Couples fall in love and say they cannot imagine their life without the other. Love is a deep connection, and anyone who has fallen in love understands that you can love someone even when you don’t always like them. Your partner can begin to annoy you or you begin to see parts of them you don’t like. You may not like the way they gossip with their friends, or you may be turned off by the way they act arrogant around your parents. Whatever the reason, it happens to many of us. Sometimes it is feeling negative about ourselves that makes us dislike our partner, but more likely it has to do with a change we begin seeing in our partner that we hadn’t noticed before. Our partner seems to change before our eyes in a way we never thought possible. All of a sudden, we are married and in love with a person we cannot stand.

Long before falling out of “like” with your partner, you may have been putting less effort into the relationship. Perhaps you focused on the kids, your career, or a sick parent, expecting your partner to stay the same loving person while you were preoccupied with another project. This is a fallacy of thinking, because all relationships require time and care. Women or men who begin seeking someone else or filling their emotional space with their kids or career are basically replacing a space once fulfilled by their spouse. The spouse then begins to resent the loss of this space and attention. They start to see many faults in their partner that were once overlooked due to their feelings of love. All of a sudden, the spouse may begin to wonder why they are with this person they no longer like. Growing out of like with your partner is a much better predictor of divorce than falling out of love with them. Many divorced couples will tell me, “We still love each other, but we don’t like each other anymore.”

Couples often fall out of like with one another when they are not aware of the warning signs. When couples get busy with life, they might start taking each other for granted and they aren’t aware of the changes going on between the two of them. Here are three warning signs that happen prior to falling out of like with your partner. If you notice these, it would be wise to schedule a date night and talk about the changes you are seeing. Then have a plan of action that the two of you come up with to get the relationship back on track.

The BIG three:

1.     One of the partners finds it increasingly difficult to spend time with you. If your spouse begins getting very busy with work and it begins taking time away from the two of you, it is wise to discuss this. Establishing boundaries with work and your marriage is one of the most important things the couple should establish within the first two years of marriage. Ignoring this leads to resentment of one of the partners and, ultimately, falling out of like with your partner. Maintaining balance in a marriage might mean the couple has to expect one of the partners to work longer hours. Discussing this openly and planning your time together despite the work load has to take precedence.

2.     Decreasing touch. When partners are really engaged and like each other, they also enjoy holding hands and touching one another. If this suddenly changes and you can no longer sit next to your partner and expect them to reach out for you, there is a problem. Talk about this, voice your concern, or quietly begin holding their hand or caressing their shoulders when you are near them.

3.     Sex diminishes. When couples are in love and like one another, they enjoy sex with one another. If you notice your partner no longer wants to have sex or be intimate with you, it is a warning sign that they are no longer engaged or want to be near you. Women who berate their husbands for wanting sex frequently would be wise to understand that intimacy and sex for men is a form of communication that expresses their love and allows them to feel loved in return. Rejecting sex with your man is analogous to him not finding you interesting enough to talk to. Wanting sex for him is the same as you wanting conversation. Neither is better or worse, right or wrong. They are both healthy forms of expression for intimacy.

Liking your partner for life takes more work and action than loving them for life, but it is also the foundation for a strong marriage. I have never seen a couple who are happily married who don’t like one another. However, I have seen many divorces where the couple still loves one another, but no longer liked each other. Be engaged, stay aware of your partner’s self growth, and make sure at the end of the day you still like the person you share your bed with.

When couples come to see me with their first complaint being that they haven’t had sex in several months, there is palpable tension. They panic, and search for reasons why. When sex is going well, it is 5% of the relationship. However, when sex isn’t going well, it may become 95% of the relationship. A recent study reported in the Daily Mail suggested that more important than sex for a couple’s happiness and health is cuddling. Cuddling provides many benefits besides a sense of security and closeness. It also provides stimulus to our olfactory centers (the smell of our partner makes us feel loved) and our touch centers, and it helps to release oxytocin (the feel good hormone that helps us feel love toward our partner).  Cuddling also provides another form of communication that sexual intercourse doesn’t. It allows us to feel closer without draining our energy. Sometimes the best communication happens when couples are holding one another.

Many times, couples’ first homework assignment from me is to begin touching each other more and talking less. When sex isn’t going well, not only do you lose that physical connection but you lose the emotional connection too.  Often you become more critical of your partner as well as irritable and annoyed. The emotional connection is much more important than the sexual one, because the emotional connection determines if the sexual one will happen, and how frequently. Touching and cuddling is the best way to restore and build the emotional connection. When couples touch, they let down their guard, and begin feeling love and acceptance toward their partner. If cuddling is continued, the feeling of love and connection leads to better communication and sex.

Women may fault men saying they don’t like to cuddle and jump too quickly to sexual intercourse. My practice as well as the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction suggests this is not true. According to Kinsey’s research, among couples in committed relationships, tenderness may be more important to the man than the woman; regular kisses and cuddling lead to greater relationship satisfaction in men than in their partners, especially as they grow older. When I talk to couples and ask them to list the number one problem in their relationships, it is men, not women saying the lack of intimacy. When I question further, they talk about missing the touching, caressing, and soft talking they once shared with their partner.

The time to begin cuddling is early in the relationship. If you have let that go with raising kids, or demanding careers, you can still get it back. Adding a little bit of time into your day to hug or touch your spouse will add a closeness you may have felt was gone forever. You may not need to mention it to your partner. Sometimes their noticing changes in you without you talking about makes it more special. However, if you have a partner who feels like you only touch them when you want sex, then communicating with them about the benefits of cuddling may be a better option.  Reassuring them that it is the intimacy and closeness that you want may be enough to convince them to cuddle. Here are a few tips to help you get started with your “cuddle plan.”

1.     You can cuddle anywhere, which makes it convenient, but being captive together makes it more special. Places like airplanes or movie theatres are a great place to begin cuddling.

2.     No one likes to cuddle on a hard surface, so make sure you have a “cuddle sofa,” or overstuffed chair where you both fit comfortably.

3.     No one likes to cuddle with a computer on their partner’s lap, so get rid of laptops, cell phones, iPhones, and iPads.

4.     Smoking while cuddling is not wise. Getting burned or the smell of smoke in your face causes coughing and disgust.

5.     Talking softly while cuddling is desired.

6.     Kissing is not necessary, but is nice while cuddling.

7.     Being a good listener while cuddling is also important, remember your partner will feel more secure and may want to tell you things they have not said before.

8.     Being gentle is part of cuddling.

9.     Cuddling has no objective other than to feel close to your partner…so don’t rush to finish.

10.  Cuddling is helping your partner and you to be healthier with lower blood pressure and respirations. Imagine your ability to heal.

Whenever I talk to a person who lost their spouse and I ask them what they miss most, they tell me many things. At the top of their list is the sense of being held by that person. The hugs, the way their skin smelled, and how that person made their body feel when they were near.  Stress, illness, and depression can affect sexual performance, but anyone can cuddle. A couple’s ability to cuddle, not to perform sex, is one of the best predictors of an emotionally/physically close, happy, and healthy relationship.

There is a myth that couples talk about all of the time in my office. They tell me that they are living together to see if they are compatible. I am sure they are sincere in their effort to make sure they can tolerate one another, but living together is not going to reveal that. According to the literature, couples who are happily married aren’t always compatible. In fact, there is no correlation between being happily married and how compatible you are. In truth, compatibility is rarely spoken of until one person begins bringing it up, and then it becomes a big issue. It usually means the couple is not getting along, which happens in happy marriages and unhappy marriages. Couples are not compatible all of the time; they fight about sex, kids, money and an extensive list of other things.

Dr. Ted Huston runs the PAIR project, which is a longitudinal study of married couples. His research has shown that the telltale sign of an unhappy relationship is when one spouse begins to worry about not being compatible or begins to overstate the importance of compatibility for a good marriage. The word compatibility covers a wide spectrum of areas. If a husband or wife tells his or her spouse, “We aren’t compatible anymore,” the spouse would be wise to sit down and ask him or her directly, “In what area specifically are we no longer compatible?” This would help narrow the real issue, and the couple could actually begin to make changes.

Many times couples begin fighting in my office; they cannot trace where the fighting originated, but they are able to say they haven’t been happy for a long time. Worn out, tired and stressed, they look for a way out of the marriage, believing it is the marriage. This makes sense, because if you project your unhappiness onto your partner and your union, then the only solution is to break that union. Unfortunately, due to the lack of healthy marriage mentors, couples don’t understand that it is normal to go up and down. They don’t see the arguments, discord, and the process of negotiating and making up watching movies and TV. They see one person leaving and shouting, “We are no longer compatible.”  If I used compatibility as a measure of success in my own marriage, I would be in big trouble. I married a man very different from me, thinking that since we both had the same vision together we could negotiate anything. So far, so good, but no one is exempt from challenging times. Those challenging times in the marriage should be anticipated and embraced for further growth. When we walk away from those times, saying something such as, “We aren’t compatible,” we lose an opportunity for growth not only in our marriage but within ourselves.

There are things I can recommend if you have come up against a wall in your marriage and want to walk away. These suggestions will help, but be sure you both share the same vision or outcome for your marriage prior to undertaking them:

1.     When you feel incompatible with your spouse, write down what areas in your personal life are bothering you before mentioning it to him or her. These issues are yours, not your spouse’s.

2.     Take your spouse out on a date or walk and talk about your marital vision. Ask him or her if they feel the same. Listen to what they say.

3.     When you tell your spouse that you feel there is a distance or incompatibility, make sure you define one specific area. If it is sex, for goodness sake, label it as intimacy. Often when men say they want more sex, they are referring to the intimacy involved; women do not hear or see that so, guys, you have to say it.

These three suggestions will help open your marriage to a new growth that you may not have known was possible. A marriage is so vast and has so many possibilities; it is your story. Every therapist understands the incredible unspoken bond between couples. Imagine if the couple themselves could see that and work with it, rather than closing the door due to incompatibility.