[0:00]

Marie

“I’ve been with my partner for several years, and we’re in the thick of parenting. Somewhere in it all, I feel like we’ve just drifted apart. I still really like him. We get along well. There’s no big fight, no crisis. I just don’t feel in love the way I used to, and I don’t know how to get back there. Is that even possible?”

That’s one of the most common things I hear from people who come to see me. Not in a crisis, not about to leave, but quietly wondering how they got here and whether they can find their way back. Welcome to This Complex Life. I’m your host Marie Vakakis, and each week we try to make a bit more sense of the messy, complicated, and every now and again gloriously beautiful business of being human. The relationships we’re in, and the mental health tangled up in them. I’m really glad you’re here.

Today I’m answering this question, and I think it’s going to land for a lot of people who wouldn’t describe their relationship as being in trouble, but know that something’s missing.

[1:00]

Marie

Short answer: yes, totally possible. What this question describes is a common example of day-to-day life just happening. Things get busy. People are working. If they’re raising children, there’s all the logistics and extra care that comes with that. Add in a few winter bugs, flu season, childcare dramas. There’s always something, and putting time and energy into maintaining your relationship can feel so far away.

This isn’t about making people feel guilty. It’s really common, and it’s really easy to slip into co-parenting and feeling like housemates or ships in the night. That can be genuinely sad.

I’m seeing a lot of people come to couples therapy right now who met around COVID, who had a few years in lockdown where they spent a lot of time together. For some people that was an incredibly stressful time. For me personally, it was terrible. I felt like I was in solitary confinement. It caused a lot of distress, and that impacted my relationship. For others though, having their partner work from home, dividing childcare, losing the commute and some of the extra social commitments, their relationship genuinely thrived. They had quality time together and that balance of both people contributing.

Now I’m seeing those same people with five or six-year-olds, back at work full time, doing school drop-offs and navigating all the after-school activities that didn’t exist before. They’ve lost something in their relationship. They’ve lost curiosity. They’ve lost connection. Maybe they’ve lost intimacy and the experience of creating new memories as a couple.

A lot of the time when people do have a date night, and I sit in restaurants and I can hear what people are saying, they’re talking about logistics. They’re on a date night, and they’re talking about the kids or bills or whether to get a cleaner or how parents can help out. That’s fine, we need those conversations too. But it does leave something lacking.

This doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a gradual drifting apart, a gradual disconnection, and some people don’t notice it until months or even years have passed. One day it hits them: my partner doesn’t really know me anymore. Maybe I’ve even lost bits of myself and I don’t really know them. They ask how was your day, say good. How were the kids, great. How was work, fine. And maybe that’s where it stops.

If that’s you, if you don’t even know what to ask anymore, I have a whole set of questions you can ask your partner. They’re free to download. There’ll be a link in the show notes.

[2:30]

Marie

Why drifting apart is different to falling out of love. I think this is an interesting paradox.

Drifting apart implies to me that there’s a level of intimacy, and I’m not talking about sexual intimacy. I’m talking about this idea of being known that isn’t as present. You can look at your partner, and I see this in couples all the time, where they love how amazing a parent their partner is, how they play with the kids, how dedicated they are. For some people, having kids is really healing. They look at their partner and think: you’re giving our children something I didn’t have, and I’m so grateful.

The falling out of love happens slowly too. It needs to be watered. It’s like a plant. We need to keep watering it to keep it alive. If a plant has no sunlight and no water and it dies, we don’t say that plant wasn’t resilient enough. We say that plant didn’t get what it needed. Everyone has different needs. Some people are like a cactus and don’t need much. Others are like a peace lily that goes completely floppy when it’s dehydrated. It’s telling you it needs water.

I’ll stop with the plant metaphor there. The point is that things do take maintenance and tending, and relationships are no different. Friendships, marriages, parenting, none of these are just a contract you sign. A marriage certificate doesn’t guarantee the things you want from it. You need to keep working on it.

To answer this question directly: yes, you can find love again, you can find that spark again, but it doesn’t just happen out of nowhere.

[5:30]

Marie

What drifting apart actually looks like. Here are some signs you can look out for that might help you examine what’s actually happening.

Sign one: your patterns have become functional rather than romantic. A birthday rolls around and it’s oh, I have to get them a gift, rather than oh, I have so many ideas of what they might like and I can’t wait to spoil them. An anniversary comes around and it’s let’s book something and get it done, rather than I can’t wait for this, let me pick a restaurant we’ve been wanting to try or plan a weekend away and spoil my partner. You can see the difference between it being a tick-box exercise and something that’s functional rather than romantic and genuine.

I know there’s a cost of living crisis and some people will say they can’t afford it. That’s an excuse. You can have a picnic on the floor of your living room when the kids are asleep. You can pick flowers from your garden. There are ways to make it cheap, intentional and romantic. It’s about clearing a space, physically and emotionally, and making that dedicated effort. If you used to love game nights, you can reintroduce that. Get some butcher’s paper and play Pictionary. Money is not the be-all and end-all here. You can afford romance. It doesn’t cost anything.

Sign two: conversation has become about logistics. What time are you getting up? Who’s walking the dog? What’s for dinner? Have you paid this bill? Day-to-day we need some of that, but if it’s the majority of your conversations, you’re not building a knowledge base of each other. You wouldn’t have fallen in love with someone if all your early conversations were just logistics. We need to show curiosity. We need to catch bids for connection.

Bids for connection are those moments where someone makes an observation out loud and their partner responds positively. Maybe you see something funny happen on the street. You tell your partner: oh my goodness, I can’t believe that person got tangled up with their dog. And your partner says yeah, whatever. That’s ignoring the bid. Another poor response might be: why are you watching the neighbours, mind your own business. A good response would be: oh my goodness, what just happened? I missed it. Just taking a moment to connect with what that person shared.

If those bids for connection are being dismissed, especially if they’re met with aggression or criticism, that’s going to be damaging. The Gottman analogy I find useful is a piggy bank or money box. We need to keep putting deposits in to be able to make a withdrawal. I see a lot of couples who are in overdraft. They’ve withdrawn so much there’s nothing left for the hard times. And hard times are inevitable. You need to have that emotional buffer built up.

Sign three: the small moments of connection have quietly disappeared. This connects to bids for connection, but it also includes sitting on the couch and having a cuddle. If you’re at opposite ends of the couch on your phones most of the time, you’re missing those quality moments, small as they are. It’s coming home, walking through the door, and giving your partner a hug and a kiss and making eye contact. You don’t have to be like an excited puppy. Just hey babe, nice to see you. A hug and a kiss.

These are some of the basic fundamentals I teach couples, and when we look at their daily schedules and routines, for so many of them these are the things that are missing. No morning kiss. No goodnight. No cuddle on the couch. They’re not connecting in those small moments throughout the day. That’s a significant red flag for me.

Sign four: you’re on autopilot. Autopilot is different to routine. If you’re just going through the motions and you get home and can’t remember your drive, you don’t remember what you had for dinner two days ago, that’s a cluttered and busy mind. It’s not great for anyone in terms of exhaustion and self-care. If you notice you’re on autopilot in your own life, it’s probably happening in your relationship as well.

Sign five: you’re coexisting rather than connecting. You’re around each other but not really interacting. You’re talking logistics but not connecting about deeper things. You’re living like housemates. One person manages things, delegates tasks, you get stuff done. That’s not connection. Just being around is not connection.

You can see the theme. There are a number of ways you can slowly drift apart without even realising it’s happening. The person who asked this question might recognise one or two or all of these patterns, and it might have happened so gradually they didn’t see it coming.

[15:00]

Marie

Understanding why this happened matters, because it’s a lot easier to know what to do once you understand what’s happening and why.

Parenting takes over everything, and it makes sense. A baby literally needs you to survive. It needs constant touch, connection, reassurance, feeding, temperature regulation, sleep support. That’s a really demanding time. That’s often where I see this start.

I don’t see it happen as much in couples without children, though some of these patterns apply regardless. The drifting can happen through focusing heavily on studies, work or a hobby. But when children are in the picture, the relationship gets deprioritised because it seems more stable than the kids. The thinking is: I love my partner, we’re good, let’s focus on the chaos over here. Because everything seems fine you stop investing in it. That’s where the cracks start to appear.

I see it happen even from early pregnancy, where one partner is really preoccupied with their health and the baby’s health, and conversations about those concerns get dismissed or invalidated. That’s one of the patterns worth naming: sometimes people are genuinely trying to connect, but their partner tries to fix it or invalidates it.

Stop trying to fix it. You can empathise with someone’s distress. You can validate their experience even if you don’t agree and even if you wouldn’t feel the same way in that situation. Not everything is about you. If someone comes home and says there’s stuff everywhere, they’re probably not saying you left it there. They’re expressing frustration. They know life is busy. They know you’re doing your best. Just say: are you okay? Looks like you’ve had a hard day. Checking in without trying to fix it, without getting defensive. It’s probably not about you.

[20:00]

Marie

What actually works. None of this requires weekend getaways or grand gestures. They might help. I love a weekend away, but your problems will just be there when you come back and they might follow you on the trip. I’ve had couples come in after a getaway saying they fought the entire time. Usually it’s because one person wanted to sit by the fire with a book and a glass of wine and the other wanted to go for a hike and play board games, and nobody had said that out loud beforehand. Different expectations, no conversation about what each person actually needed. Expectations are a significant cause of fights.

My Relationship Reset course covers this. I have questions around how couples celebrate things, their rituals, how they spend money, all the themes that come up consistently in the couples I work with. There’s a whole bunch of prompts and questions to help you have those conversations. The link will be in the show notes.

[23:00]

Marie

You don’t have to wait for a crisis to start. Here are some ways to gently bring up this conversation if you’re listening and thinking: that’s me, that’s us.

Start the conversation with what you’ve noticed and how you feel, but start with I. And I want to clarify something here. Saying I feel like you don’t, or I feel like when you, are not emotions. They’re not feelings. Describing what the other person is doing is almost guaranteed to trigger defensiveness.

Start with an actual feeling. I feel overwhelmed when I walk in and the house is chaotic. I understand we both have busy lives. I just find it really hard, and I’d like to find some ways to make coming home a bit easier. Compare that to: I feel like you don’t pick up after yourself and you leave everything to me when I get home. The second one is going to start a fight.

If you’re describing the other person, you’re most likely going to get a defensive response. They’ll feel attacked and criticised. If you’re on the receiving end and your partner is trying and fumbling through it, they will make mistakes. We all do. Try to remember that it’s probably not about you, and see if you can meet it differently.

Things like: I miss us, rather than you’re absent. I’d like to spend more time together, rather than you never make time for me. I feel disconnected, I’d love to go on a date night and it would be great if you could organise it and surprise me, rather than you never organise anything for us. The way you phrase it changes the whole conversation. This was one of the most impactful learnings for me in studying couples therapy: how to ask for what you need rather than naming what the other person isn’t doing.

Tone matters here too. You can say I can see you’re frustrated with genuine concern and get a very different response than the same sentence delivered with impatience. Tone often does more work than the words themselves.

[32:00]

Marie

Picking the right time for this conversation is really important. Don’t pick a time when you’re both depleted. Some people say let’s do it Friday night when the kids are out. If you’ve been working full time and doing all the pickups and drop-offs and logistics, Friday night might be the absolute worst time.

Couples often pair up a night owl with an early bird. The early bird wants to talk in the morning and the night owl is still waking up. By the time the night owl is ready at 10pm, the early bird has been half asleep for an hour. You might need to schedule this like you would an important work meeting. A long lunch. A Saturday afternoon. Aligning your RDOs. Find a time that works for both of you so you’re not setting each other up to fail and criticising the other person for their brain working on a different rhythm.

Don’t weaponise it. Don’t say I’m always ready in the mornings and you never want to talk. If you know they’re not a morning person and you are, stop expecting them to be different. Say: I prefer mornings, I know you prefer evenings, let’s find a time that works for both of us.

[35:00]

Marie

Some things you can do yourself. Check out the Relationship Reset course and the open-ended questions that are available to download. Both are linked in the show notes.

Falling back in love is not about grand gestures. It’s not about big things. I worked with a couple in a marathon session, two full days of therapy. Weeks later I got an email from one of them that I still think about. She wrote: thank you so much, I have fallen in love with my husband again.

That came after two days of deep conversation. Yes, some conflict resolution. Yes, looking at different patterns. But mostly it was learning new things about each other. Learning the content and context behind some of the things that activated them, some of the parenting choices they’d made. One of the most beautiful conversations I witnessed was a vulnerable one about how they felt approaching empty nest season. Their children were slowly making plans to leave home. Instead of pretending it was all fine, they shared their hopes and their dreams for their kids and for their relationship, and their fears. They each got to hear that the other person had been carrying similar things.

It gets me a little teary even thinking about it. Those conversations changed everything for them. It wasn’t grand gestures. Yes, a marathon session was quite an investment, but the power came from the conversations. All of that information was already there. It just needed a bit of scaffolding and some help to get started.

What I want you to take away is this: put deposits into your emotional piggy bank. That can start today. It can start the next time you see your partner, coming back together at the end of the day, just giving them a hug and a kiss and saying nice to see you. It can be a text that says I appreciate that you made me a coffee this morning. Start small. Those small moments over time have a real impact.

You chose each other once. You can choose each other again.

To the person who wrote that question in: yes, it is possible. It might be tricky. You might need some extra support. But I absolutely think you can fall back in love with your partner again.