Your relationship with your girlfriend begun on a high. You clicked the very first time you met. You didn’t even have to think about it before you asked her out on a date and you could tell from her eyes there was no way she was going to turn you down. Your first date was everything from a sweet romance novel because you talked for hours, feeling like you had known each other for years. For many months after that, the love and the excitement of it was palpable.
Fast forward to eighteen months later – she is a different person and the two of you are a different couple. It slowly dawns on you that your girl is losing, or has lost interest, in you. The two of you still get to spend time together but she seems flat out bored. You don’t think she is mad at you but she doesn’t laugh at your jokes like she used to, she doesn’t talk as much and cuddling on the couch on movie nights might as well go into the memoirs of the relationship.
The reasons behind a girl’s loss of interest in her significant other are not that complicated (well, it depends on who you ask). Either way, if you catch it early enough,
you may be able to reverse the situation and
perhaps spark an even greater interest than there was before.
Why Your Girlfriend Could Lose Interest in You
No matter how exciting the first few months of your relationship were, there comes a time when things begin to ‘flatten out’. Think of it as intoxication – you were high on love and now you begin to sober up. The wonderful bubble you both were in during the honeymoon stage suddenly bursts and you are exposed to the real world. Sure you still love each other but somehow the love no longer feels so powerful. The passion may still be there but it is no longer the bright, electrifying, always-ready-to-go kind. It is more like a little lamp in the corner which is no longer connected to a power outlet.
Why does this happen? The answer lies in female nature. No matter what kind of personality your girl has, don’t forget that women are deeply spiritual and intuitive beings. Whatever you do in a relationship, it has to feed that need. When she connects with you, she is looking for more than just a physical connection. She is looking for an emotional, soul connection as well.
She hungers for true, genuine friendship, acceptance, creativity and constant mental stimulation.
Some men say it is impossible to keep a woman’s interest up while others seem to do it effortlessly (sometimes with more than one woman!). Dare I say the latter are those who have realized exactly what women are yearning for and have learned how to give it to them.
Signs She Lost Interest and What to Do About it
Here are a few typical changes you are bound to notice when your girl is losing interest in the relationship. We have followed each of them with a few thoughts on what you can do about it.
She is no longer eager to spend time with you
You both get up every morning, share breakfast and rush out to work. In the evening you share another meal, have some idle chat and head to bed. Some personalities like monotony in relationships because it gives a sense of stability. But when it comes to keeping the romantic spark alive, a routine is the number one killer. If you and your girl have fallen into a bland routine, this may be why she has lost interest.
What to do: Break Monotony! Whether you have been dating for a few years or just started seeing each other a couple of months ago, the need for a little spontaneous excitement cannot be overemphasized. This is what
keeps the chemistry alive or rekindles a fire that was threatening to go out for good.
If you suspect your girl is drifting away out of boredom, take up the challenge. Plan a surprise romantic dinner for her at her favorite restaurant. If you can afford to take off for a day or two, whisk her off on a surprise out-of-town trip for the weekend and see what a big difference it makes.
She wants to maintain emotional and social distance
If the girl in your life is not too keen on having you meet or spend time with her friends and family, as well as always finds ways out of opportunities to hang out with your friends – she is not really interested in the relationship. Chances are that she doesn’t see it lasting and that is why she would rather keep you away from her friends and family.
What to do: Ask her about it! If you are the kind of personality who hates confrontation, this might be somewhat unnerving but there is no way around it. You just have to assertively – but calmly – ask her about it. Being honest about your concerns and giving her a chance to be open about her feelings allows you to find out exactly where her heart and mind are.
If you find that she really doesn’t see herself with you in the long term when you had long-term hopes, maybe you are not such a good match. Maybe she has had bad experiences in the past and prefers to wait until the relationship is more mature before she introduces you to her family. If that’s the case, perhaps you can work through that.
You suspect she is seeing someone else
Ordinarily, you would think nothing of it when your girl says she can’t come out with you on a Friday night like she usually does. But she has been different lately. She skips out on plans with you and has to work late quite often even though she has the same job she has had ever since you met. She has no interest in sex with you even if she is not upset with you. All these things have been known to happen in relationships but when they all happen at the same time, you cannot be blamed for thinking that she might be cheating on you.
What to do: Confront her. There is no way to dance around this one. Infidelity is an extremely sensitive issue so you are better off confronting it head on. Look her in the eye and ask if she is cheating on you. Do your best to remain calm and composed especially if she gets upset. This is a tricky one because her anger could mean one of two things – it could be anger brought on by
guilt because she is actually cheating on you or by the hurt that you could think of her like that. Infidelity is definitely not an easy issue to discuss but if you know her well enough, you should be able to tell if she is hiding something.
If you confirm that she really is seeing someone else, you have a tough choice to make. Either determine to woo her again and win her back or let her go.
She never texts first
In the early days of the relationship, you would text each other several times an hour. You shared long threads of text messages about nothing in particular and knew what the other was up to every minute you were apart. She would text you about everything she was doing including the little, seemingly silly happenings in her life. Now she almost never texts you. When you text her, she takes forever to respond and replies with one-word answers.
What to do: Evaluate your own texting habits. If you can, go back to the threads and look at the kinds of text messages you sent. The kind of message you send does determine the kind of responses you get (or don’t get). Here are a few questions to ask yourself:
- Do I often send one or two-word messages like Hi, Hey babe, or How you?
- Do I sometimes flood her phone with text messages even when she is not responding?
- Do I send her selfies of myself? Here, we are talking about weird, shirtless pics or odd model-like posed pics.
- Do my texts to her call for one-word answers?
If you find that one or some of the answers to this question is a clear ‘yes’, then it is time to change your messaging strategy and try some of these instead:
- Ask Specific Questions: To be honest, general questions are actually quite easy to ignore since she has to think about a specific answer to give you. Even if she does answer it, the answer will most likely be as flat and general as the question. Alternatively, ask something like ‘How did your evaluation go? I know you are great at what you do and your boss knows it too’. Not only are you sure to get a response, but you also made it clear that you were listening when she mentioned that she was going to be having a nerve-wracking evaluation this morning.
- Limit the Number of Texts You Send Her: You sent her a sweet good morning text at 8 am. It is now 10.30 am, she has not responded and it is driving you nuts. Why the hell does she take forever to respond? Take a chill pill. People get busy – maybe she has been in work meetings all morning and hasn’t got a chance to respond. Maybe she has the kind of job where she can’t access her phone until break time. Maybe she left the house in a rush and forgot her phone in the house. Give her a couple of hours to respond and until she does, refrain from sending any more.
- Quit Sending Her Selfies: Avoid sending her pictures of yourself, especially not those vain, look-how-hot-I-am pictures guys sometimes send. If you have to send any selfies at all, let it be a selfie the two of you took together on your last date. She is more likely to enjoy pictures which relate to a common interest. If you both love Chinese food and you just stumbled upon a really cute Chinese joint across town, send her a pic or two.
She suddenly has no time for you
This sign refers specifically to a situation where you are seeing a girl but you are not exclusive yet. You have been out on a couple of dates and it seemed like it was going well but she is suddenly ‘very busy’ – too busy to meet up for a coffee, an after-work drink, and even too busy to return your calls.
Yes, they do say that men are the predator and women are the prey so a bit of a chase is in order. But hey, there is only so much chasing you can do before you realize the ‘prey’ in question has no intention of getting caught. If you find yourself chasing after a girl too hard, for too long, there is no shame in giving it up.
At the very least, giving the chase a rest for a while.
What to do: Expand your net. Very often a guy will chase a girl for months in the hope that today is the day she will say yes. If you are not exclusive, that is not always a good idea. There is nothing wrong with going out on dates with other people. Doing this is not necessarily about showing your initial love interest that you have moved on to another catch. Neither is it about being a bad-boy player and sleeping with as many women as you can.
It is simply about giving yourself an opportunity to realize that
there are lots of fish in the sea. If one fish seems to think they are the only one, let them be. The truth will dawn on them when you are long gone.
The Ultimate Litmus Test
Let’s assume that you have observed a few, or perhaps all the signs mentioned. You are sure that she is losing interest in you. Even after implementing some of the solutions given,
you still feel the need to do something more. Even if you really like her and would love to continue seeing her, your feelings are simply not enough to make a happy relationship.
Put her love to the test by pulling back. Pull back in a way which she will feel your absence in her life.
- If you usually spend weekends together, tell her you are unavailable.
- If you have made a habit of meeting after work, tell her that you have to work late.
- If you live together, work a little bit later than usual for a couple of weeks or spend more time with your friends or at the gym.
- If it is a girl you are seeing and she never responds to your text messages, don’t text her again until she responds, even if she responds two weeks later.
Generally speaking, make yourself as scarce as possible and see how she reacts.
There are two possible outcomes from doing this. She will either move on like you never existed or come back looking for you. If the former happens, then
let her go – she never valued you anyway. If she comes back, she will have developed a new value for you and a new level of attraction to you.
Final Thoughts
Now you know what to look out for and what to do when you feel like your relationship is going down the drain because your girl is losing interest in it.
Some people say that once the process has begun, there is no point trying to salvage what is left of the relationship – you can only count your losses and move on. Others believe that these signs are great because they can help you catch things before all is lost. If you catch the signs early enough,
you can save the relationship and perhaps make it even better than it was before. Whether you fall on the pessimist’s or the optimist’s side of the fence, the bottom line is that you are now more informed and better equipped.
