Here’s Why Your Relationship Falls Apart After the Honeymoon Phase

We’ve all been there. One minute, you’re walking on a cloud in an endlessly exhilarating, new relationship. You’re constantly going out together, you’re checking out new restaurants, you take pictures everywhere you go. People are disgusted with how much time you spend together, but you don’t care because it’s so damn fun.

It’s relentlessly hot and nerve-racking at the same time.

You can’t get enough of each other and you don’t even know why. But you don’t even care to figure it out, either. And you don’t owe each other anything yet — there’s no obligation to call or text, you just do it when you feel like it and it somehow works out.

There’s a sense of looming anxiety that’s always present, but it seems to get resolved on its own. You’re like, “I wonder if I’m going to hear from them today…” and then you do, and it’s just in nick of time. But it’s okay, because it adds to the thrill. Your stomach drops when you see them. Maybe you even yell at each other from time to time, but you don’t care because the make-up sex is amazing.

You’re holding cotton candy and a giant teddy bear, and you’re hearing nothing but slot machine cha-chings and carnival music.

And suddenly, it becomes blah.

You know their favorite outfits and you’ve seen them several times. You don’t get butterflies when you see them anymore. You stop spending money on each other and you’d rather just have the whole bed to yourself than cuddle and lose sleep. You both sort of stop trying and start to go through the motions.

What was seemingly a never-ending flight through space in an F-16 fighter jet has turned into a layover in Cleveland.

Everything starts to feel repetitive — the fact that it’s a given that you’ll hang out takes away from the excitement. And did you just schedule a time to have sex? They’re not the partner you thought they were, or vice versa. And one of you just can’t take it anymore, and it’s time to bail.

And you’re stuck wondering why this always happens to you. Why does it inevitably fall apart here? It happens so consistently that even this dating cycle has gotten familiar.

Why Things Collapse After the Honeymoon Phase

If your relationships consistently fall apart after the honeymoon phase, it’s often because of one of these two reasons: either you are trying to derive self-value from your partner, or you’ve genuinely become attracted to anxiety. Sometimes it’s even a combination of these things, which might result in this becoming a perpetual cycle.

You Are Trying To Derive Self-Value From Someone Else

The honeymoon phase may mislead you because you are trying to find answers in someone else, instead of within yourself.

If this is you, you most likely let this new relationship dictate your entire mood. You religiously dive into new relationships head first, and it frequently scares your partner. And you justify it to yourself, saying that “you just put a lot of faith in people.” You complain to your friends that “there are no reliable boyfriends/girlfriends out there anymore.”

You have completely bought into the concept that people lose interest in you when they get to know the “real you,” so you think it’s a good idea to double down on your personality right off the bat. You come on strong and give them full control over your emotions at the first sign of commitment and consistency, and it’s often almost immediately.

But you’re actually just lacking self-esteem and self-worth, and you’re looking for someone else to provide that for you. And while your partner may really be very into you, you give them far too much responsibility, far too early, and it’s either giving them an impossible load to carry or scaring the hell out of them.

So the honeymoon phase is fun, new, and exciting, but when the dust settles, they realize that you’re not nearly stable enough to build something with, and they stop putting in the effort and start to look elsewhere. Or, you leave because they’ve become unattractive to you when they’re overwhelmed. You give them an unmanageable workload just so you can bail when they inevitably drop the ball.

And this isn’t fair, because self-worth is something you have to find and develop on your own. There’s a reason it’s called SELF-worth. No one else can give it to you.

Responsibility in relationships has to be earned, built, and fine-tuned over time — you can eventually depend on each other, but trying to trust fall into a stranger’s arms will never go well.

And the reality is, you aren’t ready to become a good partner and you have some work to do.

You Have Become Attracted to Anxiety

Sometimes, what might be happening is that you’ve legitimately become attracted to the feeling of anxiety that’s associated with a new relationship — or even an unhealthy one.

You shrug it off as “enjoying new experiences,” but it’s actually because this has happened to you so many times that you think this is what love is supposed to feel like, so you dismiss everything else.

If this is true, you’ve probably passed up on your fair share of perfectly fine potential partners because they didn’t feel dangerous. They felt safe, reassuring, and sweet, and your gut reaction was “Ew.” You joke about it, and double-tap memes that depict this feeling while you anxiously scroll through Instagram and wait for a text message. And you tell yourself you just want to be with someone who “challenges you.”

“Fights are good for relationships,” you say, “because otherwise, there’s no passion.”

You want someone who makes you work for it because it feels fantastic when things are going great. It feels like constant reassurance, even though it’s only occasional at best.

But the truth is, it excites you to continuously have to earn their affection. It gives you a sense of self-worth to finally get them to treat you the way you think you deserve, or to call you when they said they were going to, even though you spent consecutive weeks in turmoil, agony, and disappointment.

You’ve let anxiety disguise itself as butterflies. But really, they’re flat-out just treating you poorly. You feel like shit 80% of the time, but you justify it because the other 20% feels worth it.

I hate to break it to you, but that’s not a relationship. And it’s not love. It’s gambling. And you’re addicted.

You’re hoping to feel good and get in shape, and you’re eating chocolate cake instead of salmon and veggies. Yeah, it tastes great each time for a split second, but you’re not going to be able to keep it up without developing some sort of heart disease, and your stomach hurts.

It’s putting instantaneous hits of temporary satisfaction over long-term growth and sustainable development, and you’re going to shut down.

And the fact of the matter is, you never liked them in the first place, or vice versa. You were infatuated, and infatuation doesn’t last, unfortunately. It’s not something you can build a life around, anyway.

What It ~Should~ Look Like After the Honeymoon Phase

When you’re in a good place, and with the right person, the transition out of the honeymoon phase is quite different.

Things still get less exciting, but you are giddy about the fact that they’re becoming routine. You’re still crazy about each other but in a different way now. Now, you wake up every day and can’t believe that this is your life. You have little moments where you see them from across the room and think, “Damn that’s my mother f*cking partner? How did this happen?”

You feel like you have that narrator from the end of a cheesy teen movie in your head like, “Hey, my name is [blank], and my life is pretty great.”

The nervousness now is different from the early relationship nerves. What was once “Oh my gosh where is this going I’m scared and captivated” has turned into “holy shit this person could ruin me and I could do the same to them, but I’m 99% sure we won’t let that happen.”

It releases the same level of endorphins and butterflies, but in a different way. You’re nervous that you might lose them, and not because you don’t know what they’re thinking, but because you know exactly what you mean to each other. And there’s tremendous responsibility in that, which is scary as hell, too.

It’s shooting a free throw instead of gambling.

Shooting a Free Throw Instead Of Gambling

What we’re really talking about with this metaphor is the difference between the kind of nervousness and excitement that comes with anxiety in comparison to the kind that comes with responsibility. That’s the difference between a healthy honeymoon-phase transition and a not-so-healthy one.

When you’re gambling, you don’t have any control. Anything could happen. Sure, there are strategies — or, in other words, games — you can use to try to stack the odds in your favor, but it’s still ultimately out of your hands. That’s anxiety, and you’d be hard-pressed to build anything long-term off of it. The nerves you feel when you’re gambling are your body telling you that this is a stupid idea, and that you will most likely get hurt soon. You’re met with a feeling of relief when it works out, but you never had control no matter what you try to tell yourself.

When you’re shooting a free throw, the nerves aren’t from anxiety — it’s responsibility that you’re feeling. If you’re a good basketball player and you’ve put the time in, you should make the free throw — you’ve worked on them your whole life. But you’re nervous because it’s your obligation to not let your team down. And like a good partner, your team will love you even if you hit nothing but backboard. You could come up short and shoot an airball, or you could rattle the rim and miss in dramatic, heartbreaking fashion with the game on the line, but your team will be there to pick you up off the floor. And they’ll see you at practice the next day; back into the routine.

If you’re freaking out after the honeymoon phase, ask yourself if it’s from anxiety or if it’s from responsibility.

Of course, even healthy relationships can give you a little anxiety — we’re not all perfect. But if it’s primarily because you suddenly have responsibility to not let your partner down, then you’re probably in a pretty good place. So do the work, and put the time in, and they’ll be there for you.

Find excitement in the consistency, routine, and reliability. Lean into the fact that this is the new normal, because when it’s right, it’s only natural that things get easy. Don’t mistake easy and second nature for boring.

That’s you two getting comfortable, and the best parts of a good relationship are inside and beyond that feeling.

If you haven’t yet signed up for Medium, it’s a great place to check out thousands of authors, and you can also read the rest of my stuff if you like. My mom does it, and she’s a cool lady. Be more like Reid’s mom, everyone.

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Previously Published on medium

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