12 warning signs your relationship isn’t working (even if you love each other)

“All you need is love”, they say.

When it comes to romance, maybe. But for a relationship to work, you definitely need more than that!

You need trust, compatibility, good relationship skills, and 100 other things!

Do you love each other but feel like your relationship is just not working anymore?

Here are 12 warning signs to watch out for.

1) You don’t trust each other anymore 

So let’s say they cheated on you, or they have a habit of lying to your face.

You could have lived with it because you truly love them…but they’re not even putting in any effort to win back your trust.

And so you start lying to them, too. After all, why would you be the bigger person?!

Can you really love someone when you no longer trust them?

Yes, but it’s hard. 

You will always think “What if they’ll do it again?”

And of course, you can’t help but think “They don’t love me because why else would they do this to me?”

2) You’re pulling each other down

Drug abuse? Gambling? Drinking every night?

It can even be less obvious like them eating junk food all the time.

Sure, it’s not necessary for two people to be perfect before they can start a relationship. 

But if being together has turned both of you into worse versions of yourselves—then you’re probably not meant to be together.

They say love conquers all…but if it can’t even conquer your bad habits, how can it conquer the bigger monsters out there?

3) You have a dead bedroom

Your libidos not matching might not seem like a big deal at first. 

“It’s just sex”, you might say.

But if it’s been going on for a year or two, then your relationship is clearly not working anymore.

One of you would always feel rejected, while the other one would always feel bad for saying no all the time.

You might think it’s shallow to make a big deal of one’s sex life but you wouldn’t believe that it’s one of the leading causes of divorce. 

Just check out Reddit’s /deadbedrooms to see how lack of intimacy can ruin relationships. Trust me—you wouldn’t want to end up as lonely as them.

If you’re both miserable with your sex life, you might as well be friends. 

4) You’re not growing as individuals

Relationships are hard. 

You both need to constantly grow and evolve as people. 

Aside from that, you both have to grow hand-in-hand so the other one doesn’t feel left behind.

Let’s say you’ve established a good career and you’re not traveling all over the world, and yet your partner is content just binge-watching sitcoms all day.

You’ll both feel bad.

You might start to resent them a little for not trying to become the best version of themselves.

And they might start to feel insecure about your success—and we all know, insecurity can make one bitter, defensive, and even angry.

5) You’re not growing as a couple

There’s a funny quote from Annie Hall that sticks with me.

It says “A relationship is like a shark. It has to constantly move forward or it dies.”

I find this so true because now, as an adult, I realize that love is NOT unconditional. You both have to benefit from the relationship.

Aside from individual growth, relationship growth is necessary or else you’d be a dead shark.

What does this mean? 

It means you both have a clear goal about your relationship and you’re working towards them day by day—or at least year by year.

Marriage? Kids? Owning a house? Learning skills together? Building a farm? 

It’s up to you. But if you and your partner are not working towards the future of your relationship, then the relationship would stagnate and eventually die.

6) You’re slowly separating ways

If you like to go left and your partner wants to go right, then you can’t hold hands forever. One of you has to let go or else you’d both be pulling each other until it starts to hurt.

I mean this literally.

If one of you wants to settle in Asia while the other one wants to go to America, then your love will have an expiry date.

Say, you want to live a nomadic life and you want to stay in the city to build a career, it won’t happen. You can’t have both.

Even if you won’t break up soon, you’ll just be delaying the inevitable.

7) You’re not on the same page

They want to be childfree, but it’s always been your dream to have kids.

They want to get married, but you’d really rather not because it’s against your principles.

Maybe at the beginning of the relationship, you didn’t think these things are important because at that time, love is all that mattered.

But now that you actually want to build a life, you realize that love is indeed not enough. 

You need to feel fulfilled, too!

8) Your fights are getting more frequent

If your relationship has gone so toxic that every interaction becomes heavy, then there’s nothing much that love can do.

You’re probably both immature and would benefit from therapy. But even if after all that and your arguments don’t improve, then it’s probably time to reflect.

Ask yourself these questions: 

Do you prefer love or peace of mind? 

Is this how you imagine your future to be?

Do you think it’s worth it to be with them if you fight constantly?

If you say “Yes, it’s worth it”, then know that you’re probably saying yes to a very toxic life.

9) You have an unhealthy power dynamic

Even if love abounds in your relationship, it will deteriorate if one of you acts superior and the other one acts like a doormat.

Do you feel like you’re just a maid following orders? 

Or do you feel awful for acting b*itchy all the time because your partner doesn’t know how to carry their own weight?

Yeah, this dynamic can be exhausting. You need to fix it before you both lose respect and love for each other. 

10) You laugh less and less

You used to laugh about everything—from the things you watch on TV to how stupid you both are sometimes.

But now, for some reason, you rarely laugh.

You take life and each other way too seriously. 

That’s probably because life just got hard or you have deep-seated issues that you didn’t address.

If you want to save the relationship, discuss them and come up with ways to see each other in a more loving light again. That’s the only way for laughter to come easily again.

11) You’ve stopped communicating

Do you both just let everything slide now? 

Did they stop saying “Hey, let’s talk” when they’re clearly unhappy about something?

Maybe you don’t want to discuss things anymore because you know nothing good will come out of it anyway.

Well, no matter how much you love them, you’ll just end up dissatisfied in the relationship.

For a relationship to work, there should be enough communication, especially if there’s something really important that needs to be talked about.

12) You no longer want to compromise

Your toxicity level in the relationship has reached “Take it or leave it”  and “Well, this is who I am. Deal with it!”

You’re tired, they’re tired. From each other and everything else.

Most of all, you’re tired of trying to change for each other that you just want to raise a white flag and say “Gotta go.”

Love, while it can make us patient, has its limits. 

And if your partner doesn’t want to try to make things work anymore, do you even have a relationship?

Final thoughts

We all want to think that love conquers all—that it’s the only thing a couple needs for a relationship to work.

We’d like to think that as long as there’s love, then compatibility, trust, and all of the important things would follow.

Sadly, that doesn’t happen to most relationships.

For a relationship to work, you both need to do the WORK!

So if you have trust issues, work on it. If you have an unhealthy power dynamic, work on it. Or, if things can’t be worked on, at least talk about it.

But if after all of these efforts, you still feel like your relationship is not moving in the right direction, then it’s probably time to stop trying and just let go.

You can love them from afar for now.

Who knows, one day you can get back together once you’ve worked on becoming a better fit for each other.