Growing apart in a relationship: how to close the distance

What does growing apart in a relationship mean?

It means the ordinary traffic between you has thinned out, while the logistics carry on. The Gottman Institute calls the smallest unit of that traffic a bid: an attempt to gain attention, affirmation or affection. A sigh is a bid, and so is reading a headline out loud.

• Three responses. You turn towards a bid, turn away from it, or turn against it.
• The count. In Gottman’s 6 year study of newlyweds, couples who were still married turned towards each other 86 per cent of the time, and couples who divorced managed 33 per cent.
• A rate, counted over years. Nobody decides to drift, and a few hundred small moments a week stop being answered.
• A stale map. Your picture of your partner goes out of date, and you answer the person they were some years ago.
• Guesswork. With little information coming in, a short answer means they are angry and a late night means they prefer the office, and nobody checks.

Read more about feeling disconnected from your partner.

Is growing apart the same as falling out of love?

No, falling out of love changes how you feel about the person, and growing apart changes how much of the person you have access to. You are able to be entirely in love with somebody you no longer know much about. The feeling is intact and the information is out of date.

• The costly mistake. A couple who conclude the love has gone start making decisions about the relationship.
• The accurate reading. A couple who conclude the contact has thinned start making decisions about their week.
• No proof of a wrong choice. What the 2 of you do with an ordinary evening matters more than how well matched you were.
• Nobody’s fault. Circumstances produce distance at least as often as behaviour does, and blame is the least useful frame for it.

Read more about falling out of love.

Why does it happen to couples who are not fighting?

Because conflict and distance are 2 separate systems, and only one of them makes a noise. A couple who fight still spend attention on each other. Distance is quiet: the evening passes, the holiday is booked, and you end further apart than you started.

• A baby. An 8 year study of 218 couples found a sudden fall in relationship quality after a first child, for mothers and fathers alike, and it tended to persist.
• Work that expands. The best attention of the day goes to other people, and what comes home is the remainder.
• A move abroad. One of you has colleagues, a commute and a reason to speak the language, and the other has a flat and an inbox.
• Illness. Care is exhausting, and it reorganises a household around a task.
• Phones. They compete for exactly the small moments that bids live in.
• Years of being agreeable. Couples who never say the mildly awkward thing run out of true things to say.

Exhaustion looks the same from outside. If your partner is flat everywhere, with friends, work and their own interests, the relationship is where you notice it and the source is elsewhere.

What are the signs that you are growing apart?

The clearest sign is that conversation has become mostly logistical: schedules, money, who collects whom.

• Avoided subjects. You both steer round emotionally charged topics, and nobody argues about them.
• Less together. You do fewer things as a pair, and nobody suggests new ones.
• Thin support. Neither of you brings the hard day home.
• Less touch. Physical affection has dropped, and what is left feels obligatory.
• One-word answers. Replies have shortened, and disagreements escalate and then stop without an ending.
• A new first listener. The hard thing now goes to a friend, a sibling or a colleague first, every time.

Growing apart is among the reasons people most often give for divorce, and in a study of 886 divorcing parents in Minnesota it went with the least interest in stopping the divorce. That describes people at the point of filing. Drift feels like weather, so it gets acted on last.

How do you close the distance?

You close it with small repeated contact, because feeling follows contact far more reliably than contact follows feeling. A holiday suspends the conditions and then returns you to them. One large talk asks 2 people out of practice at small contact to begin with the largest piece of it.

• Count first. For a week, notice each unnecessary remark your partner makes and whether you answered it, ignored it or joked at its expense.
• Answer more bids. Answer more than you do now, on purpose, including the boring ones.
• Ask an out-of-date question. Ask what they are dreading at work this month, and update the map.
• Defend one dull shared thing. A walk, a Saturday errand done together, the radio off.
• Say the awkward true thing. Couples lose each other over years of politeness more often than over big disagreements.
• Give phones a place. Decide where they are not allowed, and leave the question of how long alone.
• Name it when they turn towards you. The behaviour that gets named is the behaviour that repeats.

If only one of you has noticed, say 2 separate sentences: “I have been unhappy and I did not say so”, and “I want us to do something about it”. Most couples who seek help come sooner than the 6 years often quoted: a 2021 study of 270 couples found an average of 2.68 years.

These steps fail when resentment has filled the gaps, when one of you has already half left, or when no dull conversation survives without a fight. That is what the session is for.

Questions people ask

Is it possible to come back from growing apart?

Yes, the distance was built from small repeated moments and it responds to small repeated moments run the other way. The hard part is that the work feels too undramatic to trust at first.

How do I bring it up without starting a fight?

Say what you want and leave out the list of what has been missing. “I miss you and I would like us to do something about it” lands best in an ordinary moment.

Is it normal to grow apart after having children?

Yes, it is very common. There are fewer free minutes in the day, and logistics take them because logistics are urgent.

What if my partner says everything is fine?

Ask for something small and specific, because people will do a thing before they accept a diagnosis. If nothing moves, you are able to come on your own.

How long does it take to close a distance that took years?

Usually less time than it took to open. The number of small exchanges in a week changes first, and the feeling follows.

Sources

• The Gottman Institute, Turn Towards Instead of Away
• Institute for Family Studies, Reasons People Give for Divorce
• Doherty and colleagues, How long do people wait before seeking couples therapy? A research note, Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 2021
• Doss, B. D., Rhoades, G. K., Stanley, S. M. and Markman, H. J., The Effect of the Transition to Parenthood on Relationship Quality: An 8 Year Prospective Study, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2009

How this article was written. I choose the subject and the angle. An AI assistant researches and drafts. Nothing is published until I have read it, corrected it and stood behind every clinical statement in it. The professional and clinical judgement is mine and mine alone.