THIRTEEN WARNING SIGNS THAT A RELATIONSHIP IS SOON TO END

After the iceberg hit the Titanic, most passengers didn’t know yet that the ship was going to sink. But there were ominous signs, and the feeling of festivity got just a little hollow. Odd things started happening,
like distant screaming in hallways, an unseemly tipping of the floor, and oh, water underfoot. The musicians kept playing, and fine gentlemen and ladies lifted whisky glasses to their lips, but I’m guessing the single malt didn’t taste quite right.

It’s like that with a failing relationship.
You go through months and months of feeling like maybe it’s going to end, then it does and somehow it feels
like a shock. Or it hits out of the blue— and then you notice all the clues that you missed. This last situation is
worth pausing over: how can an intelligent person be unaware that their primary human is about to break up with them? Well, it could be that the partners are abysmally out of touch; then again it could be that they
are blanketed in rituals, comfortable patterns that make them think they are still close, when all they have is the worn shawl of routine.

You lie in bed at night inventorying which household possessions are yours.


And there’s another possibility: deception. A perfectly alert person can sometimes be fooled by a conniving lover. And that power of deceit is itself a sign, because people who are really in touch with each other can usually tell when the other person is hiding something.

Those doomed months are torture, however they shake out. So let’s take a look around the listing vessel, and with a ghoulish giggle or two, note the awful clues that mark the final slide.

Here are the signs:
1. You feel like crying when the other person is nice to you.
2. The sound of him eating fills you with a homicidal rage.
3. You don’t feel like yourself anymore, when he’s around: your personality feels phony or distorted.
4. You find yourself being bluntly honest, objecting to his quirks that you used to put up with. (Could it be you have nothing left to lose?)
5. You have trouble planning anything for next year (or next month).
6. Your partner thinks he has told you things when he hasn’t. (You’re getting ready for dinner and he says, “That bonus check should be here by Thursday,” and you say “What bonus check?” and he says, “I thought I told you about that . . .” This could mean you are no longer his primary ear.)
7. Your social lives become completely separate.
8. You fight a lot more than usual; or worse than that, you stop fighting completely. (It’s an ominous silence when one person just lets thing slide, no longer wanting to engage with the other about the juicy issues that come up in your life together.)
9. To get away from your partner, you go to a favorite café. As you’re settling down with your latte, you spot him in the corner, cradling his.
10. You are laughing with a good friend one day and you realize you haven’t laughed like that for months or years.
11. It becomes painful for you and your partner to spend time with happy couples (or watch them on the screen).
12. You lie in bed at night inventorying which household possessions are yours. (The food processor? Definitely.)
13. You stop using your partner as a sounding board or a shoulder to cry on, because you assume he won’t understand.

So many signs, signals, clues. Makes one wonder how anyone could ever be surprised by a breakup.

Interestingly, these warning signs don’t necessarily indicate who is going to break off with whom. Signs 1 and 6 suggest that the “you” 1. There are a number of other signs that I didn’t include here, clues that your partner is cheating. Signs 2, 4 and 10 suggest that “you” will do the leaving. Even with these cases, the more you think about them, the more uncertain they become. And with most of the others, you simply can’t tell who is going to do the nasty deed.

So what determines who does pull the trigger? What provides the impetus to action? This question isn’t as easy as it seems. Every answer just seems to spark a counter example:
• The one who is suffering the most in the relationship breaks it off. Response: but sometimes the other person feels so guilty that they call it quits. Or the reason one person is suffering is that the other person is getting ready to pull away.
• The one who has grown tired of the other, or has fallen out of love, breaks it off. Response: that isn’t always true. The “unrequited” person, who is sick of loving and not being loved back, sick of under-appreciation, may very well have the strength to walk away.
• The one who glimpses a better world, breaks it off to go there.

Now we’re getting somewhere. You are not likely to end a relationship unless you have a vision of the world you’ll be in after the breakup, and you believe that the new world will be better than the one you’re in.

But what if both people feel that way? Then who pulls the trigger?
That’s easy. The one who is having a bad day.
This is our first glimpse of a fact I’ll revisit later—one that carries many lessons and no small comfort.
Things are not as different between the (eventual) dumper and dumpee as one might expect.
It isn’t that easy to tell them apart.

When a relationship is sick or dying, both people often know it, unconsciously or very consciously. So either one could decide to break it off; could declare that they’ve had enough.