Turning to Google when something felt ‘off’ used to be my signature relationship or dating panic move when looking for signs the relationship is over him – or was about to be.
I almost knew that by doing this, I had confirmed to myself already that something about the relationship (or situationship) had changed, and I was staring down the barrel of heartbreak again.
If you search online for signs the relationship is over for him, you will likely find some truthful information about specific actions or patterns from him which indicate it’s heading to a close. These will likely include:
- Physical intimacy has dropped off
- There’s a change in how he interacts with you
- His phone habits are different
- He appears distant and hard to pin down
- He snaps at you over little things
- He prioritises his friends/work/family more than you
- He’s working late, he’s tired, he’s ‘stressed’ with something happening ‘externally’
Whilst I will address some of these points, they are obvious, and you don’t need me to tell you about them.
In this article, I want you to stop outsourcing evidence of what you’ve found and seen. And instead focus on how YOU feel during this time, and home in on YOUR intuition and instinct to protect YOU.
I am going to talk about how you can genuinely identify these 5 signs that the relationship is over for him:
- Observing subtle communication changes
- The negative changes you’ve started to notice within yourself
- Increasing anxiety (and how to deal with it)
- Future planning and forecasting
- Emotional and physical exhaustion
How to know when a man is unhappy in a relationship
When looking for signs the relationship is over for him or that it might be heading in that direction, there’s generally two key things that have happened first.
- We’ve raked over the coals of our mind to look for evidence of this. And often, what we’ve found are things that can appear to be small. So small in fact, that we might feel crazy for thinking it – let alone vocalise it to him or someone else.
- We’ve looked for all the ways we have got this wrong. We turn to ourselves or to others to help prove the point by talking about it, calling ourselves paranoid, and getting others to weigh in on our apparent delusion.
When looking for signs the relationship is over for him, we first must acknowledge what I believe is the most important thing – intuition.
Intuition does not lie; you are not crazy or paranoid
No matter how tiny or externally ‘insignificant’ what you have spotted is a sign that the relationship may be over for him, it comes down to intuition.
Why do we go online (or offline) looking for signs and reasons the relationship is over for him? I’ll tell you why. It’s because we’ve denied our intuition from speaking any louder and stopped trusting ourselves.
We’ve outsourced our fear and instinct to well-meaning friends or the internet to tell us otherwise. We want to hear that we have got this one wrong. That this feeling is us overthinking or acting on fear from the time we got hurt in the past.
We hear about intuition a lot. But how do we differentiate what it looks like versus genuine paranoia or old fear-based habits?
I’m speaking from experience
There had been many times over the years that I had spoken to girlfriends, feeling anxious, panicked, and spiraling downwards, with the feeling that this relationship was over for him.
One of my own signs that the relationship was over for him was that I spotted changes in the 9 am morning text. They started coming in at around 9:30 am, increasing gradually later across the mornings. Can you imagine telling your friends this out loud as ‘evidence’ of something being ‘off’?!
Often, we get convincing reassurance from good friends that this is because of our past. Maybe that we are over-reading something that is in fact, insignificant?
What would happen next, though? Whether immediately or in due course, I was nearly always right. I’d say 95% of the time. My intuition hadn’t been off. That tiny niggle, that slight change in pattern in the relationship, that slight delay in X or the change in habit around Y?
We poke holes in our evidence (no matter how big or small) to be assured that the relationship is not over for him. And that we got it really wrong by being silly and paranoid.
Gut reaction and intuition have long been seen as the best teller of truths because they defy logic or ‘evidence’.
Those signs that the relationship was over for him, which sounded so ridiculous when spoken out loud? Turns out they weren’t so small. I wasn’t paranoid. I didn’t have trust issues. I was right – nearly always, when I wished over and over that I had got it wrong.
The 5 signs the relationship is over for him
How is this article going to help you?
It’s (hopefully) going to stop you scrabbling online.
It will stop you doubting yourself.
It will stop you spiralling and outsourcing all your fears and anxiety onto others and denying your inherent wisdom. Choose one source and stay there – you’ll keep your energy and other reserves.
Let’s now look at what I think are the 5 key signs that the relationship is over for him, and how you can adjust the way you are thinking about this to put yourself in a position of knowledge and action, rather than fear and waiting.
Reason 1: His communication style changes
This is BY FAR for me the biggest sign. It is also that very same thing which often sounds the most ridiculous when spoken out loud.
You are not anxious or paranoid – when something feels off, it’s generally because it is.
This tends to be when intuition kicks in – yet this is probably when you’ll get the most convincing external reassurance that you’re wrong.
He’s tired. He was at the gym. Work is intense right now. He’s still recovering from that event or is feeling pressure on all sides from XYZ. Here’s the thing though:
In your relationship (or situationship) there would have been moments when any of those things were at play – yet it wouldn’t have caused you to feel afraid like you do now.
My most devastating breakup experiences was someone coming back from Glastonbury music festival. Of course he was going to be tired and slow from that, right?
So why did it feel off? Why did those delays in responses or the constant yawns in my ear or the odd ‘me too’ after I said ‘I love you’ not sit right when I had all the evidence for why he would be off?
Because my intuition knew otherwise. Listen to yours when you see his communication style change.
Reason 2: You stop feeling like yourself
Here are some things I bet you are now feeling and doing:
- You feel nervous to ask things you hadn’t thought twice about before.
- You feel anxious when you glance at your phone and there’s a delay in him responding, when earlier you would not have given it a second thought.
- You want to be more accommodating and more allowing.
- You want to appear more attractive, and suddenly you don’t enjoy sitting there with him in your pajamas anymore.
- You have a desire to lock in plans or have future events with him to assure yourself that he WILL be around.
- Even if he says yes to those things, the relief is only temporary and then you find yourself seeking more reassurance from him in other areas.
- You ultimately don’t feel quite good enough being you, right now.
I know you’re looking for every reason and sign that the relationship is over from him and his behaviour. But the fact is how YOU feel within yourself is the biggest sign, rather than settling on one or two key things you’ve spotted within him.
Reason 3: You feel anxiety around how YOU should be communicating with him
You might want to think about:
- That text you used to fire off to him without thinking suddenly feels different to draft.
- That loving good morning greeting which suddenly takes a while to get a reply fills you with fear.
- That post you uploaded with the intention of eliciting a response from him. You feel a sinking pit in your stomach.
- That gut wrenching feeling that he viewed something you posted but didn’t comment fills you with fear.
- The sick feeling of how long it has been since he texted you back, when you saw he was online constantly.
When looking for signs the relationship is over for him, ALL of the above points cause you anxiety. They make you question how and when to communicate with him. It’s now as if this person you know so intimately is a stranger, or an outsider you are trying to navigate.
Reason 4: You feel a constant desire to make plans with him and lock in future events or milestones.
I remember being in this awful stage. Something was up with him, I was looking for all the signs the relationship was over for him. And yet I was looking to discard what evidence I had found by locking in a future event with him.
I think this is the one thing that can make us feel really humiliated looking back.
How did I get it so wrong? How desperate did I look trying to lock in that trip and bend over backwards to make sure it could happen so that I would feel okay about things?
After all – if he said yes to that future event or plan, surely it meant he WAS still into the relationship and WAS going to stick around?
A weekend coming up spent at his friend’s wedding. Surely, he wouldn’t bring me to that if he didn’t want to be with me or show me off?! Especially when he was even telling me that he was looking forward to it the night before the event
You can probably guess now that he broke up with me the next morning before we got in the car to head there.
Notice WHY you are looking to lock in events or milestones. Is it because you genuinely want to spend time with him, or is it giving you fleeting reassurance that it’ll get him to stick around?
Reason 5: You feel exhausted
Do you know how much time and energy is depleted by you raking over the above 4 points? A LOT.
Whether it’s one sign from him that the relationship is over for him you’ve focused on or many. The fact is, it’s taken you away from yourself. You put your power into him and his actions to be dependent on you therefore being okay.
You don’t need an exhaustive list. You don’t need to turn yourself into Sherlock Holmes or employ all your friends as armchair psychologists for the week to get to the bottom of this.
You need to trust yourself and assume that you haven’t got this wrong.
And if you have? Well, a great mistake to have made because the outcome was fine. I think you can probably tell that I don’t see or hear of this happening that much.