Dating sucks, so it’s easy to hold on to someone you know doesn’t love you the way you deserve to be loved just to avoid being thrown back into the single life. In my experience, however, being obsessed with keeping my boyfriend kept me from seeing what was really happening right in front of my eyes. I couldn’t see how unhappy he was in our relationship until he was basically halfway out the door. By then, I knew he was going to break up with me probably before even he did.
- He Stopped Texting Me. He’d text me all the time when we first started dating. Of course, as time went on, the good morning texts stopped coming every day and our conversations weren’t always as flirty. For a while, I didn’t think that was a big deal. It wasn’t until he stopped responding to a majority of my texts that I knew something was up. He didn’t want to talk to me anymore — he just didn’t have the balls to come out and say it.
- He Stopped Listening to Anything I Had to Say. I’d tell him something Saturday morning that he wouldn’t remember by Saturday night. Either he was forgetting everything I said or he wasn’t listening to me when I first said it. Whatever the reason, it became abundantly clear that he wasn’t interested in anything I was talking about anymore. He couldn’t even fake interest and he didn’t seem to care.
- He Started Making Excuses For Avoiding Me. He claimed his busy schedule was to blame for us spending less and less time together and that his student loans were making it too hard to take me out on dates. To be fair, he was busy and he did have student loans, but all of those things existed when we first started dating and he was still able to spend time with me then.
- He Started Going Out Way More — without me. He didn’t have the time or money to hang out with me, but that didn’t stop him from going to the bars almost every night with his friends. He wasn’t that much of a partier during most of our relationship, but then suddenly, out of nowhere, he became the life of the party. He was out all the time, traveling to Vegas and Cabo. Unfortunately, he was always with “the guys,” so I never caught an invite.
- He Stopped Saying, “I Love You.” In the beginning of our relationship, he’d take the time to tell me how much he cared, but that stopped. Sure, the romance comes down to a slower simmer after the honeymoon period, but he rarely said anything at all about his feelings. The only time he’d say he loved me was was when I said it first… and even then, it didn’t seem like he really meant it.
- He Picked Fights All The Time. If I questioned him about his busy schedule, he’d flip the script and get mad at me for wanting “too much out of the relationship” (whatever that meant). He was king of randomly fighting with me over things that weren’t even important. If I wanted to eat Chinese, he’d beg for Italian. If I wanted to park underground, he’d want to valet. It felt like he was purposely trying to distance himself from me and my opinions.
- He’d Talk About His Future without me in it. I noticed that “we” started to become “I.” He wasn’t including me in his weekend plans anymore, and he sure as crap wasn’t including me in any long-term plans. He once said, “When I’m 30, I’m going to travel the world and live like a nomad.” First of all, that’s dumb. Second, where did that leave me?
- He Was Being Secretive. He never lied to me — at least, I never caught him in a lie. However, he was very shady. He started randomly deleting his message threads (and no, I wasn’t snooping — I know this because he’d text in front of me). One day he’d have a ton of threads, and the next day, he wouldn’t have any. Maybe I’m being dramatic and jumping to conclusions, but I got the vibe that he didn’t want me to see a lot of what he was talking about and who he was talking to.
- Sex Wasn’t As Passionate. Our sex life wasn’t at all like it used to be. We were still going at it like rabbits, but the passion wasn’t there. The kissing decreased and it seemed to be more about the action of sex than what sex represented — or what it was supposed to represent, anyway.
- He Made Me Feel Like Crap. We weren’t getting along — well, he wasn’t getting along with me. I couldn’t do anything right but I could do a ton of stuff wrong. It seemed like everything I did pissed him off. I was always confused and wondering why he seemed so angry, and that was the biggest sign of all that things weren’t right. My boyfriend wasn’t just acting disinterested in me, he was acting outright done with me and our relationship. Soon after, he said it out loud and I wasn’t surprised at all.