It’s super rare that a breakup happens completely out of nowhere. In between all the crying and pints of ice cream and texts to our best friends, we most likely know that’s the truth. Even if we didn’t want to admit it, we knew that things weren’t going well with our boyfriend for a long time. It’s never super obvious when a relationship isn’t working out and when we just aren’t meant to be with this person. Whether we stop spending time with them or don’t say the kinds of things that we did back in the beginning, there are a lot of signs that spell trouble.
Of course, when we’re in the middle of a bad relationship, we rarely admit it to ourselves or the people who are closest to us. If our best friend, sister, or mom tell us that they’re worried about us and don’t think that we should stay with our boyfriend, we’re more likely to tell them to stay out of it than to say, “You know what, you’re totally right.” When we look back, we can see the signs, but it might take us a while. It’s much easier for us to be objective with the gift of hindsight. Here are 15 all too real stages of a standstill or doomed relationship.
15You Stop Saying “I Love You” And When You Do, It Feels Forced
There is nothing quite like saying “I love you” to someone for the first time. It’s so magical and amazing, you can’t believe that it’s happening to you, and you just want everyone to know how you feel about this person that is now such a big part of your life.
When your relationship is doomed, one of the first things that happen is you both stop saying these three little words to each other. It might happen slowly at first, but then all of a sudden, you realize that it’s been months since you talked to each other like this. It’s super important to talk about you feel about each other all the time. It further cements your connection and makes it clear that you’re both on the same page and are putting a ton of effort into the relationship.
14Your Closeness And Connection Goes Right Out The Window
This one is a no-brainer, right?! Being close with one another is a huge part of a relationship.
Sure, couples are different about this kind of stuff, and not everyone is super passionate all the time, and that’s definitely okay! But you don’t want to be that way most of the time or else it’s kind of strange. When a relationship is doomed, you’ll enter the “no closeness” phase and it can be super difficult to get out of this.
Once you stop being with each other this way, you start feeling more like friends than anything else, and that’s a really bad situation to be in.
Even if you both want to go back to the way that things used to be, too much time might have passed and you might feel differently about each other. Yup, it’s definitely super sad.
13You Rarely Kiss Or Show Any Affection
Just like intimacy, kissing is another important key to any successful relationship. Plus, if you’re attracted to someone and they feel that way about you, kissing is just fun, plain and simple.
Once you and your boyfriend stop kissing all the time, you might as well break up on the spot because your relationship is definitely doomed.
There’s no coming back from this.
You should both want to kiss all the time, even if, yes, life and work and grocery shopping and all that stuff gets in the way. No couple can actually make out 24/7, but if you two are crazy about each other, that should be what you wish could happen. And that feeling shouldn’t go away, no matter how long you’ve been together.
12You Don’t Watch TV Shows Together Anymore
Millennials might Netflix and chill when they’re casually dating, but millennial couples definitely do that too… except they literally watch a TV show or a movie.
It’s pretty common to binge watch a whole bunch of different TV shows with your boyfriend. It’s a nice way to spend a weeknight or Saturday night (and maybe even a Sunday afternoon too, let’s be real). You get to relax with your favorite person and spend time together and watch something super entertaining, too. Once you and your boyfriend stop watching TV together, though, you can be sure that trouble is brewing in your relationship. This means that you’re just not hanging out anymore and that’s no way to sustain a love story. The couple that binge watches together stays together.
11You Start Going Out Without Each Other
When your boyfriend is no longer your plus ones to big events like weddings or smaller events like get-togethers with your friend group, you know that things aren’t going super well.
You might not even realize that this is a bad thing because, hey, you’re being social, and maybe he’s less social than you are and more of a homebody.
But it’s important to go out together and have fun, and you always want to feel like you’re going to be there for each other. That means attending parties or events together, even when one or both of you aren’t really in the mood to go. It’s just what couples do and should be a no-brainer after being in a relationship for a while. When that’s not happening, you have to wonder why.
10You Miss The Old Days
It’s one thing to be nostalgic for the early days of your relationship, back when life felt carefree and magical and you were nuts about each other. It’s nice to look back on memories of a time when you fell in love. And it’s pretty amazing to talk about that stuff with your partner.
It’s totally another thing to feel like the early days were the best part of your relationship and things look really different now.
That’s not what you want to happen. If this describes you, then your relationship is doomed, and this is one of the stages. You know deep down that things aren’t the same and that it’s not good anymore, but you might not want to admit that. So, instead, you miss the old days.
9You Don’t Tell Each Other Anything
This is another stage of a doomed relationship. This is bad whether you two never were the kind of couple who shared absolutely everything or if this is something that has started happening pretty recently.
While there are some things that you each might want to keep private, like bodily functions or bathroom stuff (although some couples do talk about that…), you do want to share most of your life with this person. After all, that’s kind of the point of this whole relationship thing. You want to feel like they will hear anything that you have to say and really listen, and you want to have open and honest and real conversations. Without that, you really don’t have much of a relationship, and it’s just bad news.
8You Fight About Small Things
Sometimes a serious conversation turns into a fight, and you hate it but know that it might be necessary to get both of your points and feelings across. There’s nothing wrong with that, as long as you two work on your communication and don’t say truly cruel things that the two of you will regret later on.
When you start little fights all the time, that’s a different story, and it’s definitely one stage of a doomed relationship.
You don’t know how to talk to your partner anymore and feel frustrated, so instead of saying that you feel that you should break up, you fight with them. And you fight some more. It’s never going to get you the result that you want, but you don’t want to admit how bad things have gotten, so arguing it is.
7Your Friends Say They’re Concerned
When your relationship is full of love and totally for real, no one is going to say that they’re worried about you. It’s just never going to be a thing that happens. Your friends and family will be super happy for you both and will know that you’re totally made for each other. You’ll always have their complete support.
When you’re not right for each other, the support definitely won’t be there, and your friends and family will constantly tell you that they’re worried.
They’ll say that you’re not yourself anymore or you’re not that social or they just don’t think that you should stay with this guy. You might not listen to them, but they’re still going to talk to you about this. And that’s another way that you’ll know that your relationship is headed nowhere.
6You Threaten To Break Up A Lot
People who are happy and in love never, even threaten to break up with each other. They don’t do it during a fight. They don’t do it during a serious conversation. They don’t do it when the other person has done something mildly irritating but truly no big deal, like loading the dishwasher “wrong” or not picking up an avocado at the grocery store.
One stage of a doomed relationship is saying that if the other person doesn’t do something, they’ll be dumped. Or saying that maybe you should just break up if the person is going to be like or if they don’t love you or whatever else. This is just so hurtful and so uncool and will absolutely lead to an actual breakup.
5You Resent Each Other More And More
Resentment has no place in a relationship. Once you get to that point where you feel like your partner is doing something just to bug you or upset you, or when you swear that they don’t actually care about you, there’s really no going back.
When you resent someone, you blame them for a lot of things and you think that they’re being emotionally manipulative toward you.
Is that any way to be in a relationship?! Definitely not. Once those negative feelings start building up inside you and your boyfriend, you won’t be able to get back to a place of happiness and love. It sucks for sure, but it’s also pretty telling that you two aren’t right for each other, and it should be time to move on.
4You Feel More Like Friends Than A Couple
Basically, you never want to get to this point. It’s one of the worst things that you can experience and it’s one of the final stages of a doomed relationship. When this happens, you know that a breakup is on the horizon.
You just can’t sustain a supposedly romantic relationship when the romance isn’t there anymore. Whether you two were once madly in love but now just aren’t, or you never really felt that way about each other but were fooling yourselves, the end result is going to be the same. You need passion or a relationship will never amount to very much and heartbreak is always going to happen. Or maybe you won’t even care since, again, you didn’t really have an epic romance going on.
3You Go To Parties/Social Events Without Him
It’s fine to go to some things without your boyfriend. Maybe there’s a Saturday night when he’s honestly burnt-out and stressed from work so he needs a night off, or he’s got an epic cold (or a man cold which, as we any girlfriend knows, is even worse).
It’s weird if your boyfriend never goes to any form of event with you.
People will wonder if you two are having problems or what the deal is, and it should be time for you to wonder that yourself. You two need to be a team and present yourself as a united front, just the two of you against the world. That’s the magic and the good part of being in a relationship, and without that, it’s just not good.
2You Don’t Spend Time Together
A final stage that your relationship is totally doomed? When you and your boyfriend stop spending time together.
You want to start spending more and more time together as the relationship progresses, not less. Think about when you first started dating. You probably saw each other maybe twice a week for the first month or so, and then it became a bit more often, and then it was every single day and night because, hey, you were super in love and couldn’t be without each other. Then you moved in together because you were hanging out all the time anyway and going back and forth is too much. If you’re living together but never see each other and have separate schedules, that’s not a good sign.
1You Forget Your Old Rituals And Routines
A couple’s rituals and routines are what make them unique and, sometimes, how they show each other how much they care about others.
From Sunday brunch to Friday nights on the couch with pizza and a movie, from date nights to morning runs, there are so many things that you can do with your boyfriend that make you feel close and connected and, of course, totally in love.
If you two stop hanging out and, specifically, stop with your special routines and rituals, that’s not a good sign at all. It proves that you really don’t care about each other anymore and that neither one of you is putting any effort into the relationship. And that’s an impossible situation to backtrack from. When this happens, you know that your relationship is doomed, and there’s nothing that you can do.
