16 Signs Your Relationship Is No Longer Healthy

Updated 11 years ago, April 10, 2014

1. The two of you have broken up, gotten back together, broken up, and gotten back together so many times that you have lost count. You don’t even bother to react anymore when she dramatically declares that she “needs space” because you know that she will begin blowing up your phone again precisely three days later. “Baby, I miss you LOL,” she whines, and you are once again putty in her French-tipped hands.

2. He says that he has forgiven you for past transgressions — like that time you and that Spanish graduate student shared a dance-floor-make-out during your study abroad trip to Europe, when your relationship status was in question. However, you sense that he still holds resentment towards you, and it is right there — bubbling under the surface until it eventually froths over. Which it will.

3. You don’t know if you can fully forgive them for past transgressions that have severely impacted your ability to trust them. If they were capable of hurting you like that before, how do you know that they won’t hurt you in the future?

4. Your friends, family, and practically everyone else in your life who is NOT wearing overly optimistic relationship goggles is begging you to end it with them. For good.

5. You are no longer certain whether you are in love with them or if you are just clinging onto the idea of them — what they have meant to you in the past, the experiences you two share, and the comfort of knowing that someone out there loves you unconditionally (in theory).

6. You find yourself relating to this Robyn song.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nv644ipg2Ss&w=584&h=390]

7. There is someone else who has caught your eye, and you find yourself increasingly imagining what it would be like to act on the sexual tension between the two of you. And when that other person flirts with you, oh boy, do you flirt back.

8. The only thing binding you together at this point is your shared history. All you do is dwell on the past, but there is no moving forward with them.

9. You no longer find them attractive. Their small imperfections (physical, emotional, or otherwise) — all of which you once found endearing — have grown off-putting to you. His eyes are too far apart. She could stand to wash her hair a bit more frequently. The way he pronounces “coffee” is obnoxious. She needs to stop singing Pat Benatar songs in the shower.

10. Receiving a text message about a homework assignment from the classmate you find really, really cute has become far more thrilling than receiving a text message from them — your significant other, supposedly the apple of your eye — to hang out.

11. Each time you hook up, you find yourself simply going through the motions and praying that it will end quickly and easily so that you can go back to finishing whatever it was that you were doing before they interrupted you. This is what your physical relationship has devolved into, and — to be honest — you’re not entirely sad about it.

12. While envisioning your future, you have realized that you can no longer picture them as playing a role in your life two — or three or five — years from now. You want to grow without them because you have started to understand that you are not meant to grow anymore with them.

13. During one of your many breaks, you have seriously considered cutting off contact with them — deleting them on social media or blocking their phone number — so as to put yourself out of your misery, once and for all.

14. The prospect of seeing them stresses you out more than it excites you. More often than not, you would rather sit at home and binge-watch Netflix movies instead of sitting across from them in a restaurant you don’t even like while listening to them yammer on and on about some topic you find just as boring as them.

15. Say there is someone else you’re interested in. Say that person makes a move. Despite your it’s-complicated relationship status, you can no longer say that you wouldn’t be down.

16. When you’re around them, you’re sometimes uncertain whether you hate them or love them, but when you’re not around them, you are 100 percent certain that you’re not missing anything.