Have you looked at your spouse lately and wondered what brought you both together in the first place? Do you feel you don’t understand each other anymore? Do you feel like you can’t stand the man or woman you married and promised to love until death do you part? 
Are you always arguing and fighting with the man who once made your heart skip many beats? Do you find excuses to stay away from home so you won’t put up with the woman who once made you go against the whole world? Are you both now flat mates that talk only about bills, shopping and the children?
Do you often wonder where the love you once professed for each other vanished to? Do you look at your partner and think you both no longer have anything in common except your children? Do you sometimes feel like running away and leaving everything behind just to start all over again? Do you feel so sad and trapped in your marriage?
You are not alone. You may be experiencing some rut in your marital relationship or you and your spouse may be growing apart. Relationships have a natural ebb and flow, but if you feel like you are growing further apart from your partner and nothing they do makes you happy, your relationship may need some work. You both need to talk wholeheartedly and find ways to move forward in oneness and unity.
If you know some of the signs that you and your spouse may be becoming distant, this can help you take a step back and re-evaluate your relationship. You just need to work through your relationship challenges together. This is not the time to blame your spouse for everything that has gone wrong in your marriage. Both of you need to take the blame and work on making your marriage blissful once again.
It’s not pleasant when you no longer feel for your partner what you felt for them in the beginning. It can be heartbreaking when a relationship stops being all rainbows and happiness. You no longer do the things you enjoy with each other in the past. You no longer love your spouse deeply that you don’t care if your words and actions are hurting them. It is sad when love goes sour and couples stay apart while still living together.
Relationships require work and efforts from both partners. This is why I get angry when women are hounded to keep their marriages no matter what and build their homes even when their husbands are doing nothing to build the homes with them. Men and women should build their homes. Men should stop advising women to endure the emotional, psychological, verbal and physical abuse they put them through. If you know that you can’t take what you dish out to your spouse, stop doing it to them.
When you stop having sex with your spouse, something is wrong. It is not a good sign if you and your partner aren’t spending time together in the bedroom. If there is no sex, no affection, no nurturing, and no intimacy, your relationship is headed for the rocks.
You are growing apart from your partner if you spend more time apart than together. If you notice you are spending more and more time in separate corners of the house rather than together, this can be a signal that you may be at an impasse with each other.
I pity men who are always leaving their wives alone; they are just setting themselves up for heartbreaks later on. If you prefer to spend time away from your wife all in the name of making money and spending time with friends, have you asked yourself who is filling her emotional tank?
If as a couple, you don’t do anything new year in, year out, you are gradually growing apart. If all you do is come home, watch TV, go to sleep, and repeat, your relationship might be stuck in a rut. I am not saying you must be in each other’s face all the time, but research shows that couples who try new things are happier together.
You can check into a beautiful hotel for a weekend and spend time holding hands and feeling each other’s bodies. You can go to your favourite restaurant and enjoy a good meal. You can register at the gym together and sweat it out as a couple. You can also go for date nights just to spice things up. Who says marriage should be boring?
If you don’t talk to your partner but feel irritated by their actions all the time, you are growing apart. The honeymoon phase of a relationship generally goes smoothly, but couples who make it in the long run have healthy communication skills.
This does not involve only talking about food, what to buy at home and how to pay for the children’s school fees, healthy communication means active listening to your partner without interrupting them or trying to force your opinions down their throats.
Don’t shut down your spouse’s complains and dissatisfaction with some of your actions. You are teaching your spouse to bottle things in. You are telling that person that they are unwanted and not worth listening to. And when this happens, you are gradually losing your spouse. He or she will start avoiding you by staying on their own just to keep the peace.
Fighting all the time is a sure sign that something in the relationship has changed. This may be a sign of overall dissatisfaction in one partner with the other or it can be mutual discontent. You need to sit down with your partner and have a honest talk about your marriage. It is heartbreaking to be living with someone and still feel unloved.
On the flip side, feeling indifferent to your partner’s actions is also a sign that you both are growing apart. If you don’t react when your partner says or does something bad or they don’t engage when you try to talk about a problem, you should know that as soon as indifference comes into the relationship, it won’t last long. If you think fighting is bad, well indifference is worse.
Feelings of defensiveness can indicate feeling attacked, or even an unwillingness to see each other’s viewpoints. If a relationship is going to be successful, then each person has to be able to take responsibility for individual actions and to be able to communicate openly about shortcomings. When defensiveness takes a stronghold in relationships, then communication is hindered.
If you feel yourself losing trust for your partner, it may be that you are drifting apart. Do you trust your partner? What is the level of trust in your relationship? In many struggling relationships, there is manipulation, and jealousy. If either of you is having difficulty with trusting the other person, your chances of having a healthy marriage are lowered.
You are growing apart if you care more about your friends than your partner. Having friends is important, but if you care about spending time with them more than your partner, this could be a sign that you and your partner have drifted. This is because when the chips are down, your spouse is the one who will be there for you. Stop hurting your spouse just to please your friends.
It is important for couples to strike a balance between spending time with your spouse and your friends, and it may be a red flag if you don’t want to bring your partner around during any of that friend time. If you continuously keep your spouse away from your friends, then something is wrong with your relationship.
Just because you and your partner are growing apart doesn’t mean that your marriage is necessarily over. Take time to discuss what is happening in your relationship. It takes efforts to build great relationships and it is the duty of husbands and wives to make their marriages work.
You can go for counselling together. I don’t mean church counselling where the woman will be commanded to submit more to a man abusing and belittling her. Avoid religious counseling where women will be hounded to stoop to conquer while her husband continues hurting her and taking her displeasure for granted. I can’t stand religious advice given to women in this part of the world. These religious counselors make men feel like demigods and absolve them of blame whenever there’s marital crisis.
If you and your spouse are drifting apart, meet a professional marriage counsellor and talk about your issues freely. Then work on your challenges and start doing those things you did while you were dating all over again. Sometimes, it takes little efforts to keep your relationship on track once again. Good luck. Let love lead. Life is too short to live an unhappy life.