Do you feel like you are not valued enough by your partner? What must be going wrong? What are the signs you are not a priority in your partner’s life?

When it comes to a romantic relationship, you want to feel special to your partner. It’s not a crime to want to be their exclusive focus of attention. It is very natural to want to be on the top of your partner’s priority list. But there are some inevitable circumstances when you and your relationship with your partner might take a backseat but you still deserve every ouch of their time and love.

Sure, there will be moments when health, work, family, and other stuff might be temporary of importance but if you constantly feel like you are being the second option or the last, the truth is something else. You might have often defended your intuition by rationalizing your partner’s behavior.

But how will you know if your partner needs some space to deal with something which is bothering him/her or if they just don’t care enough about you?

Here are 16 signs that you are not a priority but an option in your partner’s life: 

1. You are the one organizing the relationship – planning things out, implementing and executing them.

2. You are always the one compromising everything in the relationship – be it your time, your needs, decisions, etc.

3. You always have to be patient with them, waiting on them but they will never wait on you. If they have to, they will display frustration.

4. They spend more time with ‘close people’ and contact you ‘as soon as they are free’ aka, as per their whims.

5. You seldom go out for parties, dinner dates, and outings. Your interaction with your partner is only limited to the four walls of your room.

6. They debunk all of your complaints regarding feeling missed out from their life, then apologize for the same, readily returning back to their old behaviors.

7. All of your trials to contact them go in vain. Your partner might be stuck in a complicated situation but in an age where people are constantly using their phones, messages on Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp and Snapchat going unanswered is a big sign of being ignored.

8. They are always feeding you with reasons for not being able to be together. If someone really wants a relationship with you to work out, his/her efforts will be visible. They would not consider trivial hurdles to be a magnanimous obstacle between you two.

9. They are clueless about things you do for the relationship on a regular basis. When someone does not value and respect you, they will assuredly never respect your actions.

10. You feel like they are taking advantage of you. Be it emotionally, physically, financially or otherwise, when someone doesn’t care for your importance, they will dehumanize you and treat you like a mere material.

11. They lie to you and hide seemingly insignificant information from you. You will often find these things to be quite significant contrary to what your partner believed.

12. They are not much thrilled and amused when you are around. You notice your partner behave disinterestedly and off around you.

13. You find them behaving suspiciously as if they are always trying to hide something from you. They even get jumpy and anxious around you.

14. They do not respect your decisions or ideas. They might miss important dates, might even cancel plans on the last moment or behave casually after they have hurt you.

15. Your partner nonchalantly invalidates any requests on your part and rejects them.

16. Your partner makes you feel unwanted, unworthy, and unlovable. You might even start questioning your abilities.

When you are in a relationship that does more damage to your mind and body than it mends, you must retrospect and assess what is going wrong. If you feel your partner is not worth the time and effort, let that relationship go. I know it is easier said than done. But before you are set to lose your self-respect just because you love your partner, let me tell you something: if your partner leaves you broken, you will be the one to pick yourself up.