6 Reasons We Fall Out of Love & 6 Changes We Can Make to Keep It Flourishing

in the world. Thanks to each and every single one of you that come back every week to listen, learn, and grow. Now I want to say a huge, huge thank you to you because thanks to you, on Purpose was in the top ten podcasts in the United States this week, which is unbelievable. It blows my mind because all the other podcasts are true crime or the news or daily podcasts that have news elements to them, and for us to be top ten in the US is just incredible. So thank you so much to everyone who's

left a review. Thank you so much to everyone who's posting on Instagram and Twitter and Facebook and YouTube, and thank you to each and every single one of you that's recommending this to your friends, that's bringing your community into my world. I'm so deeply appreciative of all the love, of all the amazing energy that you send towards me, and I hope that in these episodes you see every single week, I'm trying to share my best energy towards you. I am so excited to share this episode with you

because I think it's so important. Whether you're single, whether you're in a relationship, whether you're married, whether you just broke up, whether you're divorced, whatever your relationship status. I want you to know that this episode's super important because this is something that we're all scared of. It's something that happens more often than we think, and I don't think there's enough conversations around it. There's not enough discussion

around this topic. And so today we're talking about the six reasons we fall out of love and six changes we can make to keep it growing. Right, today we're talking about the six reasons we fall out of love and the six changes to keep it growing. No one falls in love hoping to fall out of love. But I'm sure many of you have even experienced this. And I had a friend recently who experienced this where she came and told me, he told me he doesn't love

me anymore, he said, he's fallen out of love with me. Now, whether you've heard those painful words yourself, or whether you've heard a friend go through this, it is never a great place to be. It is never going to feel right because we don't fall into love wanting to fall out of love. So why do we fall out of love? Well, to answer that question, I want to start by looking at the definition of what it means to fall in love. Now,

falling is something involuntary. It's usually outside of our control, and to me, that doesn't sound like a good way to be in love. We want to be in love. As shri Shi Ravishanka, a teacher from India, has said before, we don't fall in love, we rise in love. Right. So what I find really really interesting about that is that even the idea of falling in love and falling out of love, falling in love happens involuntarily. It happens unconsciously. But guess what so does falling out of love. Falling

out of love happens unconsciously as well. And so if we fall in love unconsciously, we will fall out of love unconsciously. But if we can rise in love consciously, then we can continue to grow in love constantly. Notice how we carry our unconscious unawareness through every stage of life, and that it doesn't just disappear or change or benefit us in any way. When you look at the studies and the research, fifty eight percent of participants say that

breakups are dramatic or messy. That's a large portion, and I know we've all been there. We've all been in those dramatic or messy breakups. Now, sixty four percent of participants have gone through a breakup of a long term relationship. This is where it gets really interesting. Sixty five percent of people say communication issues are the reason for a break and we're going to talk about some of those

key issues today. Sixty seven percent of people say that disagreements between typical couples never get resolved, but they don't need to. Not every argument needs a resolution. But actually what leads to a breakup is that the other thirty three percent of issues are not addressed. And then thirty eight percent of relationships end because of infidelity. So notice how we would think that cheating or something of the sort could be higher, but actually not that it isn't

a significant number. It's still lower than communication issues. It's lower than disagreements, it's lower than addressing important things. Today, when we look at the reasons we fall out of love and the ways to keep it growing, I want to focus on the subtle in betweens that often get forgotten. The first one is we stop learning new things about

each other. Let me ask you a question. If you're in a relationship, or if you've just got out of one, or if you've been in one before, answer this question for yourself. When was the last time you did something new together? What was the last new thing you learned about your partner? Chances are those things don't even come to mind. More often than not, we're not learning about our partners anymore. We think we know them, We think and believe we understand them, and even more unconsciously, we

expect and believe that they know us. We expect and believe that if we've been together for a certain amount of time, maybe if we've taken our marriage vows, then they already get us, They already know us. And this is one of the biggest reasons why people fall out of love. They expect other people know them, and they expect they know other people. So when you expect and believe that you already know everything you need to know, and they know everything they need to know about you.

We stop learning new things about each other. I asked this to a friend recently that I was speaking to. I said, when was the last time you learned something new about your partner or did something new with your partner? And they said it was a couple of years ago when they're on vacation. I'm thinking, Wow, you've been together for a significant amount of time, but the last time you felt you were growing together, learning together, developing together

was over two years ago. We should be trying to do something new together every quarter, right, every quarter every three months, we can find the time to have a new experience together, a new event and experience, and you experiment a new education, a new piece of entertainment. To

share an experience together deepens your relationship. I just got back from a wonderful few days in New York where a friend of mine, a very dear friend of mine, was getting married, and a lot of my friends had flown in from London, friends that I hadn't really hung out within quite a while because of the pandemic, and we had a whole weekend in New York And while we don't have romantic relationships, this was friends. We made

so many memories in four days. In four days, we made so many new memories in New York City, where we've deepened our bond, continued, our friendship, added new stories, and we've learned new things about each other. See, the thing is that at the start of a relationship, everything is new, right, everything's new. You go to a restaurant, it's a new experience with them. You go to an art gallery, you go to a city. Right, you may go to Paris, you may go to Rome, you go

to another place with them. You travel a lot more with them, so you're constantly having new experiences, and the newness of the environment creates a freshness in the exchange. Right, the newness of the external environment creates a freshness in the exchange that you share. But as we spend more time together, we live in the same home, we have the same routine, we do the same things, and we hang out with the same people in the same places. So now there is no more newness in the environment.

So the freshness of the relationships exchanges diminishes. But we can change that very simply we can adapt that very easily by doing new things together, learning new things about each other. So I want you to think about that as you start planning out the next quarter, or as you move into your next relationship. See how you can add newness from the outside so that you can learn more new about the person. There is always something new to learn about something old, whether it's a work of art,

whether it's a building, whether it's a word. Everything in the world has more history than we can even father or imagine. And so I would like you to think about the person you're within. That way, they'll recognize that they're never endingly deep, they're limitless, and that you should always try and discover something new about them. And that way you'll never fall out of love with them. You may choose that you don't like what you learn, but

you won't unconsciously fall out of love with them. Number two is we stop talking about vulnerable, intimate important meaningful topics. What's really interesting about this is that when they surveyed couples, the happiest couples only spent about ten percent of their communication on small talk and daily tasks, but the unhappiest twenty eight point three percent. Of their time was spent

on shallow things. So you notice how there isn't conclusive evidence on this yet, but it's moving in that direction that the less we're talking about things that are important, powerful, deeply meaningful to us, it's hard to build a long lasting relationship of a functional conversations when everything becomes too functional logistical. I mean even those words they strip away

the spirit of connection. And it's natural that as we spend more time together, we end up talking about, well, what needs to happen around the apartment, or one needs to happen around the house, or you know, who's picking up the kids, or who's planning this out, and everything becomes logical functional. It becomes like event management as opposed to being a relationship. And that's needed. Right. Those conversations are integral, but they are a baseline for the deeper,

meaningful conversations that need to happen. What's really uncomfortable about that is that we have to make time to ask those beautiful questions, right, We have to make time to give our partner the ability to have meaningful conversations with us. So one of the questions, and I was thinking about questions that have often encouraged couples to ask each other. And you know, questions can be anything about embarrassing moments,

their childhood, or the future. So I find that talking about the past, present, and future is what develops intimacy in a relationship. If you want to develop a connection with someone, it is by discussing your past, present, and future you think about it. Some relationships in your life you only talk about the future, some relationships you only talk about the past, and some relationships you only talk

about the present. So someone who has a three sixty degree view of you is someone you can have a loving relationship with and you can keep growing the love because they are growing with you and through your journey with you. So childhood is the past, embarrassing moments, maybe the present, and it also brings a bit of laughter, a bit of lightness, and then the future your hopes

and dreams, your aspirations. So some questions that I really like for childhood is you know, who's someone in your family that you feel your most yourself around, Right, That's a great question, and making time for questions like this allows you to learn so much about that person. Another great question is why do you want to be a parent? If you want to be a parent, why so? If you don't, why not? And having an open conversation around that. One of the best conversations to have about the present

is what's your love language right now? Right What is something that you deeply appreciate? Or another way it could be to describe your perfect day? What is it that makes a day special? And remember these questions are not being asked with the expectation that someone's going to fulfill them. It's just the act of having that intimacy, that vulnerability with someone that creates deeper bonds and deeper connections and deeper relationships. And then the future, what are your hopes

and aspirations? What are you building, what are you creating? What are your goals this year? So if we truly want to not fall out of love, it requires this consistent growth. And this is what I find fascinating that nothing in the world just stays as it is right, nothing in the wor world just lasts without maintenance. But we expect love to last without maintenance. We expect love to last without nurturing, We expect love to last without

any effort. And it doesn't make sense at all. We've been getting so many amazing reviews for The Daily Jay, my new daily guided meditation series on the car Map. You might have heard a couple of snippets on the podcast for a few weeks, so in case you haven't had the chance to check it out, I just wanted to share this review from Caitlin, an elementary school teacher from New Jersey. He's what she had to say. I have over nine years of experience in the American public

school education system, including teaching throughout the pandemic. Over the past two years, I've seen extreme cases of anxiety and my students like never before. Many of these children have never experienced these feelings before, and most are not even sure of what they are feeling. My school district has spent a great deal of time focusing on social emotional

learning sel through this school year. We try to teach coping skills and focus on teaching kids how to deal with their feelings and become the best version of themselves. As someone who has also been experiencing the many anxieties of the world today, I have recently downloaded the car mapp thanks to my mom. My mom and I are big fans of yours, and once she heard that you will have seven minutes of Daily Jay each day. She

encouraged me in doing this. Your meaningful ideas and meditation have quickly become part of my daily routine, so much that I've begun incorporating some of them into my sel

morning meetings with my third graders. If you've ever wanted to meditate with me, join me on the car map for the Daily Jay, a daily guided meditation where I'll help you find calm in the chaos, plant beautiful intentions for a happy, abundant life, and simple steps for positive actions to get you closer to the life of your dreams.

Meditate with me by going to Calm dot com forward slash Jay to get forty percent off a Calm Premium membership that's only forty two dollars for the whole year for a daily guided meditation experience the Daily jy only oncom. The third reason we fall out of love is we don't create systems to deal with arguments. This one is absolutely huge, right, the amount of people that argue, the amount of people that have disagreements, the amount of people

that avoid arguments, but having systems to deal with arguments. Now, I'm going to share with you a system. The first system is the when, where, what, how? Why system. My belief is that arguments needs to become more like debates. The reason is that in an argument, there is no goal, there is no intention, and there is no clarity. In a debate, there's a motion, there's an intention, and there's knowledge. Arguments are unstructured, they're highly emotional, and they're highly irrational.

Debate it's of focused discussions on a particular idea. So the first question you have to ask yourself to create a system for arguments. Every time you start arguing, you can move to this system and me and rather they do this fairly often, and I find that I may guide us in this direction sometimes, so anyone can guide. But you have this discussion when you're not arguing. So

you have this discussion when you're not fighting. So you said, okay, look, next time we fight, this is the system we have to use to actually have a productive argument, as opposed to when we start fighting. We have to somehow figure this out, which is unlikely. The first thing is the ninety second rule. Knowing that emotions switch after ninety seconds. In those ninety seconds, you're gonna want to act, You're gonna want to be angry, you're gonna want to release yourself.

But if you can wait ninety seconds, if you can hold back for ninety seconds, it will change the tone of an argument. The first thing is what are we arguing about? Let's be really clear on what are we actually arguing about? Now, if you're starting an argument, if you've got an issue with something, what are you actually arguing about? And if someone else is arguing with you? Calming the situation down and asking the question, what are we actually arguing about, let's really look at that. What

is your genuine issue with this? Let me understand the root of it, Let's really break it down. It's not a challenging question. It's not a condescending question. It's a clarifying question. So you're not asking them what are you arguing about? What's wrong with you? What's your issue? You're saying, I want to understand clearly what it is that I've done to upset you and what it is that I've done to make you feel this way, right, I want

to understand that. That's the first step. The second step after you figured out the what, and so it's like, what are we arguing about? Because half the time we don't even know what we're arguing about, or we're arguing about a side thing and then we go, well, well, well it's not that, it's really this, and then we switch topic. Right, So let's really spend some time cooling down and figure out what are we arguing about. Before we do that, we have to figure out when and

where we're going to argue. Here's the thing about debates. They're set with the time and a place your arguments needed, time and a place. Ideally, where is in a neutral place? You want to argue, in a place that feels comfortable for both of you. You're not arguing in front of the kids, you're not arguing while the TV's on. You've made a commitment to do it in a proper time and place. And the place also means it could be somewhere neutral. It could be in a park, could be

you know, in your garden. It could be somewhere that feels more open. And when not when they just got back from work, not first thing in the morning, while someone's rushing to get their breakfast, not before a big meeting or presentation. Often we do that unconsciously and the other us and gets unhinged. A healthy system for an argument is first figuring out when and where you're going to choose to bring this up, and what you're choosing to bring up. Now, how is you're sitting next to

each other, You're not sitting opposing each other. There's a beautiful quote by Antoine Descent Exuperre that says love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking

outward together in the same direction. When we're looking at each other, we may look past each other, we may look against each other, we may have ideas that cross or conflict, But when we're looking in the same direction, when we're sitting next to each other, when we're on a walk together, we're already subconsciously moving in the same direction together. Arguing or debating while having a walk as

we move can be healthy. So that's the when, where, how, and then the why why am I really bringing this up? Explain why you're bringing it up. Don't just argue about what you're arguing about. Explain why it affects you. And also, when you prepare to share this, that's the thing about debates. You prepare for debates when you share this, the most amazing thing is that they understand because People may not understand what your issue is, but they're more likely to

understand why you have it. You may have an issue with someone not doing the dishes and they won't get it because they don't have the same why for it. But if you tell them why, they can understand yours a little bit deeper. Please communicate with why. So, how you set a system for an argument is before an argument outside you say, look, this is the system we're going to follow. We're going to figure out when and where,

we're going to figure out what we're arguing about. We're going to know how we're arguing it about it, and we're going to share why we're arguing about it. And it's going to be more like a debate than an argument, because we don't want to approach it from the perspective

of just shouting at each other. Now, the fourth reason we fall out of love is that the John Gottman Institute says that only nine percent of the time our couples emotionally available nine percent, which means there's ninety one percent of the time that couples are not emotionally available.

It's incredible right to just not be there, to just not be present carve out time every week, once a week to have emotionally available time EA time, and that could be on a Sunday for an hour each but to really carve out that time, to not think that watching a movie together or going to dinner together is emotional availability. That's physical availability. But what people are really seeking is emotional availability, and you really want to focus

on that. Number five is no division of chores and responsibilities. People get so frustrated that they default to taking care of everything that they by default have to do everything right. So you want to figure out early on who's doing the cooking, who's doing the cleaning, what's the schedule. We have to almost treat it in that way because it's so easy for things to just fall on one person. Before you take on a new task, like let's say

you're renovating. Okay, before we take on renovating, who's going to take on the renovation, who's going to take on the decision making? We have to start operating somewhat like a business in those areas of our lives to avoid lack of communication. Okay, if we want to plan a vacation, who's going to plan it, who's going to book it? Let's let's plan that out before we get excited about doing these things. A number six is not addressing important

issues for your partner. This is huge. If you're want of those people that knows your partner wants to get married but you don't want to and you don't want to talk about it, or you know your partner one's kids and you don't and you don't want to talk about it, make a point to talk about it. Either you're going to fall out of love or they are because you don't talk about the things that are uncomfortable to talk about. Talk about the uncomfortable things in the

same way as I describe the arguments and debate. Don't avoid the elephant in the room. Right, it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. Thank you so much for listening to this episode today. I think there was some incredible insights in this one today, and I hope you're going to share them, repeat them, amplify them. I am so grateful for this on purpose, community, and family. I can't wait for live events. I can't wait for meeting you all in person when I go on torn next year,

when my next book comes out. I am just so excited to share this journey with you, in this life with you. I appreciate you and I'll see you soon. Thank you so much. I actually, actually, actually I want to read some reviews because I saw some this week that brought so much joy to my life. This is from Mark. I listened to Jay's podcast while doing my yard work. I can clean my yard while feeding my mind. I share Jay's podcast relentlessly with anyone and everyone inspired

by Jay. I'm launching a business and it is on my vision board to one day beyond Jay's podcast. I love that. Please keep the inspiration flowing. Thank you, thank you. This is from Patricia. I'm in my early thirties and recently I've had some life changing events OCCA and I found myself in a rut. I followed Ja on social media for a few years, but I've never listened to his podcast. One morning, I was doing my hair and

decided to try and be productive while doing so. It's been three weeks and I've listened to Jane's guest daily. I listened while I'm in the car or in any chance that I have. It's drastically changed my mindset and it has allowed me to take my mental health into my own hands. I feel like I am learning and growing, which is enriched my life instead of feeling stale. Keep them coming, Patricia, thank you so much. Everyone, make sure

you leave a review. We're around eighteen thousand reviews. I would love to get to twenty thousand by the end of the year. If you can take a moment, it would mean the world to me. Thank you so much. I'll see you next week. Lee