- It feels like a celebrity couple is breaking up every other day this summer.
- Joe Jonas, Sophie Turner, and Britney Spears are among the names on the star-studded list.
It's shaping up to be the summer of divorce, with what feels like a new celebrity couple splitting every other day.
On Wednesday, Joe Jonas and Sophie Turner confirmed that they are divorcing in a joint statement shared on Instagram. They have been married for four years and share two children together.
And last month, Britney Spears' husband, Sam Asghari, filed for divorce 14 months after they got married, citing "irreconcilable differences."
Prior to that, "One Tree Hill" star Sophia Bush filed for divorce from Grant Hughes just seven weeks after calling their marriage the "best decision" of her life on their first wedding anniversary, People reported.
News of "Thank U, Next" singer Ariana Grande and her husband of two years Dalton Gomez's separating broke in July, and Grande is now reportedly dating her "Wicked" co-star Ethan Slater, who has been married to his now estranged wife Lilly Jay since 2018.
Meanwhile, "The Bear" star Jeremy Allen White was spotted kissing model Ashley Moore in early August, just months after his divorce from wife Addison Timlin was announced.
Earlier that month, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that he and his wife of 18 years, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, were separating, while Sofia Vergara and Joe Manganiello announced their divorce, after 7 years of marriage, in July.
Breakups can be painful but not seeing it coming, and your ex moving on quickly, can make the fallout even worse.
So we asked a relationship expert to share some guidance on how to tell if your partner is falling out of love with you.
Susie Masterson, a UK-based psychotherapist specializing in relationships, told Insider there aren't specific telltale behaviors to look out for, but rather changes in your relationship dynamic or the way they treat you, and shared four common areas where shifts can appear.
But she stressed that they do not always mean your partner has lost interest, particularly if there is something big going on for them outside of your relationship.
Healthy arguments have stopped
Arguments in a relationship are quite healthy, Materson said, as long as they are what is known in couples therapy as "fair fighting." This means no one is insulting, swearing, or raging at anyone else.
They can be a good opportunity for one partner to communicate that something is bothering them. Once the other person is aware, they can express that their partner's feelings matter to them, and work on finding a solution, she said.
But if you start to notice, for example, that the healthy arguments have stopped, Masterson said this could suggest they don't care anymore.
Equally, arguing a lot more could also be a bad sign.
"People can start to deliberately incite arguments to try and move away from intimacy, to try and stop questions being asked, to avoid having sex, to avoid talking about the future, whatever it might be," she said.
Bids for connection being rejected
Bids for connection, a term coined by marriage researcher and clinical psychologist Dr. John Gottman, refers to a partner seeking emotional connection, attention, affirmation or affection from the other, and can be small things such as asking how their day was or noticing they got their nails done, Masteron said.
If your partner begins to consistently miss your bids for connection or chooses not to respond, she said that this could be a sign they are becoming less invested in your relationship.
It could be that when you make a bid, they just look at their phone or make an excuse to leave. "That bid for connection is never received or certainly never sent back," she said.
Having more sex or less physical touch
"While you might imagine that couples have less sex if they're not into each other anymore, or they've fallen out of love, depending on who it is, it could actually be that you end up having more sex," Masterson said.
This could be because one partner is using sex as a way to avoid all other relationship activities and forms of intimacy, she said.
And it doesn't just have to be sex, it can be physical affection too. For example, if your partner used to come in and kiss you or they used to cuddle up with you on the couch, if they are falling out of love with you, that will happen much less, Masterson said.
Refusing to commit to things or make joint decisions
Masterson said that a partner's refusal to commit to future plans or make joint decisions is another thing to look out for. This could mean anything from refusing to book a holiday to avoiding getting the roof replaced, she said.
Equally, it could be that they start to do more things independently than before without telling you, Masteron said. For example, they might go to the gym alone when you had previously always done this together.
She described it as an avoidance of being together and a lack of interest in having shared plans or responsibilities.