Is Your Partner Quietly Quitting Your Relationship?
How to know if it’s happening to you
It’s interesting to consider that about half of the American workforce is currently quietly quitting their jobs according to a recent Gallup survey. Quiet quitting happens when dissatisfied workers start doing the minimum of their job requirements while they look for other jobs. They aren’t trying to climb the career ladder at a job they hate. They aren’t working harder for jobs that have few pay increases and even fewer benefits.
Workers want more, but this isn’t just a trend we’re seeing at work. Quiet quitting — and quiet firing when employers stop investing in their employees — is happening in relationships, too.
Is Your Partner Quietly Quitting Your Relationship?
I’ve only quietly quit one relationship in my life. It was an abusive relationship that made me feel trapped, and I disengaged until an opportunity presented to leave. But I’ve often been on the other side of this equation and can help you identify if the person you’re with might be quitting you.
They Spend Less Time Talking About What Matters
One sign that your partner is quietly quitting happens gradually. One day, you realize that all of your conversations only reach the surface level. They aren’t talking to you about how they feel or what they’re thinking. They’re not as open as they once were and don’t seem as engaged in conversations with you.
When you remember those early days of dating when you could talk for hours and love everything they had to say, this can be a painful realization. While it doesn’t mean that the relationship is beyond repair, it’s possible that your partner feels disconnected from you. Our minds go straight to infidelity when we think about betrayal and loss of trust in relationships, but this can happen any time when our partners feel unappreciated, unheard, or misunderstood.
They Stop Including You in Future Plans
Do you remember that point in the relationship where it was new and exciting, and you were constantly planning ahead for the future? You might talk about vacation plans or what you wanted to do with them for the next holiday. The future might have been a little fuzzy, but you knew you were in it.
Having relationship goals is important. When was the last time your partner mentioned you in their future plans or actively planned something with you months in advance? Another sign that your partner is quietly quitting is when they stop building a future with you and start quietly creating a new game plan.
They Start Testing the Waters Elsewhere
Another key sign of quiet quitting is micro-cheating. Micro-cheating happens with emotional infidelity. Your partner stops talking to you about the problems and starts sharing your relationship problems with someone they also find attractive. They might not be crossing a line into sexual infidelity, but they are certainly betraying the relationship and actively considering new options.
There’s nothing “micro” about micro-cheating for the person who’s being betrayed. In fact, there’s little more painful than realizing your partner has a crush — not on a harmless celebrity they’ll likely never meet but on a person in their lives that’s not you. They begin testing the waters of future options before they’re even done with the relationship. They already know they’ll be leaving so they’re quietly forming a life and even new love interests.
They Don’t Want to Repair the Relationship
I remember one relationship where we’d been able to have those hard conversations and hear each other out. As we both tended toward conflict avoidance, this was massive progress. But I began to realize that the problems were being aired, but they weren’t being repaired.
Talking about the relationship problems alone fixes nothing. You need a plan to fix them. When your partner is quietly quitting, they don’t really want to fix the problems. They aren’t interested in couples’ counseling with you. They don’t put in the effort to repair what’s broken. Their effort is going into the new life they’re planning without you, not into saving the relationship.
They Avoid Sex
There are a lot of reasons that your sex life could take a hit. You could both be stressed out. Your partner could be having some self-esteem issues. There might even be a medical issue happening. Sometimes, however, less frequent sexual activity could indicate that they are disengaged from the relationship.
They aren’t having sex with you — or perhaps it’s the frequency or quality that’s suffered. It’s possible they’re having sex elsewhere, but it could also be that the emotional disconnection has created a physical one. They aren’t initiating sex or being responsive to it because they are focused on leaving, not connecting.
They Subtract Flirtation and Affection
Where did the sweet pet names go? The midday memes? The inside jokes accompanied by cute little emojis? The first flush of love is nowhere to be seen, and they might not even compliment you anymore. The flirting is gone, and you notice that the I love yous begin to disappear.
When a partner is disengaged in the relationship, the little things go first. That’s when we find out that the little things are never little. Those good morning texts you once took for granted are missed keenly.
There’s a clear delineation between what your relationship was and what it’s become. You feel wistful for the past and afraid of the future. For good reason. Your partner is likely quietly quitting you.
How to Address the Quiet Elephant in the Room
If the relationship was healthy and mature, there wouldn’t be any quiet quitting. There would be open talks about how the relationship has changed and what it might mean for the future. But that rarely happens. Instead, people quietly quit while their partners quietly suffer.
Compassion for Quiet Quitters
The truth is that the quiet quitters are also quietly suffering. They might even feel like your low effort has been quietly firing them for a while. We identify with the worker who stops going above and beyond because pay increases are low enough to be insulting and they aren’t appreciated in their jobs. So, why don’t we extend that compassion to the person who is so discouraged about their relationship that they stop trying to be heard and start trying to create a better life?
It hurts when someone quietly quits. It’s hard to love someone who feels that we are no longer a good fit for the life they want. But it’s equally hard to be the person who feels like they have to make that choice.
Of course, that’s not universally true. There are many people who have no qualms about quietly quitting while micro-cheating their way into the next relationship. But the average person who truly cared and sincerely tried probably never planned to quietly quit. They only began to do it when they felt like the relationship went downhill.
An Alternative to Quiet Quitting
A healthier alternative to quietly quitting a relationship is to create an environment where both people feel free to address their wants and needs. We don’t quietly quit the relationships where we feel safe, heard, and appreciated. If we’re feeling a disconnect in the relationship, it’s important to clarify where the miscommunication has occurred. Where did the intimacy break down?
Instead of quietly quitting, maybe we need to bring in something else from the workplace — regular performance reviews.
Instead of heading to couples’ counseling when the relationship is broken, we could regularly check in with our partners to make sure they feel seen, loved, heard, and understood. We can show our appreciation and commitment with both words and actions, ask how we’re doing in the relationship and what we could do better, and even go to couples’ counseling as a preventative measure to maintain the health of the relationship.
What To Do When They’re Quietly Quitting You
If you believe that your partner is genuinely quietly quitting, there are a few things you might want to consider doing.
- Have an open and honest conversation about the relationship without being judgmental or defensive. Find out what went wrong. See if it can be repaired and if they’re even interested in repairing it.
- Understand that quietly loving them harder is not going to improve the situation. I’ve done this. It doesn’t help. Instead, it just brings you more hurt. Stop investing energy in people who are no longer investing in you. Decide if you want to stay in a relationship where they may never leave but they aren’t really present and engaged either.
- Understand that quiet quitting might be about the relationship and not about you. Unless the relationship is abusive, most quiet quitting happens because of misunderstandings or just plain incompatibility. It doesn’t mean you aren’t lovable. People change. Not every relationship is meant to last.
- Consider counseling. The experience of both quiet quitting and quiet firing is stressful. Talk to a professional about how you’re feeling. Take good care of yourself as you make decisions about your future.
- Practice the Golden Rule. Nearly every religion has some version of it. Basically, treat other people how you want to be treated. If you don’t want someone to quietly quit you, don’t do it to someone else. If you don’t want to be quietly fired, put some effort into your relationships or end them. Put yourself in their shoes and decide what the kindest way to move forward might be — do that instead.
Half the U.S. workforce report being dissatisfied in their current jobs. I wonder what that statistic might be for relationships.
Regularly maintaining the health of a relationship is important. It’s more than scheduled date nights. Love, like anything else, must be nurtured to grow. If we neglect it, it will probably quietly quit until it finds an environment where it can thrive.
