind of annoying, and you're just realizing it now. It's more harmful over the long-term to repress those feelings of annoyance than to examine where they are coming from and what you are going to do with them.

3. You Don't Call Or Text First

At the beginning of the relationship, you were always initiating conversation, especially if you didn't hear from your partner first. The both of you probably used to fall asleep talking on the phone and exchanged messages throughout the day. Lately, though, the messages have become more one-sided or have dropped off altogether. You feel withdrawn from your partner, and you don't have the impulse to be in constant communication with them anymore. Sometimes, you don't want to be in communication at all.

I can tell you that this withdrawal might make your partner cling to you harder. The laws of attraction, unfortunately, work this way. Unless you are clear with yourself — and them — about the reasons why you are not initiating conversation, they're going to continue pursuing you, and you are going to continue to feel more and more oppressed by the relationship. Understand that you need your partner to give you some space right now, and then ask for it.

4. You Don't Think About The Future Anymore

It used to seem like you and your partner had a great shot at a future together, and you knew — with varying degrees of certainty — that it was a future you both wanted and could see yourself in. Now, however, it might seem like you have outgrown that future, and the relationship isn't heading in the direction you want. You might not even know what you want yet, and maybe you need some single time to figure it out.

Maybe you feel guilty for abandoning ship when you used to profess your undying enthusiasm for the relationship and investment in a future. The important thing to remember is that the future hasn't happened yet. Instead, focus on your feelings in the now. Are you really happy day to day? Or are you holding out for things to get better? And how much do you believe they actually will?

5. You Question Whether You Should Have Gotten Into The Relationship

This is the biggie. When you are losing interest in your partner, you are probably questioning whether you loved them at all. And from there, you wonder why you got into the relationship at all. Was it just the sex? Did you need companionship? Were you tired of being single and just said “OK” to the first person who came along?

Stop. It wasn't any of those. I mean, maybe one of those reasons had something to do with it, but you wouldn't have gotten into a relationship with someone you didn't connect with on some level, even if the connection you felt wasn't the best one for sustaining a long-term relationship. There's nothing shameful about recognizing that the connection fizzled out. It wasn't your fault. Sometimes, a relationship works for a while and then, you outgrow it. You learn a lot from it, and someday, I guarantee you will be able to look back fondly and recognize that there were some good things there. It just wasn't right.

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