Isn’t that one of the things you deeply wanted in life? You want the person you’re with to always want you as much as you want them. When you don’t feel strong reassurance of the level of love and respect in your relationship, you’ll easily get drowned in the pool of overwhelming anxiety, fear, doubts, and stress.
Because we all know it isn’t funny to be interested in someone only to have them uninterested in us, let alone have someone we’ve been with for a while suddenly turn cold and uninterested.
That’s why we all, will always prefer quality, deep, and healthy relationships where the love won’t fade or wither. But shit usually happens. And sometimes, the beautiful love and relationships we once had with someone special will all of a sudden become something else.
And at the end of the day, we end up keeping late nights worrying or wondering if our partners still love us as much as they did.
Sounds relatable, right?
Well, here are 5 of the very worst things that’ll happen when your partner is no longer interested.
1. You become a convenience and not a priority.
This might not be something new to you — it’s something you might have heard before. But sometimes, we just have to hear things in a specific way, over, and over again, for them to become flesh.
The very best relationships are mutual, reciprocal, or two-sided and aren’t only characterized by mutual feelings of love or efforts from both parties, but also genuine feelings and acts of love that aren’t inspired by what one party will benefit from the other or the relationship, neither do they occur at the convenience of one party only.
However, some people simply choose to treat their partners like some bank of emotional or financial support or even physical or sexual pleasure — where they’ll just walk away as soon as their selfish needs are met.
And the same or some other people will, in turn, choose to do nothing but take their partners or relationships for granted as they place them at the very bottom of their priority lists.
For instance, they’ll rarely text or reply to their partners’ texts and even if they do, it’ll be nothing but short or curt responses, they might even go to the extent of constantly canceling important plans or dates, and even making out time for their partners when they can no longer find excuses not to.
There’ll be little to no happiness, contentment, and peace of mind for the partner on the shorter end of the stick in such a relationship that isn’t deeply rooted in genuine love and mutual respect and even desire.
The thing is, your relationship is just another one-sided or unbalanced relationship if your partner doesn’t treat you like a priority but a convenience. This doesn’t mean your partner should be thinking of you all day long enough to often text or call you when you aren’t together or treat and worship you like some god or goddess.
The questions should be:
Does your partner put you first and above all the emotional, financial, and sexual benefits they’re getting from the relationship? Do they prioritize and love you enough to see no reason to do things that’ll harm you or jeopardize the relationship?
Are they compassionate enough to genuinely apologize and make amends when they occasionally hurt you? And are they passionate enough to care about creating couple-times where you both can create lots of good memories?
Even though you’ve been together for over a decade or more, if you suddenly can’t answer yes to any of these questions, they’ve probably fallen out of love with you and are no longer interested in you.
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2. Pushing your boundaries becomes the other of the day.
One of the things I love the most about great and healthy relationships is the freedom, peace, and happiness that comes with the fact that you don’t have to give in to any pressure to behave in ways you don’t like or endure and tolerate behaviors you aren’t comfortable with. As well as the fact that your partner truly sees, hears, respects, and values you.
The problem is that some people who aren’t always like that, will all of a sudden, change and become nothing but energy-depleting partners whose new second natures are trampling all over their partners’ boundaries, forcing their partners to put themselves at a disadvantage to please them and keep the relationship going.
They’ll all of a sudden, begin to say things that are excruciating and will extremely hurt their partners, all in the name of being ‘brutally’ honest.
They’ll begin to pressure their partners to give up their needs for theirs and expect their partners to do their bidding even when they don’t want to.
Worse, they’ll begin to manipulate their partners into believing that they should normalize enduring and accommodating their lousy behaviors.
Well, the truth is, your relationship is no better than a one-sided relationship if you constantly feel stifled by the incessant and endless acts of disrespect of your boundaries by your partner who you barely recognize because they’ve changed completely.
Hence, if you all of a sudden, begin to feel like your partner does nothing but put up behaviors that brutally violate your boundaries, then it’s obvious they’re no longer interested in you.
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3. It’ll feel like you’re always walking on eggshells.
Walking on eggshells in a relationship is usually a sign of emotional abuse and can have the effect of messing with someone’s mental health.
When it constantly feels like you’re on unstable ground and have to often go out of your way to avoid mind-boggling arguments even when it means keeping mute on things that stress, hurt, or harm you, you’re likely being emotionally abused by someone who’s suffering from either mental health illness or low self-esteem hence, often reacts out of proportion to even the smallest situations.
But it’s something that’s almost entirely different when a relationship that was never like that for a long time suddenly begins to feel like you’re carefully walking on fragile and unpredictable eggshells that you have to avoid topics related to your partner’s commitment to you and the relationship.
A healthy and functional relationship is nothing but an open and free playground where both parties involved can freely talk about everything even their deepest doubts, fears, and insecurities without receiving negative reactions like glaring looks, silent treatments, or even physically aggressive reactions from the other party.
Because someone will not just be proving that they don’t love you anymore when all they do is make you doubt, second-guess, and adapt your actions and words in a way that you always avoid setting them off, especially about their commitment to the relationship. They’re also being toxic and yes, abusive.
Someone that loves and will still love you will always know this. As a result, they’ll hardly act in ways that’ll make you doubt their commitments. And if they mistakenly do, they won’t just be open to talking about it but will ensure they reassure you of their love and commitment to you.
Hence, one of the most terrible things that might happen when your partner is no longer interested in you is that you’ll get subtle clues but won’t be able to talk about it with them — they’ll keep you treading tightly on eggshells.
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4. You often feel manipulated.
The worst thing that could happen to you is to have someone that no longer loves you manipulate and use your doubts, fears, and weaknesses against you.
That way, they’ll either insinuate that you’re the one who no longer loves them or tries in every possible way to invalidate your feelings whenever you confront them about their commitments.
By doing any of these, their ultimate goal is to somehow make you responsible for the cold and unloving vibes in the relationship. They no longer want to commit but at the same time, they don’t want to let you go.
In most cases, they’re keeping you for some reasons best known to them and that are geared to their selfish benefits. In my case, my ex-girlfriend was keeping me as her 4th or 5th best choice who’s so nice enough to love her unconditionally when all things fail elsewhere.
While she’d always find ways to invalidate my concerns about her commitment level. She’d either turn the whole thing on me claiming that I no longer love her or tell me that I’m just making things up. I stayed that long with her because she wasn’t always like that and I was hoping things will eventually go back to as they were before — I still regret doing so.
Now, I know that it all began when she somehow began to think she could do better than me. And wasn’t really interested but wanted me as a backup. That’s why I’d advise anyone who cares to listen, to take their heels the moment their relationship becomes this toxic.
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5. Disrespecting you just comes naturally to them.
This list would have not been complete to me If I omitted this. In fact, it’s somehow the main theme of the post. Someone who no longer respects you might no longer love you enough to prioritize you instead, they’ll make you convenience.
In the same way, someone who no longer respects your boundaries, whose fear of previous reactions keeps you treading tightly on eggshells, or who often manipulates you no longer has enough respect and love for you.
Some persons might even take things even further to the extent of consistent flirting, throwing cynical words, and even heightened cheating with little to no care about you, your feelings, and the relationship.
While it’s totally up to you, and it’s even okay to stay back if you think you can change things, a partner that no longer respects you and worse, doesn’t love you anymore will constantly leave you feeling wary, angry, deeply resentful, and everything but happy and satisfied.
We all deserve better than people who aren’t even half-interested in us as much as we are in them.
And I strongly believe that I should channel elsewhere the same energy I would use in waiting patiently and trying too hard to win back the love and interest of someone who for some reason I don’t know decided to fall out of love with me. Because anything contrary isn’t worth the effort.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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