How To Know When You’re Just Not Meant To Be

Sometimes a relationship can tick all the boxes and meet all the conditions but something still feels off. No matter how much two people wish they could be together, you can’t force something that’s not meant to work. Read on for eight signs that you’re just not meant to be with someone.

  1. Everything feels difficult. When something is meant to be, there tends to be a natural flow. And when something doesn’t quite fit, everything around it becomes difficult. You’ll know that you don’t actually belong with someone when everything in the relationship just feels like a huge chore. Organizing schedules, agreeing on date activities, coordinating life plans, and everything else will feel forced and unnatural. Think of it as a puzzle. Certain pieces fit and when you try to force the ones that don’t, it’s uncomfortable. This is the Universe’s way of screaming at you that it’s not right.
  2. You don’t feel like a team. A couple should be a team. You might each have different roles that suit you better, or maybe you share everything equally. But for all intents and purposes, you are a team. You don’t belong with each other when it feels like a one-way street, where one person does all the work. Or one person does all the crying. Those feelings of unbalance can mean that you’re not on the same page and you don’t fit together properly.
  3. Little problems seem really big. If you’re not meant to be with someone, little problems will seem much bigger than they are. You’ll have a gut feeling that you don’t suit each other well, so you might subconsciously always be looking for a reason to break up with them. Through those lenses, the smallest challenges will seem impossible to overcome. You might constantly find yourself wondering whether you really want to stay with that person.
  4. You compare them to your exes. Do you always compare your new partner to your ex? Or a few exes? That could be a sign that you don’t actually fit together like a puzzle. Although people compare to their exes for all sorts of reasons, when you really belong with someone, you won’t second-guess them all the time. You’ll be secure with them rather than looking back and wondering what it would have been like if you were still with someone else.
  5. Fighting feels like the end of the world. All healthy couples have fights from time to time. But when you fight with someone you really belong with, you find a way to recover. Even from the really bad fights, you both do what you can to fix it. By contrast, when you’re with the wrong person for you, the fights can feel like the end of the world. It can feel like you’re an inch away from breaking up every time you disagree.
  6. Their flaws bother you. We all have a list of preferences that we’d like in our ideal partner. Some people like dark hair and others like blonde. Funny or nerdy. Tall or short. The truth is, though, when you meet the right person, those little conditions don’t really matter. When you like someone enough and you actually belong with them, their “flaws” are just insignificant details that you overlook. But when you’re not meant to be, those flaws tend to stand out. They matter because you don’t feel strongly enough about that person for them not to matter.
  7. You have different values. It’s totally fine for a couple to have differences. Those differences can actually work really well together. But when a couple has different values, it can really cause a lot of issues. For example, if one person dreams of a life spent traveling and finding adventure, and the other longs for a house in the suburbs, there’s going to either be one unhappy person or a clash. Different values can sometimes indicate that it’s not meant to work out.
  8. Something just feels off. They say that when you meet the one, you’ll just know it. The same goes for a relationship that’s not quite right. Although it all might appear to be working out well on the surface, something will just feel off. You might not be able to pinpoint exactly what it is. If you listen to your intuition and gut feelings, you’ll already know that you don’t belong with that person.
  9. You dream of being with someone else. If you dream of having someone else, it’s a pretty clear sign that you’re you don’t truly belong with your current partner. No one deserves a partner whose heart is elsewhere. At the same time, no one deserves to be in a relationship that they don’t actually want to be in. Those feelings just show that you don’t belong together, even if you appear to on the outside.
Vanessa Locampo is an Aussie writer who’s equally obsessed with YA fiction and pasta. Her time is divided between writing all the things, reading all the things, listening to Queen, and bopping her cat on the nose. She has a bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing and has written for sites including Hotsprings.co and Discovering Montana, and currently works as an editor at Glam. You can keep up with her on Instagram @vanessaellewrites.
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