Why we fall out of love

“When
the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amore!” sang Dean
Martin. We all know the delicious feeling of new love, but what about
the flip side? Love doesn’t always last, and its retreat can leave us
bewildered, confused or downright depressed.

Even if you were
raised on a plentiful diet of fairy tales, you know that “till death do
us part” can be a rare thing. Even staying with someone forever is no
guarantee of experiencing lasting love. But why do people really fall
out of love? Is there anything we can do to make love stay? Do some of
us give up too easily? To understand the phenomenon of love’s end, we
asked the experts’ opinions on the subject. Here are the top three
reasons they shared with us:

1. A distancing “Wave” can topple a
good thing if you let it. Ken Page, psychotherapist and author of the
Finding Love blog for Psychology Today and founder of the Deeper Dating
website, has identified a phenomenon that can destroy new love: “The
‘Wave’ occurs when we unconsciously push a caring and available person
away by inwardly diminishing his or her worth.” Think about how Carrie
Bradshaw behaved when she first started dating Aidan Shaw: Aidan was
“too available” and Carrie freaked because she wasn’t used to being with
someone so open.

“When someone is available and decent,” Page
explains, “something inside us knows [this person] can get to our nest,
our soul — the place where we care the most and can be hurt the most.
And our unconscious gets panicked.” If you find yourself breaking up
with someone awesome for no good reason, check yourself; you might be
acting out of fear. After all, real love is a big deal. It involves a
leap of faith, and that can be a scary thing. Those who give in to the
Wave fall out of love before they even give themselves a chance to fall
properly in love, and that’s kind of sad.

2. Unwillingness to
discuss relationship problems. OK, let’s say you’ve taken that leap and
you’re in a long-term, committed relationship. Good for you! Now, don’t
forget to communicate with your partner regularly. Guy Winch, Ph.D.,
author of The Squeaky Wheel: Complaining the Right Way to Get Results,
Improve Your Relationships and Enhance Self-Esteem, says that people
fall out of love because they don’t talk through their relationship
peeves with each other: “Research shows that couples who are able to
voice complaints well and discuss them productively have greater marital
satisfaction and much lower divorce rates than couples who are unable
to do so.” If you’re in a newer relationship, iron out the kinks early
on to keep love alive over the long haul. “It is much easier to address
issues earlier in a relationship than later, just as it is much harder
to mold cement once it has dried and hardened,” explains Winch.

The
key word here, however, is “productively.” It usually doesn’t help to
fight and blame your partner for all of the relationship’s problems. Dr.
Fran Praver, author of The New Science of Love: How Understanding Your
Brain’s Wiring Can Help Rekindle Your Relationship, says that “when
couples play the blame game, they wage a war of being right where both
parties lose. It may seem like a strong personality to insist on being
right, but in fact ‘rightness’ is born out of rigidity and weakness, not
strength.” Couples fall out of love when they can’t find a way to make
the partnership good for both people involved. Creativity and open minds
are the stuff of lasting love; silence and blaming, though? Not so
much.

3. People change or get bored with each other. April
Masini, the relationship expert behind AskApril.com and author of
Romantic Date Ideas, says: “Over time, people can change — or more
often, they become who they really are. Someone who loved his steady
business career may suddenly realize he always wanted to be a stand-up
comedian and throw caution to the wind to chase his dreams.” People
evolve; circumstances change — and sometimes, relationships can’t be
sustained as a result. But if you really know your partner down to the
core, the changes won’t be as shocking. “The kind of change that leads
to love lost is always about a buried desire to be someone that’s
repressed inside,” continues Masini. “It’s important to really know your
partner to avoid this lost-love syndrome.” In other words, don’t
neglect someone you care about. You cannot get to know a person
thoroughly right away — rather, it’s a lifelong journey. There’s a whole
universe inside the person you fell for, and if you don’t check in with
that individual on a regular basis, you could wake up one day hearing
this: “I’m unhappy. I’m moving to another country to start my life over
fresh, and you’re not invited.”

If you find yourself perusing
faraway rental homes and thinking, “He’s changed!” or “I’m just so bored
with her,” think about holding on and digging a little deeper first.
“At a certain point in a relationship, according to Imago Couples
Therapy,” says Page, “each partner feels that the thing they most need
from their partner is the very thing that their partner can’t give. At
that point, many people feel that the relationship has run its course
and they leave. The reality, however, is much different. This can be the
beginning phase of an entirely new level of intimacy, if they each
decide to learn to grow and try to give that partner what [he or she
needs most].”

Then again, love doesn’t necessarily have to last
decades (or a lifetime) to matter. Romantic relationships can also
evolve into dear friendships — and that’s perfectly fine. Dr. Lissa
Coffey, author of the book, Closure and the Law of Relationship: Endings
as New Beginnings, agrees. “We may come together for a certain period
of time to help each other learn and grow, and when that has been
accomplished, we’ve gotten everything we were meant to get out of the
relationship. Then it changes,” Coffey explains. “It doesn’t have to
end; it’s just redefined.”

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