Why Does Love Leave a Relationship?

After a few years of married life feelings cool down and only habit and predictability are left. Three simple ideas to start turning it around.

Why does love leave a relationship?

Many couples run into this: after some time of married life their feelings cool down. Some freshness goes out of the relationship, they lose interest in each other, and what’s left is habit and predictability.

People simply live together, deal with household matters, go to work, raise children, argue and fight about something, then make up.

And in the middle of this ordinary, grey family life, one of them (and sometimes both at once) starts to feel: “It could all have been completely different. I’m living in someone else’s movie.” A quiet despair grows, along with the feeling that you’re alone with emotions your partner neither understands nor shares.

There are a few simple ideas that can help you start changing things for the better:

1. You once loved this person very much and agreed to walk through life together. That person hasn’t gone anywhere. That husband (or wife) still lives with you under one roof. It’s just that your vision may be clouded right now by fatigue, resentment and disappointment. You look more at what the person does “wrong” (from your point of view) than at what they do well.

Wherever the focus of your attention is — that’s the direction your relationship will develop in.

Forgiving and letting go of the pain you were caused is worth doing for the sake of your own inner peace.

2. A relationship needs systematic work. I know this advice sounds a little banal, but I consult many couples and individuals almost every day. And I see that 90% of people in a family simply don’t do it.

When I ask “What’s your husband’s (wife’s) love language?”, I often hear “I don’t know what that is…” in reply. And it’s the same with a great many things, from sex to goals and a vision for life.

Plenty of people live together for decades without knowing elementary things about the person they love.

3. Don’t be afraid to talk about what you feel and what is really going on. The person you love sees and senses anyway that something is off with you. The situation is already not fine. There’s no need to leave them to spin themselves up.

Talk simply and honestly about what’s happening. Speak without judgement, without anger, in a warm and respectful tone. Choose the right moment for such conversations — and definitely don’t open with “we need to have a serious talk”.

There are many more reasons why love leaves a relationship.

And what reasons would you name for everything going cold in a family?

Continued in Selfishness, Pride, and Pettiness.