6 Major Signs You Want To Give Up On Your Relationship

Sometimes, relationships don’t work out. One day you wake up, and you realize that it’s not like the first few weeks or months when you first met your special someone.

People oftentimes get lost in the euphoria during the start, and they fail to see the signs of falling out of love and the ultimate breakup that follows. Only after a few weeks of moping, binge drinking, crying yourself to sleep, and telling yourself that it’s okay does the hindsight work its way to your consciousness.

The thing that differentiates romantic relationships from all others is the ambiguous thing people call the "spark." It may go by other names like "butterflies in your stomach," "fireworks," or "magic."

# You start to put distance between you and your partner

Remember the first weeks of your relationship? Remember that uneasy restlessness you feel whenever you’re apart?

Now, the tables have turned. You suddenly feel tired with your routine get-togethers and start to skip calls, emails, and other forms of communication. Gradually, you ask for more time alone, you postpone dates, dinners, vacations, etc., while coming up with plausible excuses to give.

# You would rather go out with friends or other people rather than your partner

Similar to the first, you suddenly seek the company of your friends. During the first few weeks of your relationship, you can barely attend poker nights, reunions, sleepovers, spa bonding sessions, or whatever you and your friends do.

Now, you’re no longer missing in action. The hangouts get more and more frequent to the point that you cancelled dinner with your partner’s family with a lame excuse, just so you can grab a beer at the pub with your mates.

# You would rather be busy or productive with something than spend time together

If not hanging out with your friends, you delve into a workaholic frenzy just to stay away from your partner. You can’t go out for coffee because you’re doing overtime or attending a dinner meeting with your boss. Since work is a valid reason to be away, people tend to use this often. Your partner suddenly drops rank from your priorities checklist.

When you can’t seem to avoid your partner…

Maybe you were confronted about it, and you agreed to go out despite all the reasons in your playbook. You agreed just to spare yourself from the “you don’t have time for me anymore” tirade. So when you’re together, this is what happens:

# You act withdrawn and spaced out

Your partner is telling you about home and work troubles, or maybe something exciting they saw online, all the usual stuff you guys used to talk about when going out. Your partner has been going at it for minutes, when they startle you with a question that you clumsily respond to because you’re preoccupied with wayward thoughts.

You’ve seen it in movies before: you’re imagining your other happy place while the other person’s voice blurs into an incoherent droning. All of a sudden, they snap you from your reverie with, “hey, are you all right?”

# You stop planning activities that would bring both of you together

Spending time with your partner starts to feel like a drag, so you avoid them like the plague. You rarely seek out your partner anymore and go passive aggressive by either making yourself busy or unavailable. DVD marathon night? Nah. You barricade yourself in the basement with a box of pizza and a six-pack, while spending long hours with your PlayStation 4.

Maybe you’re not that harsh. You still go out every now and then, but you only agree to dates that are convenient for you. If it’s too far, too expensive, or just too long and ritualistic, forget it.

# You become extra irritable and antagonize your partner frequently

If during the first weeks of the relationship you laugh at your partner’s foolish antics and tolerate their flaws and the things that your partner does to annoy you, now every little thing that they do ticks you off. If you’re a guy, you act worse than a woman during her period. And if you’re a woman, you’re most likely to use that as an excuse.

It could be the shirt he’s wearing, the way she plays with your hair, or old habits that you kept silent about. You suddenly confront your partner, and it would later erupt into a heated argument. Maybe you’re doing this unconsciously, which is a clear sign that you’re not into the relationship anymore, or you’re deliberately acting like a dick to speed up the breakup.