Falling in love is one of the most amazing experiences. It triggers all kinds of happy hormones in our bodies, making us feel like we could conquer the world. When that love is suddenly withdrawn, it’s devastating, which is why it’s so hard to hear her say she doesn’t love you anymore. Not only is your love for her still as strong as ever, but you start to doubt the relationship you invested so much into. Doubts start to creep in, and you wonder if she really loved you in the first place. If so, how could those feelings come to such an abrupt end?
10 Possible Reasons She Doesn’t Love You Anymore
There are lots of reasons women fall out of love. Relationships are hard work and need a lot of emotional investment. Let’s explore some of the possible reasons she doesn’t love you anymore.
#1 She Feels Neglected
Women need to feel wanted and valued to feel content in a relationship. They want their opinions to be heard and their feelings acknowledged. They want their partners to be attentive to them and offer emotional support. Without that attention, a woman’s perspective of the relationship changes. Instead of boosting her self-esteem, it makes her doubt herself and her self-worth. Maybe you’ve stopped talking on a deeper level or you’ve lost some of your physical intimacy. Where you once showered her with compliments, you now rarely notice that she’s got a new haircut. Failing to give a woman the emotional validation she needs can cause her to fall out of love.
#2 The Spark is Gone
At the beginning of a relationship, you want to spend all your time with your partner. The conversations you have together seem more stimulating than anything you’ve experienced before. Not only do you share an emotional connection, but you’re also physically intimate. You trust one another enough to open up and make yourselves vulnerable. This type of intimacy is the cornerstone of any happy, healthy relationship; when it’s gone, there’s little you can do to rekindle it. If she said she doesn’t love you anymore, and the spark is gone, not even passionate makeup love will reignite it. Maybe you find she’ll initiate conversations only to withdraw when it gets too personal. Even if she hasn’t directly said she doesn’t love you anymore, this is a sign that she’s pulling away.
#3 You’ve Grown Apart
For clinical psychologist Susan Heitler, Ph.D., a healthy relationship alternates between times of togetherness and periods apart. Through this rhythmic balance, we achieve a sense of belonging and enough independence to strengthen our identities. Spending time apart too often or putting more energy into your social life instead of your relationship can weaken the emotional bond to such an extent that she could fall out of love with you. Fortunately, if she’s fallen out of love because you’ve grown apart, there are ways for you to rectify that situation and save your relationship. We’ll discuss how you can get a girl to fall back in love with you a little later on.
#4 She Doesn’t Trust You
“Trust is the foundation of a committed relationship,” says clinical psychologist Andrea Bonior, Ph.D., “and a lack of it hollows out a relationship from the inside.” It doesn’t matter whether you had an affair, failed to keep your promises, or revealed secrets – once your partner no longer trusts you, she’s likely to start falling out of love with you. A woman who doesn’t trust you will feel insecure in the relationship, making an emotional connection impossible. It’s difficult to repair a broken relationship because of a lack of trust. Not only do you need to focus on trusting one another again, but you also need to tackle the root causes that lead to the breakdown in the first place.
#5 She had Unrealistic Expectations
Love can be blind, and it can also blind us to our partner’s faults. No one’s perfect, but when we fall in love, it’s easy to turn a blind eye to our partner’s imperfections. Unfortunately, as time passes and the relationship matures, we start to see things differently. This is one of the primary reasons women fall out of love, says therapist Gerry McCanny. Having an unrealistic image of the person we’re in a relationship with leads to disillusionment which can quickly cause a woman to fall out of love.
#6 You’ve Become Too Needy
Needy behavior is one of the quickest ways to get a woman to fall out of love with you. If you cling to her all the time and stop her from seeing her guy friends, she’ll see you as a jealous control freak and lose respect for you. A healthy relationship needs a balance of freedom and intimacy. Without that freedom, she’ll feel trapped and as though the relationship is stealing away a part of her identity rather than enhancing it. Togetherness is critical for the development of intimacy, but if she’s spending all her time with you, it restricts her opportunity to grow as an individual.
What Do You Do When a Girl Says She Doesn’t Love You Anymore?
When a woman tells you she doesn’t love you anymore, it can feel as though you’re whole world’s collapsed. It can be difficult to know what to do next in the confusion. Should you beg and plead or let her go? Should you try to work on the relationship or accept that it’s come to end? Begging and pleading with someone who no longer loves you is a waste of time and will probably only push her further away. If you want to rekindle that love, you’ve first got to understand what caused it to diminish in the first place. Maybe you failed to spend time together, causing you to grow apart, or she lost respect for you after an indiscretion. You should also try understanding what it feels like to fall out of love. You can reestablish that emotional connection better if you understand your partner’s feelings. A Phenomenological Study of Falling Out of Romantic Love conducted in 2013 found that when a woman falls out of love, she experiences “loss of trust, of intimacy, and of feeling loved; emotional pain; and negative sense of self.” If she tells you she doesn’t love you anymore, you need to try and reverse these negative experiences by proving you’re trustworthy, restoring that intimacy, and making her feel loved again.
How Do You Get your Ex Back When She Doesn’t Love You Anymore?
Before you can get a woman to fall back in love with you, you first need to get her to respect you as a man again.
Give Her Space
If you’ve been too clingy or needy, give her some space. Show her that you trust her by giving her the freedom to live her own life. Once she sees that you’re strong enough to put your own emotional reactions to one side and prioritize her feelings instead, she’ll start to respect you again.
Make Her Feel Valued
You also need to make her feel valued and understood. If you think back to the beginning of the relationship when you were both head over heels in love, you wanted to know how she was feeling and what she was thinking all the time. Rekindle that curiosity by asking her how she feels about current events or her goals for the year ahead. Using deep listening techniques, you can build trust and deepen your understanding.
Listen to Her
Roger K. Allen, Ph.D. believes, “A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words.” Hearing and healing go hand in hand, helping to restore lost feelings, boost your partner’s self-respect, and fix things you thought were beyond repair.
How Do You Get a Girl to Fall Back in Love With You Again?
Women don’t walk away from past relationships easily. After putting so much time and effort into establishing the intimacy and trust needed to make a relationship work, they struggle to abandon that and move on.
Reestablish the Intimacy
A study published in 2017 found that “the most common reason for wanting to stay in a relationship was emotional intimacy.” 66% of participants contemplating a breakup were motivated to stay in their relationships for three primary reasons. These were “positive aspects of the partner’s personality, emotional intimacy, and enjoyment.” If you can find a way to reestablish that intimacy, you have a good chance of getting her to fall back in love with you.
Start Laughing Again
Another key takeaway from the same study is the enjoyment aspect of the relationship. If you’ve been miserable or unable to see the positives in life, you’ve been making it challenging for her to get any pleasure from having a relationship with you. Nurture your joyful side, bringing jokes and humor back into your life, and love will follow. Research shows that laughter and playfulness are crucial components in “bonding and establishing relational security.”
Rekindle the Spark
Another thing you need to do to get a girl to fall in love with you again is rekindle the spark you once had. According to one study, roughly 40% of people “believe the spark fades because both partners take each other for granted,” so that’s a suitable place to start. Rather than taking your partner for granted, treat her like you did when you first met. Dress up for a date and take her somewhere different. Whether that’s an expensive restaurant or a romantic picnic, it doesn’t matter, as long as it lets her know that you’re prioritizing her needs over your own. Small gestures of affection, like holding hands or sending flowers, can also go a long way to rekindling that romantic spark.
Moving On
If a woman is no longer attracted to you and says she doesn’t love you anymore, it could be time for a new beginning. Suppose you’ve tried deep listening, nurturing intimacy, restoring trust, and she’s still adamant the relationship is over. In that case, there’s little more you can do other than accept the situation and move on. The good news is that letting someone go is often the quickest way of getting them back. By giving your ex-girlfriend the space she wanted, you’re showing that you respect her decision, and are handling it with emotional maturity. It also gives you both time to reflect on the relationship and what went wrong. There’s no denying that breakups are hard, but they also provide an opportunity for growth. As you look back over the things that went wrong in your past relationships, you can start figuring out what you can do differently to keep the romance alive in the future. You don’t want to make the same mistake again, whether that was being too clingy, betraying your partner’s trust, or failing to put enough time into the relationship. As you work on becoming a better person, you increase the chances that she’ll fall in love with you all over again.
Conclusion
There’s no clear answer to what to do if she said she doesn’t love you anymore. It depends on what caused that love to fade away. Was there an indiscretion that caused her not to trust you anymore, or did you simply grow apart? If you still love someone who says she doesn’t love you anymore, there are ways to rekindle those emotions, provided you’re willing to put the work in. That means listening to her, understanding her, making her feel valued, and giving her the space she needs to explore her own emotions. Not every relationship can be saved, but if you can get your ex-girlfriend to trust and respect you again, there’s every chance she’ll fall back in love with you. Even if you don’t manage to save the relationship, the work you’ve put in will make you a better version of yourself and help ensure you don’t make the same mistakes again.
