Pearl Nash
My boyfriend has been so distant lately and I honestly hate it.
The worst part is I legit am unsure about why he is doing this, or at least I was.
Here’s how to tell if your guy is drifting from you for real or if it’s not about him losing interest in the first place.
Am I overthinking or is he losing interest? 20 ways to tell
Is he losing interest or am I just overthinking this to death?
Here’s a way to tell what’s going on.
1) Take a look at your chat history
Later on I will get into the deeper sides of what’s going on.
For starters, take a look at your chat history and call history.
How often do you talk?
When did you last talk?
For that matter, what did you talk about and for how long?
This may seem a bit overly-specific, but it’s good to get your bearings about where things are at right now.
Your boyfriend might be slammed with work, and that certainly does happen for real.
But he also may be losing attraction and interest in you.
Some of the first clues of that are going to be right here:
In how much, or how little, you chat and call together.
Because if it’s very rare for you to interact and the reticence is on his end then there’s no doubt something is wrong.
2) How much time do you spend together?
You should also take a realistic look at how much time you’re spending together.
If you live together, discount all the time that you just happen to be lounging approximately close in the living room or something like that.
How much time do you actually spend together conversing, interacting and having a relationship?
Remember that a relationship is all about relating.
You could be married or you may have been together for 30 years, in which case congratulations.
Still:
The time that you actually spend together relating, having sex, talking and having a true relationship can’t be replaced with anything else.
No title, contract or external view of your life is going to reconstruct or constitute a missing heart that’s not there.
So be honest:
When did you last actually do something together or have a good face-to-face conversation? How’d it go?
3) Get outside help and expertise
The idea of going to a counselor or coach has never sit well with me, I guess I was raised with some kind of ideas around it that it’s weak and all that.
Well, it’s not. And also it really works.
I’m so glad I made the decision to get help in my relationship, because I believe it’s the best thing I have going in my corner right now.
While this article explores the main ways to tell if he’s actually done with you and fallen out of love, it can be helpful to speak to a relationship coach about your situation.
With a professional relationship coach, you can get advice specific to your life and your experiences…
Relationship Hero is a site where highly trained relationship coaches help people through complicated and difficult love situations, like an emotionally and physically distant boyfriend.
They’re a very popular resource for people facing this sort of challenge.
How do I know?
Well, I reached out to them a few months ago about this tough patch in my own relationship.
After being lost in my thoughts for so long, they gave me a unique insight into the dynamics of my relationship and how to get it back on track.
I was blown away by how kind, empathetic, and genuinely helpful my coach was.
Things are still not perfect with my guy, but they are getting much better every day.
In just a few minutes you can connect with a certified relationship coach and get tailor-made advice for your situation.
4) Where are things at in the physical department
Regardless of whether your relationship has progressed to the stage of sex or you’re married, take a look at where things are at in the physical department.
I’ll confess a dirty secret to everyone:
My guy and I rarely even hold hands anymore, much less kiss.
As for sex? Ancient history.
The last time I satisfied myself riding his rockhard abs seems like it was in the neolithic age.
Which is also about where our communication and verbal intimacy is at.
The last time he told me he cares about me and loves me was honestly in the first year we dated.
It’s insane.
If this is going on and he’s never initiating sex or hand-holding or kissing with you, then you’re not imagining it.
You’re not overthinking it: he very likely is losing interest.
5) His life path is diverging from yours
Am I overthinking or losing interest? This question is like looking at a reflection in the mirror in some ways.
Are you losing interest?
I still love my boyfriend so much, but I hate his behavior and I also have to be honest that he’s drifted from me so much in his life path.
He has transitioned into a completely different job and our schedules are really different. What’s more is that my life path no longer means much to him.
I’m really into things like alternative healing and energy work, and he now dismisses that much more than he first did.
He also has new friends who are just really different and not in a very good way, from the kind I had when we first met.
Our life paths are splitting up in different directions and I completely recognize that.
What I do about that is another matter…
6) The future has become a gray zone
Looking for indicators that he’s losing interest should also involve looking at your discussions and visions of the future.
Where do you see yourself next year as a couple? What about in five years? Ten years?
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if two people are in love then even the thought of ten years is nice and not terrifying.
But if something has gone wrong then even the thought of next month is dreaded.
If he’s losing interest in you, he’s going to avoid all talk of the future and leave it as a gray zone. At the most he’ll make non-committal and generalized statements about it but never really commit.
More than likely, he’s planning his exit.
7) Work on your most important relationship
Am I overthinking or is he losing interest? The question has circled through my brain for months now.
Despite the progress we’re making it’s still circling through my brain.
Recently, however, I took a new track and approached my relationship frustrations from a new angle.
Have you ever asked yourself why love is so hard?
Why can’t it be how you imagined growing up? Or at least make some sense…
When you’re dealing with a partner who seems to be drifting away from you, it’s easy to become frustrated and even feel helpless. You may even be tempted to throw in the towel and give up on love.
I want to suggest doing something different.
It’s something I learned from the world-renowned shaman Rudá Iandê. He taught me that the way to find love and intimacy is not what we have been culturally conditioned to believe.
In fact, many of us self-sabotage and trick ourselves for years, getting in the way of meeting a partner who can truly fulfill us.
As Rudá explains in this mind blowing free video, many of us chase love in a toxic way that ends up stabbing us in the back.
We get stuck in awful relationships or empty encounters, never really finding what we’re looking for and continuing to feel horrible about things like a partner who no longer pays us much attention.
We fall in love with an ideal version of someone instead of the real person.
We try to “fix” our partners and end up destroying relationships.
We try to find someone who “completes” us, only to fall apart with them next to us and feel twice as bad.
Rudá’s teachings showed me a whole new perspective.
While watching, I felt like someone understood my struggles to find and nurture love for the first time – and finally offered an actual, practical solution to the immense frustration and heartaches I’ve felt in my love life.
If you’re done with unsatisfying dating, empty hookups, frustrating relationships and having your hopes dashed over and over, then this is a message you need to hear.
I guarantee you will not be disappointed.
Click here to watch the free video.
8) What’s your relationship history?
We all have a relationship history, even if it’s a history of heartbreaks and breakups (hey, why are you looking at me?)
So what’s yours?
In my relationship history there’s a pattern.
I found out from talking to the coach at Relationship Hero that it’s called anxious attachment style.
What it boils down to is that I worry a lot and I worry relationships to death.
If that sounds dramatic, that’s ‘cause it is.
I overanalyze and worry so much in some past relationships that I’ve turned small issues into huge breakups.
I sense a vibe shift and go nuts, cycling around what it does or doesn’t mean for months.
Then my partner notices, gets stressed and tells me to chill. Then I get angry that he told me to chill. Then we start talking less and eventually have a few huge fights.
Cut to:
Saying our goodbyes.
You know what: that really could be what’s happening here.
I do feel confident my boyfriend is losing interest but I also know and need to check my own tendency to overanalyze and try to control everything in a relationship when it’s not going optimally.
9) What are the jealousy levels when you flirt with a guy?
What guy likes his girlfriend to flirt with other guys?
Wait, I know the answer to this one: a cuckold or a guy who attends swing parties.
But aside from that…
What monogamous guy in a relationship with a woman he loves likes to see her giving the eye to other attractive men and flirting with them or making plans with them?
No guy who’s in love and doesn’t have that fetish likes it!
He gets jealous, maybe even possessive…
But one of the signs that your guy’s attention and interest has wandered is that he stops being jealous.
I don’t only refer to outer signs of jealousy, but also to his actual actions and inner feelings.
He just basically doesn’t care anymore.
I like at Bolde magazine where Kerry Carmody wrote about this topic and shared her thoughts.
“Sometimes a little jealousy is a healthy thing in a relationship.
If he used to be a little jealous when another guy hit on you at the bar and now seems not to care when a similar situation occurs, he might be losing interest in the relationship.”
10) Are you still his priority and important to him?
There are times in life when you have to make yourself a priority, but in general it’s a good sign if you’re at least your partner’s priority after himself.
So think about this and reflect:
Does he put you first or is he thinking of you like an afterthought and considering your needs only when it suits him?
This can make a big difference in how your relationship will pan out in the future and assessing whether there’s anything less, so be honest to yourself.
You will be able to tell by the big things and the small as well.
They all reflect whether or not he’s putting you first.
There’s no real other solution for the future if he no longer cares about you as his top priority, which is why this is one of the most important signs.
11) How does he respond when you’re in trouble?
You can tell a lot by how much someone cares about you when you get in trouble.
Do they show up or bolt away?
Do they put you as their first priority, or do they downgrade your crisis until they can get their stuff done first?
This relates a lot to the previous point and has to do with whether you’re still an important part of the relationship.
As the saying goes, when the road gets rough is when you find out who your friends are…
By the same token, when the relationship gets rocky is when you find out who really loves you or not.
Does he pick up the phone to take your call when you’re deep in distress?
Does he loan you the extra $50 when you’re in a bad jam and just need a short-term loan?
These may seem like small things, but they can make a world of difference.
Sometimes it’s just that simple!
12) Has he become the king of excuses?
There’s one thing my guy does constantly these days which just drives me up the wall…
Making excuses.
He has one for everything even the tiniest issue that comes up or occurred.
He didn’t hear what I said. He’s stressed today. He forgot to do what I asked because his mom’s been talking to him a lot. He’s going through pressure at work, so he can’t help me out with what he promised.
On and on and on…
I feel like recording him and making an audiobook of the top 100 excuses of a deadbeat boyfriend or something.
It’s nuts. It’s so frustrating.
I can’t force him to take the reins, but I’ve made it so clear to him that what I want is just for him to step up to the plate and…
For lack of a more politically correct term:
Be a man.
The thing is that you would be shocked how many guys are making excuses all day but suddenly get with a woman they are more interested in and clean up their act right quick.
If this is happening in your relationship you certainly should think about the possibility that his excuses aren’t just about him being a loser, they’re about him no longer being very into you.
13) Where are you in his future plans?
Earlier I wrote about how the future becomes a kind of gray zone that he doesn’t like to talk about.
Where are you in his future plans?
If he doesn’t discuss them much or have any, where are you in the gray zone.
Does he at least mention you in a general sense as a part of his future plans?
Is it “we” or “I?”
This pronoun usage can tell you a whole lot about your importance to him and be the dividing line between him truly losing interest or him simply being snowed under with some other kind of crisis.
14) Is he interested in other women?
The next item on the agenda which you must look into is his behavior around other women.
Is he interested in other women or in a specific other woman?
This can often be the real reason that he’s losing interest, but it’s sometimes a matter of getting hard proof instead of just your suspicions.
This can be hard to come by, leaving you in months and years of circling suspicions and despair.
Is he interested in other women?
It would certainly explain a lot about why his attention has been drifting from you…
Why he angles his phone screen away when you walk by…
Why he’s set his profiles to private on social media so you can’t tell who’s watching or interacting with them.
There’s nothing quite as hurtful as a cheater.
If this is what’s going on then I hope for your sake that you discover as soon as possible so you can deal with it
15) What does he say when you confront him?
I asked my boyfriend directly if he’s losing interest.
His answer didn’t make a whole lot of sense but it boiled down to: yes, kind of.
More or less, he’s stressed about the direction of his life as a whole and that includes not being completely sure how he feels about me being in it.
Obviously I was not thrilled to hear that. I still have strong feelings for my partner, even if they seem to be decidedly less than “love.”
Yet at the same time I was thrilled to have him opening up to me like this and I was determined not to put conditions on him opening up to me.
Many times a guy won’t open up to you about how he feels because he thinks it’s a test or some kind of way to get him to admit he’s losing interest so you can attack him…
You need to assure him that this is not it and that you genuinely want to know his real emotions.
In my relationship this is precisely what I did…
He did what I said and even if it wasn’t what I wanted to hear, his words opened up whole new avenues for us to talk about as a couple and work on.
I don’t know if we’ll make it.
What I know is that at least we now have a fighting chance.
My final conclusion (and yours)
My boyfriend and I are still working on things.
We might still split up. I am trying to figure out not only how much interest he has in me but how much I still have in him.
That’s really the key right there.
You should be the selector and the one who’s making these decisions, not only him.
How do you feel about your partner? How brightly is the love light burning in your heart?
Be honest about this and plan accordingly.
Talk to the great relationship coaches at Relationship Hero and take your time in making a decision on all this.
Relationships aren’t everything, but they do make a big difference in our overall wellbeing and the progress on our relationships with ourselves.
