Falling out of love happens gradually. We may start to notice that our feelings for the other person are changing. Gradually, we become aware that the sense of our emotional connection is fading.
We may start to feel more irritated than is usual as we stop wanting to share details of our day, work, and time. Whereas we formerly wanted to tell our partner what was happening, we now notice that that feels less important, that connecting with them feels less important. Typically, when we fall out of love, our desire for sex and physical intimacy starts to diminish.
Our sense of attachment to our partner has changed, and whereas the other person may have felt like the centre of our worlds, of our existence, now that changes. It is natural, but painful. What was a profound and meaningful attachment is coming apart. We are falling out of love.
Long-distance relationships and falling out of love
We were in a long-term relationship, we were living in different parts of the country but it was ok. We managed the distance. We wrote to each other, we telephoned each every day. I had a phone put in my room at university so we could have privacy to speak to each other. This was before mobile phones. And then one day he told me that his feelings had changed, that the distance didn’t work for him anymore. I was heartbroken but there was nothing I could do about it, he said he had fallen out of love with me. We broke up. It was very painful. Anonymous client.
When we are in love, long-distance relationships don’t seem to be a problem. The heart shrinks the distance. But that doesn’t mean that it is always sufficient, or that it always will. There are times when the distance proves too big an obstacle to support the relationship.
Attachment issues and falling out of love
Sometimes people with more insecure or disorganised attachment styles may be more prone to falling out of love than others.
For people who grew up feeling insecure in their original family home, a weakness may always remain when it comes to developing a secure and meaningful attachments later in life.
This may not be apparent to us until we mature and find ourselves in love relationships. It is only then, as we start to understand more about our psychologies and, as it were, our emotional architecture, that we may become aware that we have a tendency to struggle to maintain a sense of emotional intimacy and connection.
Anxiety and falling out of love
For reasons that may appear obscure, instead of feeling settled in love, we start to feel anxious. If we have attachment wounds like these, then remaining in love may always present us with problems.
Sooner or later, we will need to try to find a way to work on this, otherwise we may be destined to repeat the patterns, the old emotional patterns we grew up with.
That is not to say that we blame our parents or our families for our own struggle to stay in love and to build and nurture attachments, but that we start to look at ourselves more closely and to take more responsibility for who we are.
We become more able and prepared to recognise that we struggle to remain consistent in relationships, that we need to try to work with our attachment styles.
Falling in love; staying in love
In a sense, falling in love may always be easier than staying in love. But we might want to be able to nurture and foster a greater sense of ongoing security with our partner.
If we go on to have children, we will want them to grow up secure and well attached. We may not have come from such secure and well-attached families ourselves, but that doesn’t mean we can’t develop them. It might take a certain kind of work. It might mean that taking the time to work on our issues, on who we are, in the confidentiality of psychotherapy is helpful.
It can be done, and instead of being people who fall out of love, we can work on developing more secure attachment bonds.
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Having the chance to speak in a confidential setting is often the key to developing a clearer understanding of what might be behind our experiences and the way we behave in love relationships. It may provide the space to understand more about how experiences have shaped us in ways that we haven’t fully acknowledged.
By giving yourself a safe space to look at these things you may start to discover a greater sense of possibilities, and this may be the beginning of developing a greater sense of understanding how to relate to yourself and others, how to start living more fully again, and how to start to have healthy relationships with yourself and other people.
The chance to reflect on ourselves, our feelings and experience can be powerful and transformative. Out of this, you may be able to develop a clearer understanding of how you and your sense of your problems have developed, and what you can change.
I have been working with people on issues such like this for more than twenty years. My work is built around helping you to develop greater insight into who you are, and how you live.
Contact me to arrange a free telephone consultation to discuss how my approach might help you.
Email: toby@tobyingham.com
