People either grow together or grow apart.

While the first can make for a phenomenal experience – nothing can rival a 20-year friendship or a 40-year romance, after all – the latter isn’t as pleasant.

In fact, the realization that you and someone you used to be close with are slowly but surely growing apart can be heartbreaking. It’s a gentle yet sad feeling mixed with nostalgia, and the worst part is that there’s often nothing you can do about it.

Sometimes, you’re the one who’s pushing another person away. Other times, you may notice that they’re phasing you out of their life, which basically means they’re waiting for your relationship to slowly fizzle out.

But how can you make sure your gut feeling is correct?

These are the 7 signs to tick off your list.

1) Their text messages get increasingly less enthusiastic

You’ve probably already heard the term “ghosting,” which happens when someone decides to abruptly end communication without any explanation whatsoever.

One day, you’re messaging back and forth. The next day, they’re out of your life. End of story.

Understandably, this can be extremely distressing.

Well, the good news is that if someone’s phasing you out of their life, they’re probably not going to ghost you. Not at first, anyway.

The bad news is that they might resort to the “slow fade,” which psychologist Jennice Vilhauer, PhD, describes as “ the charade that someone puts on when they decide to end a relationship but don’t share their decision.”

She adds, “The slow fade isn’t kind, it’s a form of gaslighting that can cause emotional damage. Providing clarity about the break-up allows the other person to process it emotionally; it’s the kindest way to end a relationship.”

Unfortunately, far too many people are terrified of confrontation and therefore opt for the “cowardly” way, which means they’re basically waiting for you to get the hint and stop reaching out.

They’re transferring part of the responsibility of ending the relationship onto your own shoulders so that they can eventually say, “Oh, we just lost touch.”

The slow fade is characterized by longer breaks between messages and an overall decrease in enthusiasm when it comes to the tone and content of the texts.

2) You’re the only one who takes the initiative and makes concrete plans

Moving on to our sign number two, I’ve got a question to ask you.

Think of the last three times you met up with this person or had some form of contact. Were you always the first one to reach out?

While I would generally discourage people from keeping a tally of who messaged whom first, there are situations when taking a step back and having a think about whether you’re the only person putting in effort can prove very effective.

And this is one of them.

Any kind of healthy relationship can only work if both people put in similar amounts of energy.

This doesn’t mean you always have to reciprocate – if one of you is going through a very stressful or busy period at work, for example, it makes sense that you don’t have as much time to hang out – but both people should ideally feel appreciated and fulfilled to a certain extent.

In one of my past friendships, I asked myself, “What would happen if I stopped reaching out? Would the other person realize and take initiative?”

I put my plan into action. Lo and behold, the friendship fizzled out because the other person never properly tried to re-establish contact.

That was sign enough for me.

3) They cancel on you more and more often

Some people aren’t as obvious as those who never reach out and offer drier and drier replies.

Take Julie, for example. Julie was my university friend of two years. Once our studies came to an end, though, she slowly stopped hanging out with me and our third friend (let’s call her Sophie).

It wasn’t as clear-cut as that, though.

And that’s because Julie did reach out. She did make plans.

But when she asked us how we were and we offered our replies and asked her back, she would leave us on read.  

When she made a concrete plan, she would cancel on us the day before because she “wasn’t feeling up for it.”

At one point, Sophie and I joked that Julie basically functioned as our socializing calendar – she would come up with ideas and make plans and then not turn up, thereby scheduling friend dates for the two of us.

Here’s what Julie’s problem was.

She wanted us to remain friends without putting any real effort in, and she thought that if she asked us a couple of questions from time to time or showed the *intention* of meeting us, we would get the message that she was still part of the friendship group.

This kept happening for months on end until we finally told her that if she wasn’t planning to actually meet us, there was no point in her scheduling activities with us.

4) They don’t share their big news with you anymore

If you used to be the first person they’d tell if something amazing or terrible had happened to them, and now you get to find out about their life from Instagram stories…

Yep, that’s another clear sign they’re phasing you out of their life.

Just last year, I found out Julie had been accepted for a postgraduate degree in a field of expertise she loved from her social media.

She didn’t think to share her excitement with me and Sophie directly. We became part of the passive follower crowd.

5) They don’t put in any effort to resolve your conflicts

Look, no relationship is perfect. 

Sometimes, you won’t see eye to eye. Sometimes, you might get upset at each other and pout for a little while. Sometimes, you might just ignore it and hope it all blows over.

But if you genuinely care about this relationship, be it a friendship, a romance, or a relationship with one of your relatives, you will try to make up.

In other words, you’ll try to effectively communicate your feelings, listen to the other person’s point of view, and attempt to find a compromise.

If someone’s phasing you out of their life, though, there’s basically no reason for them to go through all that trouble because they aren’t interested in maintaining this relationship in the first place.

Therefore, their response might be to simply ignore the conflict or reply to it by distancing themselves even further.

6) They’re always “too busy” to hang out

I believe there is no such thing as “too busy.” We all have the same number of hours in a day – what we do with them is completely up to us.

Yes, you might have a lot on your plate. Yes, you might not find the time to meet up with a friend, and that doesn’t automatically mean you don’t ever want to see them again.

But it does mean that your friend is not the biggest priority right now. And that’s okay – as long as we call it what it is.

If someone’s too busy to hang out with you, it’s a sign they prioritize other matters in life over you. You might or might not be okay with this depending on the context and the nature of the relationship itself.

Furthermore, “I’m too busy” could also just be an excuse.

As mental health writer Jen Zamzow Ph.D. says, busyness is a socially acceptable excuse, which is why far too many people use it to get out of situations they don’t want to be in:

“We end up letting ourselves off the hook more often than we should—and more often than we really want. Instead of just saying no to things we can’t do, we also use ‘I’m too busy’ to avoid things we just don’t feel like doing.”

7) You can feel something’s just… off

Finally, listen to your gut instinct.

If you can feel the other person pulling away from you, there’s a high chance they are, indeed, phasing you out of their life.

If you want, you can choose to talk to them about it. Direct confrontation may be exactly what they need in order to come clean about their genuine intentions.

Of course, they might also just say they’re too busy or make empty promises about future meetups that will never take place so that they can avoid the uncomfortable feeling that comes with directly cutting ties.

You can’t control their behavior. What you can do, however, is to choose your own path.

If someone’s phasing you out…

Maybe it’s time to pour your energy into people who genuinely want to spend time with you.