We give you the explanation once and for all
As the song goes; people fall in love in mysterious ways. This unexplainable magic also means that people fall out of love. Sometimes you are just as puzzled about why people fall out of love. No need to wonder anymore, I will explain exactly why love fades.
Knowledge is power
If you are aware of the most common reason why people fall out of love, it’s much easier to keep your partner in love with you. It’s also easier to keep being in love with your partner.
When we fall out of love, it is seldom only one of these 11 reasons, more often it is a combination of several different reasons.
Sometimes all the reasons below are present, and together they form a strong motive for falling out of love.
1. They don’t feel appreciated
When you are in a couple it’s all too easy to start taking the other person for granted. This process is also the kiss of death for those sweet butterflies.
When someone doesn’t feel appreciated, they don’t feel loved and as a result that person lowers their feelings of love. When you feel like your partner is indifferent to your existence and efforts, staying in love is not easy.
Criticism becomes the norm
This point goes hand in hand with couples who criticize each other or are constantly unhappy with who their partner is. All the love and romance are slowly dripping out of the relationship if this is the dynamic you find yourself in.
Negativity sucks the fun out of life
When you feel like your partner doesn’t value you, you also start questioning their part in your life. Are they really the right person for you? This kind of thought process makes you slowly fall out of love.
Chronic unhappiness kills love
Some people are unhappy with their life and they take out their unhappiness on their partner. They blame their partner for everything that’s wrong in their life. As a result, their partner falls out of love with them.
On top of this, unhappy people are simply not attractive.
2. The relationship becomes boring and predictable
Routine, such a simple word. Routine can be both good and bad.
Our minds and bodies long for routine. We are good at creating a routine in our lives. At the same time, all of us have the desire to explore and to be intrigued and surprised. We want to evolve and learn new things. Adventure is programmed into our biology.
At the beginning of most relationships, there is a lot of excitement and exploration.
Getting to know another human, and falling in love, the process is in itself an exciting occurrence.
Comfort replace excitement
As the relationship progress, both parties become comfortable with each other. But some couples take this too far and the whole relationship becomes stale and boring.
If you want to know how to keep things spicy and interesting check out my article How to make someone stay in love with you. Two people can absolutely be on an adventure together.
3. Infatuation wears of
Our bodies are programmed to release a lot of happy hormones at the beginning of a love affair. Basically, we get high on a love drug. It’s nice and very thrilling, but this also means that the drug needs to wear off at some point.
We produce fewer love hormones
In most relationships, there is a 3-month period of strong infatuation followed by a 2-year-long period of being in love. But around the 2-year mark, our bodies simply don’t produce the same amount of love hormones as they did at the begging.
At this point we start seeing our partner in a clearer light, we see them for who they really are. Sometimes the contrast between who we thought they were and who they really are makes people fall out of love.
Unreasonable expectations
People also fall out of love because they have high expectations of how they are supposed to feel when they are in a relationship with someone. We think we will always feel that strong pull toward our partner and when that feeling is not present, we assume that we have fallen out of love.
When the love drug wears off we might draw the conclusion that we are not in love anymore.
4. The communication is not working
You have probably already heard that good communication is one of the pillars of a thriving relationship.
But you might have never reflected on the fact that bad communication makes people fall out of love.
There are many examples of bad communication, for example not hearing what your partner is saying, not following through with your own promises. There is also “the silent treatment.” All of these communication problems will lower the affection two people have for each other.
Conflict is unavoidably
When two people get together and create a life together, they will have disagreements.
How you handle your conflicts will be absolutely crucial for answering the question if you and your partner will fall out of love.
Do you become angry and spiteful? A nasty fight can easily sow the first seed to falling out of love.
If you get upset and say and do things your partner think is unacceptable, this can lead to two people falling out of love.
5. They start missing their freedom
Freedom is very important for many people. Both men and women have a strong natural longing for freedom.
Unfortunately, in a toxic relationship, both parties often suffocate each other’s freedom.
They might stop each other from going out and meeting other people, or from pursuing dreams and new hobbies.
When you feel limited by your partner it’s easy to fall out of love. Basically, you feel like you cannot be yourself in the relationship and you start missing yourself.
Check out this article on How to fix an unhealthy relationship. You can absolutely improve a toxic relationship.
We sacrifice a bit of ourselves
Even in a healthy relationship, there is an amount of sacrifice that has to happen, two people seldom want the exact same thing. But when we perceive that the sacrifice is too great in relation to what we gain, the result is that people fall out of love.
6. There are dealbreakers that they overlooked
When we fall in love, we are inclined to only see possibilities, not obstacles. It’s those love hormones I mentioned before, they work hard at gluing you and your partner together.
They make us see the other person with rose-tinted glasses.
As the relationship progress, we start seeing the other person for who they really are.
We discover things we don’t like
People who are more on the anxious side of their personality often overlook dealbreakers. They are more focused on being in a relationship than evaluating if the other person is a good match or not.
When we are high on love, we often think we can overcome any obstacles. Or we secretly expect our partner to change.
A couple of years later we realize that those obstacles (for example poor money management skills) are simply too big and as a result, we slowly start falling out of love.
Our needs are not in sync
When we discover that the person we love doesn’t want the same thing out of life as we do, the result is often that we start questioning our love for them. We also start wondering if they are really the right person for us.
7. The sex life is not satisfying
There is a saying that goes that when the sex is good it’s 20 percent of the relationship, when the sex is bad it’s 80 percent of the relationship.
This is absolutely true. A sex life that is unsatisfying can singlehandedly make a person fall out of love.
One of the reasons behind this is that most relationships are monogamous, so sex is a need that you can only satisfy through your partner. You are completely dependent on them when it comes to this area of your life.
This makes your sex-life very unique when it comes to being a determination factor relationship-wise. Ultimately being sexually unfulfilled is one of the main reasons why people fall out of love.
People crave intimacy
Sex is also deeply connected with feeling seen and appreciated. Sex is also a validation token for our attractiveness.
For many people, sex and love are deeply connected. On top of that, sex is often also connected to people’s sense of self-worth. Considering all those factors, is no wonder people fall out of love when the sex life is not what they need and want.
8. They don’t feel heard and seen
This point is very important, and it ties into all the points I have mentioned above.
What people ultimately want, both in life and in relationships is to feel seen and heard.
We want to be loved for the unique person we are.
To feel seen and heard is a very deep thing, we want to be appreciated for the depths of our personality.
Life can get in the way
Sometimes we are so busy with life that we stop making time to listen to the other person. We don’t have enough deep conversations or ask enough deep questions.
On top of that, we ourselves also forget to show our partners who we really are.
We stop connecting
When we interviewed more than 300 men for HerBrilliantFriend, the main reason that they had broken up with someone was that they felt disconnected from their partner in one way or another.
The disconnect can happen in many different ways, for example, a couple who stops having fun together.
But all forms of disconnect are about not seeing and hearing your partner. This problem also occurs if you are a person who always pushes your agenda on your partner. If you always try to make them be something you want them to be. The result is that they will fall out of love with you.
9. They don’t feel supported
A supportive partner is very important for most people. After all, support is one of the basic biological needs that makes us form couples, to begin with.
Two people have a bigger chance to survive and thrive if they stick together and help each other.
This survival need is a strong pull as to why people form couples.
The relationship becomes a chore
This is also one of the strongest reasons why people fall out of love. They simply don’t feel like the relationship is beneficial for them. Maybe their partner doesn’t make enough money or make enough effort around the household.
In many cases, they feel like their partner is a heavy rock around their neck.
They might even feel they have a bigger chance of surviving on their own.
10. Not wanting the same thing in life
For a relationship to be thriving, two people need to have enough similarities. There are many areas in life where we can be similar or different.
For example, eating habits, how many children we want, what kind of hobbies we want to pursue, and political views. The list goes on.
A certain amount of difference makes the relationship interesting and dynamic. But if the differences are too great, they risk pushing a couple apart.
Who are you?
In the end, it comes down to the very basic question of how we want to spend our life. If two people seldom want to do the same thing, one person always has to compromise, and as a result, resentment grows.
Or the couple spends more and more time apart and as a result, they grow apart. We need common ground to connect and that connection needs to keep happening on a daily basis.
11. Their partner is too needy
This one is a little bit tricky because we all need our partners. In a healthy relationship, we have a mutual need for each other.
But if the relationship becomes too unbalanced, with one person always giving. (For example, money or emotional support.) This unbalance becomes a breeding ground for resentment. No one wants to feel taken advantage of.
It does come back to our basic need for survival. A needy partner will drain our resources. This holds true even if the neediness is purely mental.
We all have a need for thriving as a person and if our partners need too much from us, they take away from this need. We start to think we will be better off alone.
A Final note
I encourage you to think back to those times in your life when you have fallen out of love. Ask yourself why you did fall out of love. The answer will teach you a lot about love and relationships.
Also, ask yourself which of these 11 reasons why people fall out of love were present and which of them played the biggest role.
You can also ask friends why they fell out of love and see if their reasons match up with these 11 main reasons.
Why we fall out of love is not such a big mystery, if you ask me. This knowledge, now that you got it, will be fruitful to use to stay in love. Nothing of the above is inevitable. Relationships are meant to thrive.
Moa Ailert is the founder and editor-in-chief of Her Brilliant Friend.
She has a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and plenty of insight into human psychology from traveling and living in different places around the world.
Moa is currently based in Portugal where she has a guesthouse; Villa dos Irmaos.
She has various websites, among others Ericeira Insider, but Her brilliant friend is her true passion project.
