Watching for Signs and Symptoms of a Break Up

Have you ever been in a relationship that you think will last forever and all of a sudden it ends, just like that? What caused it to happen? Were there signs that could that could have helped prevent it from happening? Breaking up out of the blue is like getting a sucker punch to the heart.

I remember having a long distance relationship a long time ago with this girl who seemed perfectly happy talking on the phone every night and seeing each other every few weeks whenever one of us had the chance to visit. Then out of the blue, while on vacation with some of my family, I received an email saying it was over, and as the cliche goes, saying that I was a great guy and that the problem was with her and not me. Whether you know it's coming or not, I think we can all agree that it's even worse when we don't see it coming. If we can see the signs, at least we can brace for it even if a little or even change the outcome. But what are these signs?

Before we move on let me give you a tip: if there is anything you should walk away with from this entire post it's this, we are all great liars, especially to ourselves. We can watch our significant other flirting with someone else openly and believe them when they say that they were just being friendly, but deep down we know the truth. Especially if something's going wrong with your own relationship already.

We are pretty good at keeping those nasty, painful emotions away when we really don't want them. Because of this, in the end we usually do more harm than good by putting off the inevitable. If you don't lie to yourself and you look with objective, unbiased eyes then you might actually have a chance of saving your relationship before your partner calls it quits. Now for the signs…

At the beginning of a relationship all couples go through the honeymoon stage where you practically find yourself attached to your partner 24/7 whether it be physically, through text, over the phone, facebook, etc. After a while you get past this stage and slowly become more individualized again while still retaining your couple status and growing in trust and love (hopefully). But what if instead of continuing to be attached at the hip your partner finds that they have a lot more other important things to do than spend time with you. If you find that they don't have a reasonable excuse for blowing you off time after time, there's only one way to counteract this, and that is communication.

When you're communicating with your partner, the most important thing to do is not to make it sound like you're accusing them of anything. You just want to sit them down, and calmly ask them about what's been going on.

Do you find that your partner suddenly needs a lot more privacy? Setting or changing the password on their phone, changing their passwords to Facebook (if they shared it that is), always going to the other room to make a phone call? Just the fact that they're doing this doesn't mean that they're getting tired of the relationship, but if they're doing it and not giving you a good reason why then there might be a chance that they are.

Again the best way to confront this is through communication. Just politely and calmly ask, "What's going on?" and maybe why they're being so private now. Of course depending on what's going on during that time they may be setting up a surprise for your birthday or anniversary, so watch out for that as well.

Do you still have it as often as you did before? Has there been a change in who initiates it? If your partner used to be the one who always initiated it and now doesn't seem interested then that could be a sign that they're getting tired of the relationship or worse, even seeing someone else. Of course there could be other things like being tired from work, not enough time, etc. Once again the best approach is to communicate and see why there's been a change.

Like I said at the top, we are great at lying to ourselves. Most of the time the signs of the end of a relationship can be easy to spot, but if we're lying to ourselves then it can be pretty easy to ignore or overlook them. By catching them early and acknowledging them you have a much better chance of communicating and fixing them right away before the chance of an actual breakup occurs. So to reiterate: keep your eyes open, don't lie to yourself, and communication is key.

If you have any other tips or ideas shout them out in the comments below.