You promised forever but your heart is no longer in it. Perhaps you cannot pinpoint the moment you fell out of love with your significant other, or perhaps you actually can, but either way, the feelings are gone and you are torn about what to do.

It may surprise you, but romantic love in relationships can be cyclical. Yep, it’s true. Over the course of a long-term relationship, you may fall in and out of love with your partner, many times. Or you may fall out of love and are never able to get that loving, romantic feeling back.

You have some choices to make if or when you find yourself in this situation.

What To Do When You Have Fallen Out Of Love

Make An Effort To Reconnect

Sometimes we fall out of love because we sort of forget about one another. We get so busy with other things in life like work or children that we forget to nurture one of our most important relationships.

If you notice a lack of connection with your partner, it is important to try to get your relationship and your connection to one another back on track. You can reconnect by talking and listening to one another. Or by doing things together that require conversation and interaction.

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So no plopping down on the couch in front of the television. Try going out for a nice dinner or just on a walk together, and build up to a trip with just the two of you. Spending time together will either help make you closer or help you make a decision about ending things.

Become Friends

As I have said many times before, friendship, true friendship is the real foundation of a long-lasting, loving relationship. We trust our friends, we depend on our friends, and we confide in our friends.

It is important to be that safe place for each other. If you were never friends, this may be a good time to explore a friendship with each other and see where that takes you. People in relationships fall in and out of love, but having a friendship with one another can get you through that lull in love.

Self-Reflect

You need to figure out what has changed. Has your partner changed or have you changed? Has your partner committed an unforgivable deal breaker?

Self-reflection is an important tool to use in deciding where do you go from here. Do you no longer want to be married, are you struggling mentally and emotionally, or do you think the relationship has run its course?

You may not like the conclusion you come to after reflecting on how you got to this place, but it knowing the answer will help you move forward, either with your partner or alone.

Relationship Counseling

Counseling can help, especially if you have identified a cause for your change of heart but still want to work things out. Of course, your partner also has to be a willing participant for couple’s counseling to work, but either way, it is worth a shot.

You may also want to consider individual counseling. Counseling just for you will assist with some much-needed self-reflection and will help you process your feelings and emotions about no longer being in love with your partner.

Relationships are work. Some relationships are hard work. And some relationships are not worth the work. At the end of the day, only you can decide if the relationship is worth fighting for. Is it worth the work and effort you need to put in to make things better or do you just want to be done and move on with your life? It’s a difficult decision but and a necessary one if you are no longer in love.

What are your thoughts on handling a relationship when you have fallen out of love? Do you agree with my recommendations? What would you do? Please share your thoughts and experience!

“The way I see it, you mostly stop loving a person the same way you stop respecting them. It can happen all at once if something enormous and terrible falls over the two of you. But for the most part, it happens in inches. In a thousand tiny moments of contempt that unravel the image you had of the person you thought you knew.”
― Sarah Gailey, The Echo Wife