Love/Relationships

Falling Out of Love With Your Partner Is Inevitable

Relationship cycles can be ambiguous.

As half of a couple myself, I understand how tiring it can be to feel as though you’re working incredibly hard to manage a stable, functioning, and healthy relationship with another person — while at the same time worrying if you’re up to par in the ‘still-madly-in-love’ department.

Do we spend enough time together? Do we fight too much? Are we having enough sex? Are we still compatible in enough ways in which to make it in the long term?

These are all worries that make us wonder if we’re in love in the way we think we’re supposed to be in love.

Relationship pressure can come from our friends, our family, our kids, and society — whether it’s intentional or not.

Many of the closest people in our lives create expectations for us and our romantic relationships — especially if it’s a relationship that has lasted a significant amount of time, has evolved into a marriage, and/or has produced children.

We must keep the relationship alive. We must keep the spark going. We must stay together for the kids. We mustn’t let anyone down who is counting on our relationship to stick it out indefinitely.

These are just some of the pressures long-term couples experience.

That’s a lot of pressure.

My partner and I have responsibilities not only to ourselves in regards to maintaining a stable, functioning relationship but also a responsibility to the family we’ve created together.

That said, it’s important to point out that even though my partner and I will undoubtedly do our best to stay together for the long haul — we may not be in love with one another for that entire length of time.

Whether it’s me, him, or both of us, there are going to be periods in our relationship where we just don’t feel like we’re in love with one another.

There may be times when we don’t cuddle as much or when we forget to hold hands. We might have dry spells in our sex life. We may be completely turned off by one another at some point.

This shouldn’t be shocking. It’s pretty common in long-term relationships.

Being a couple who is in love doesn’t always mean perpetual coziness together. Sometimes it’s just getting stuff done together as partners during very unromantic situations — such as raising kids.

‘Head-over-heels’ love in a long-term relationship — at least in the way in which some people imagine it — isn’t always romantic and we should relax those kinds of expectations.

Being totally in love with someone to the point where you can think of nothing else is beautiful. Yet, it’s not a state that can be sustained on a day-to-day basis as time marches forward. At some point, you will snap out of that phase.

As a relationship grows and adapts, there will be degrees of falling in and out of love, like the ebb and flow of a tide. There will be days, weeks, months, or even years when there are uncomfortable chapters of relationship stagnation and likewise with harmonious flows of rediscovering the relationship flame.

Falling in and out of love with your longtime partner is a natural part of the relationship cycle and it is needed in order for that love to expand to new places.

You don’t need to maintain an ecstatic love affair of hot passion with your partner at all times to be successful together. You should be aware that the embers do burn out from time to time.

People have all kinds of ideas about what being in love should look like, whether it’s from movies, TV, social media, or their upbringing. A lot of that stuff is simply not realistic — so we can just relax and take the pressure off of trying to contort our relationships into molds that simply don’t fit.

You don’t need other people’s expectations of what a great relationship should be like to dictate how you and your partner operate. And you certainly don’t need extra pressure from yourself about it.

What matters most is that you and your partner are on the same page regarding your relationship. You communicate with one another. You understand one another and you’re completely at peace with how you choose to be in love with one another daily.

Oh, by the way, I also have a podcast about being a stepmom. Check it out if you’re interested.