Relationships are hard. There’s no two ways around it.

But do they have to be this hard? Should your relationship be a constant struggle each and every day?

Shouldn’t you be mostly happy and just go through a few rough patches every once in a while?

Yes, that’s the ideal. And for the most part, that’s what healthy, loving relationships look like. Some may be a lot more combative than others if both partners like to roll up their sleeves and get everything out in the open.

But if you’re constantly battling it out or always unhappy, something else might be going on.

You may be two people who’d simply make better friends, business partners, or even co-parents than romantic partners.

Psychology can shed some light on how to tell if your relationship simply isn’t based on love the way you think or hope it is. 

These seven signs you don’t truly love each other, according to psychology, are going to be a bitter pill to swallow. But if you can relate to enough of them, then the proof, as they say, is in the pudding.

1) Criticism is standard in your relationship.

The Gottman Institute, founded by Dr. John Gottman and Dr. Julie Schwartz Gottman, is well known for researching both what makes romantic relationships work and what makes them fail.

Gottman’s research has helped to define what they call the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse for relationships. These are factors that, if present in relationships, are incredibly strong signals of its demise. 

The first of these four factors is criticism.

Rather than offering a critique or making a complaint, criticism of your partner is directed at something deep inside. This could be a value that you don’t share or a quality that you don’t like about them.

We all complain in our relationships, though some do it more than others. But when those complaints about what our partners do turn to criticisms of who they are, this can indicate big problems.

Look at the difference between these two ways to communicate about the same issue:

Complaint: “The toilet paper was all used up, and I had to use the tube. Ouch! I wish you would remember to replace the roll according to our ‘you kill it, you fill it’ rule.”

Criticism: “You used the toilet paper and left me in real trouble. You’re always doing this because you’re selfish and never think about anyone but yourself.”

I think you can see how the criticism here is a lot more cutting than the complaint.

Is your relationship full of this kind of critical communication? If it is, you may actually be lacking the necessary respect for each other that a solid relationship needs.

2) You treat each other with contempt.

If you look at a dictionary, you’re going to read a definition of contempt like this: “a feeling that someone or something is not important and deserves no respect.”

So you can already see that if this is how you think about your partner, you’re already in some pretty deep water.

The Gottmans believe that contempt comes out in body language, through communication like “disrespect, mock them with sarcasm, ridicule, call them names, and mimic or use body language such as eye-rolling or scoffing.”

This kind of behavior is clearly meant to demean the other person and make yourself look bigger or better by comparison. But is this the way that people who love each other act?

The Gottmans say no. In fact, they say that contemptuous communication is the biggest predictor of divorce. 

And that’s from people who seem to be able to predict if couples will divorce with 93% accuracy.

3) You’re both always on the defensive.

If one partner goes on the offense with a complaint or criticism, the other partner will normally do one of two things.

Either they’ll try to de-escalate the situation by listening to their partner with respect and an open mind, or they’ll get defensive.

And if they get defensive, the Gottmans suggest that this will lead quickly to aggression. 

The person who starts out defending themself usually tries to turn the blame around and place it squarely back on their partner’s shoulders. They simply don’t want to carry it themself.

As you can imagine, or maybe know from your own experience, all this usually does is make the other person get more aggressive and attack right back. Things can keep going back and forth, escalating until they explode.

This isn’t a sign of love. It’s a sign of a dysfunctional relationship that either needs to be seriously repaired or simply ended for the good of both partners.

4) You have stone walls built around you.

The last of the Gottmans’ Four Horses is stonewalling. 

In case you’re not familiar with this term, it means building emotional walls to separate yourself from someone else. The intention is to block them out so they can’t affect you.

Stonewalling is refusing to communicate or cooperate, and we all know that’s not what happens in healthy relationships!

If your partner is communicating with you, whether constructively or aggressively, it might be normal for you to withdraw or shut down. The Gottmans mention that “tuning out, turning away, acting busy, or engaging in obsessive or distracting behaviors” are all examples of stonewalling.

And it’s not healthy.

Of course, people might also do these things if they have a lot of anxiety about the topic at hand. But we’re talking about repeated patterns of behavior.

If your partner refuses to engage with you or you basically block them out often, it could be that you really don’t love and respect each other enough to maintain this relationship.

It’s important to point out that the Gottmans’ Four Horsemen are symptoms, not causes or relationship ills. You can’t just change the way you communicate based on some healthier models and expect everything to change.

They might improve a bit, but the underlying cause of these behaviors is still that you and your partner aren’t working out as a couple and possibly don’t love each other.

5) You lose trust.

Of course, the Gottmans aren’t the only psychologists who have studied relationships.

A lot of research has been done into relationships that fail and people who fall out of love. 

One study interviewed people who had fallen out of love to look for the common reasons for this phenomenon.

The researcher found that one common thread was a feeling of a loss of trust in the partner. 

This loss could be slow and gradual, a creeping feeling that the partner is no longer as trustworthy or dependable as you once thought. Or it could simply fly out the window after an incident that shakes your foundations, like cheating or abuse.

If you don’t feel like you trust your partner anymore, at least not in the complete and unquestioning way you used to, then you may very well have fallen out of love.

And, of course, it could be the same with your partner’s trust in you.

6) There’s no intimacy anymore.

The same study also pointed out another big indicator of falling out of love.

It was very common for participants to comment that their relationships started to enjoy less intimacy and eventually had none.

In the study, this “intimacy” was a euphemism for sex and referred to physical intimacy. Participants reported that they stopped having sex or even wanting to, or if they did, it was unfulfilling.

Some even reported wishing they were having sex with other fantasy people rather than their partners.

However, this isn’t the only type of intimacy that disappears in a loveless relationship.

Emotional intimacy is the feeling of being close, appreciated, and valued by another person. And this doesn’t have to have anything to do with sex.

When partners are emotionally intimate, they share their deepest feelings. They listen and accept each other and feel good when they connect. But partners who aren’t truly in love can lack this emotional connection or eventually lose it.

7) You don’t make each other laugh.

One last study on relationships looked at another type of communication.

This time, they looked into how humor – sharing jokes and laughing together – predicts relationship success.

The study found that couples who shared humor had much higher relationship satisfaction than those who didn’t.

If you think about how being able to laugh through difficulties or see the light side of tough situations together makes everything feel better, you’ll definitely understand these findings. 

So if you and your partner don’t laugh together, if you always take things too seriously, then you’re not going to appreciate your relationship much.

It might even be a sign that you don’t actually love each other.

These seven signs you don’t truly love each other, according to psychology, aren’t things anyone wants to experience in their relationships.

But if this is how yours looks, chances are that it’s not going well and just isn’t meant to last.