When Love Starts To Crack, These 3 Signs Always Show Up First
Early signs reveal when something deep is shifting.
Timothy Dykes | Unsplash By the time most couples come to my office for marriage counseling, they have tried everything they can on their own to work through the difficulties they're encountering. They're depleted; their internal resources and energy are dangerously low. Often feeling bruised and defeated, they come to counseling with a desperate plea for direction and advice.
Their eyes beg the question: Should we learn how to fix a broken relationship and try to create a better one, take some time away from each other to reformulate, or just give up? Before you can fix a relationship, you have to identify whether or not it is truly broken.
When love starts to crack, these three signs always show up first:
1. It becomes a one-sided relationship
It could be that there is no reciprocation in the relationship anymore. In other words, you may scratch your partner's back, but when you can't reach an itch, they couldn't care less.
Continuously putting in effort without reciprocation can lead to a sense of emotional exhaustion and a feeling that one's own needs and happiness are not important. Research has suggested that this imbalance can also lead to constant worrying and replaying conversations to figure out what went wrong.
2. There's a lack of intimacy
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Intimacy is something every relationship needs, so if you aren't getting that anymore, the relationship is broken. The breakdown of intimacy often follows a destructive, self-reinforcing pattern, research has revealed.
One partner's attempt to connect may be met with indifference or irritability, fueling feelings of rejection. This rejection can lead to resentment and emotional shutdown.
3. There's no trust anymore
Trust is the foundation of all relationships, so without it, your relationship is in trouble. Those are just a few. The list could go on, but if your gut is telling you that something is not right in your relationship, it's time to take ownership and work on fixing it.
This begs the question ... Can you fix a broken relationship? Relationship coaches and therapists can help you determine if your broken relationship is worth fixing. The answers to these six questions can help you determine whether healing your relationship is possible:
- Do both of you want the same thing?
- Is there enough energy left in the relationship to provide the fuel needed to repair and recommit?
- Have you resolved traumas from the past, or are they buried and showing up in repetitive patterns that don't serve you?
- Do one or both of you run away before giving resolution a chance?
- Are there underlying, hidden issues that are sabotaging your chances to reconnect?
- Do you both still want to try?
In the next few crucial hours of therapy, we often search for those answers amidst a storm of hostility, hurt, injustice, or the need to justify winning. Sometimes, one partner has the role of the injured party, and the other is remorseful and humiliated.
At other times, two people have been building up relationship conflicts that have never been resolved and have now become emotional cancers out of control, now finding a voice because of a current crisis. They have an exaggerated and helpless style of battling, and they are unable to hear each other among the din of their own pain. Other couples are in a war of silence; the first to speak with any attachment to connect loses power.
As we process what has brought them into therapy and identify the origins of their distress and the negative patterns they've rehearsed, I look for nine qualities in how couples interact with one another that signify whether they will be able to work toward making real progress in overcoming their obstacles. These key indicators reveal to me — and them — that hope exists.
Despite the most terrible of betrayals, the most anguishing of hurtful behaviors, and the most discouraging disappointments, these subtle but crucial revelations can predict the outcome of whether or not they can find their way back to the love they once knew.
Important note: Unhealthy or abusive relationships are not the same as broken relationships, because if there is abuse of any kind, it is not a relationship. In such cases, I recommend leaving and focusing on your mental health.
Dr. Randi Gunther is a clinical psychologist and marriage counselor who helps singles and couples. She is the author of the newsletter Heroic Love.
