They say friendship before a relationship is always a good thing. It allows you to build a strong, healthy relationship based on trust and mutual respect with your significant other. There are also cases when you spend so much time in a relationship that you’re slowly turning into friends. This is particularly common among married couples. How to recognize signs that tell you the relationship has become a friend zone? This article has the answer or more of them to be precise. Here are six signs your relationship has hit the friend zone and how to fix them.

1. Lack of intimacy and bad sex

One of the most obvious signs your relationship is slowly turning into friendship, or something else, is a lack of intimacy. When you just started dating, you couldn’t keep your hands off one another. Now, you can’t even remember the last time when you had sex. Even when you do have it, sex is bad, monotonous, and the spark is gone. Basically, you stop being lovers and turn into two roommates sharing the same house.

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If this sign applies to your relationship, don’t think of it as some major problem and avoid being too analytical. Instead, take it as an opportunity to improve your relationship by rekindling that spark. Have an open conversation with your significant other; feel free to talk about this subject. Reconnecting outside the bedroom will help you build intimacy between the sheets as well. If monotony is a problem, try out different positions, be adventurous.

2. Other couples make you feel awkward

Remember the time when you couldn’t care less if someone felt uncomfortable when you displayed PDA? Now, the sheer thought of PDA makes you feel weird and uncomfortable. When you’re out with other couples who do engage in a little bit of PDA, both of you feel awkward and really don’t want to look at them.

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In most cases, PDA makes us feel awkward because we assume another person would reject it and you don’t want to be the clingy one. Banish these thoughts and initiate it, your partner will love it. Remember, relationships do need some spark every now and then to close the friend zone door forever.

3. Lack of effort

Another important telltale sign that relationship is turning into a friendship is when both of you assume the other person doesn’t make any effort. A romantic relationship requires work and effort in order to flourish. Besides regular sex, the effort is what makes you feel special to one another.

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There is no “one size fits all” rule when it comes to making an effort. It depends on your needs and preferences. The point is to do something together and bond as a couple again. Even purchasing sexy lingerie is a way of making an effort. Taking a good natural supplement is also considered as making an effort.

4. Letting yourself go

When was the last time you shaved your legs? Or when did you stop going to the gym? Letting yourself go is a major sign that you’re more friends and lovers. You want to look sexy and sensual for your lover, but not for your friend. At the same time, you don’t really care how you look when your friend sees you. Therefore, when both of you stop doing all those things you used to do before, it is a sign something isn’t right.

No, this isn’t about someone’s appearance per se, it’s a symbol which sends a message to someone that you are sexually interested in them and wants them to be interested in you. When people in a relationship let themselves go, they don’t send this message anymore.

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Find out what triggered this change in you and your partner. Ask yourself (or him/her) why you stopped trying and give an honest answer without judging. As mentioned above, communication is the key. Talk about this problem, explain what propelled this sudden change of behavior and work together to resolve it. In turn, you’ll notice that both of you are trying to do better, look better, and send those signals once again.

5. Monotony

It’s not just about sex life, but monotony infiltrated into every aspect of your life and everything seems so mechanic. You wake up at the same time, eat almost same breakfast every day, go to work, come back, watch same shows on TV, have the same bedtime ritual, talk about the same things, and so on and on.

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Familiarity isn’t such a bad thing, it’s a feeling we welcome when dating the right person, but the only way to appreciate it is to do something new from time to time. Spicing things up isn’t just reserved for the bedroom, but everything else too. Sign up for some class together, go to the gym, or maybe you can send him/her a few naughty photos. The latter is particularly useful if you notice that all your texts to one another are about food or some generic things that have to be done.

6. Spending too much time at work, not enough with you

Okay, you don’t really want to be glued to your partner, but you do want to spend more quality time together. When one of you starts spending too much time at work and believes the relationship isn’t on the priority list, it’s a sign of distraction. Although this may not be intentional, particularly if it’s a stressful time at work, but it is enough to make you alienate from one another. If this problem persists, both of you get too used to the fact of being apart, and the relationship slowly turns into the friend zone.

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Avoid resentment and set some boundaries. Let your partner know what you expect and how you feel. Sometimes the other person just struggles to find a work-life balance, and the best thing to do is to be there and try to help.

Conclusion

There is a fine line between a relationship and friendship. Lack of effort, no passion, letting yourself go, are major signs that say your relationship needs more effort. Sometimes these problems occur when we fail to acknowledge that in order to keep a healthy and happy relationship, we have to make an effort and put some work into it all the time. This isn’t a bad thing, this effort deepens your connection and allows you to truly to get to know one another and learn more about your expectations and desires.