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. To help you sort out what’s part of normal relationship ups and downs and what the signs he wants to break up are, we talked to dating and relationship expert Mark Rosenfeld from Make Him Yours to learn how to tell if your relationship is in trouble.
Video Transcript:
Hey, it’s Mark here from Make Him Yours and today we are talking about nine signs that your relationship is in trouble. I’m giving you the warning signs that there’s dark waters ahead and that you need to act now. Stay tuned. Whether you’re single right now and want to start you new relationship with the knowledge of how it should look, or in a relationship right now and are worried that yours might be going in the wrong direction, today I’m giving you warning signs that your relationship is heading for trouble.
Here are 9 signs he wants to break up:
1. 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.
2. Topics start to go off limits.
I 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.
3. You can’t just relax and trust him.
So 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.
4. Your emotional state is entirely dependent on your partner and your relationship.
Now 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.
5. You’re not friends anymore.
So 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.
6. 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.
7. You have difficult conversations over text message.
I always know when I’m on a discovery call with a woman and she’s sharing a situation in her life with a man to me, that when she’s telling me the story and the difficult conversations are starting to happen over text, that the relationship and the situation is in a downhill spiral. You never want to have difficult conversations over text. If he tries to start one, send him the text message back, “Not a convo for text. Let’s chat. :-)” Take it away from text message at all times.
8. Your partner won’t work with you.
So I have lots of different women come to me, and many of them are in relationships themselves wanting to make things better. One of the questions I always ask is, “Is he willing to work with you?” To be frank with you, I have couples who come to me in pretty dire situations. And she works on it and he works on it, and things get better. Whereas other women come to me with an incompatibility that may not be that major, but he’s not willing to work on it or acknowledge it. And of course what happens in that instance is over time it grows and snowballs. If the man is willing to work on things with you and take action into improving the aspects of the relationship, there’s a real chance that that relationship can become good. But for even moderate or sometimes minor problems, if the guy isn’t willing to work on them at all, and it’s something you can’t deal with, then it’s a strong sign your relationship is in trouble.
9. You spend more time unhappy than you do happy.
What’s the ultimate sign of a fulfilling relationship? How many days are you spending in it where you’re happy and how many days are you spending in it when you’re unhappy. I have a client who’s never experienced a really positive relationship that’s happy most of the time, and she struggles leaving a bad one because she wonders if there’s anything better out there. Now, I should add a caveat here: This is happy about the relationship. It’s not about how you’re feeling about your own life; it’s not about how you’re feeling about the things going on with you. They’re your responsibility. But if you’re not feeling happy about the relationship itself, at the very least, more often than you’re unhappy about it, what are you doing in it?
Well those are the signs. They’re not dead set. You can work on these, and as I said with number eight, if your man is willing to work on this with you, a lot of these can be fixed, worked on, resolved. But these are signs that your relationship is in trouble. Don’t ignore them.
I’d love to hear from you. Have you experienced these signs yourself? Seen them in a relationship? Has it led to demise or did you come back from them? And I look forward to seeing you in the next video very soon.
