When your relationship is in trouble, it’s not always easy to see it. Sometimes you may feel like something is off, but you’re not sure what it is or if it’s even a bad thing. Other times, you can feel someone drifting away or like the end is near.
# Lack of sex
If the sex has dried up in your relationship, or if one or both of you doesn’t want to make time for intimacy, it’s a strong indicator that your relationship is not heading in a good direction. What’s a normal frequency of sex? It varies between couples and there’s no “normal normal.” But, a couple should be aiming for at least once a week to connect and make time for intimacy.
# Topics start to go off limitsI remember in a former relationship of mine a point where I started to feel very uncomfortable, and I wasn’t sure why. Looking back I realized it, it was the day when I stopped feeling like I could communicate everything and say everything that was on my mind. Now why did I get like that? Well, I didn’t do things perfectly. If I’d been braver, I would have just said it anyway. The point is though, if your communication has decreased and you’re starting to feel like there are topics you’ve got to walk on eggshells around or there are topics you can’t communicate, it’s a strong sign your relationship is in trouble. A good couple can always communicate everything. They can talk about every topic whether it’s easy or difficult because communication has to be maintained in a good relationship.
# You can’t just relax and trust himSo he goes out for a night with the boys, he gets a message from a girl’s number that you don’t know on his phone, and you can’t just trust him and relax. That’s not a nice feeling and it’s not a feeling that can continue in your relationship. Now of course there’s going to be insecurities that you can address on your own. But what we’re talking about here is intuition—where you just don’t feel good. Something in your gut is telling you that something is off. That is a strong sign that your relationship is in trouble.
# Your emotional state is entirely dependent on your partner and your relationshipNow I talk a lot on my YouTube channel about taking responsibility for your thoughts, and therefore taking responsibility for your emotions. It’s important to remember that ultimately you are in control of these things. But to say that your partner will never affect your emotions is crazy, right? You’d have to be a psychopath to never be affected by someone else and to never have your emotions be connected to another person. The problem is when it gets excessive. You want to always ensure that you’re sourcing a good portion of your emotional state and your happiness and your security from yourself. And that way it’s going back and forth between your partner, and you’re forming a healthy relationship.
# You’re not friends anymoreSo passion and sex are important, but so is being friends underneath it. A couple will do so much better when they’re also best buddies, when they love hanging out together, when they enjoy the time spent together as friends. You can’t have a relationship survive just as friends, but you also can’t have it survive just as passion and sex. You need both. And so if you’re not friends anymore—this is something I tell my married clients a lot—you have to foster that friendship. You have to be friends underneath it all or you’re not going to treat each other like friends, and things are going to go downhill.
# You have differences in major values
This is perhaps the saddest reason that your relationship could be in trouble and the hardest to deal with. Because the fact is that you could have wonderful chemistry and you could very much be in love with someone who isn’t right for you because they have differences in their major values.
They want to live in the country and you want to live in the city. He wants kids and you don’t, or vice-versa. You have major differences in money, in health values, in religious values. When these differences are so fundamental that you see yourself and your lives going in totally different directions, that means that despite all the chemistry in the world, you don’t have the compatibility to survive as a couple.
Share your vision with him for what you want. And ask yourself, “Can I achieve what I want in my life while I’m in this relationship?” Have him ask the same question. If your visions are compatible or if you can at least get them together with enough compromise, then you have a compatible relationship where you can let the chemistry foster and run it.