At a certain age, everyone around you starts pairing off. Avoiding lone wolf status while all of your friends nestle into happy partnerships may seem important, but not at the cost of staying in a relationship that’s not worth your time. For a reality check on your couplehood situation, see if you’re doing any of the following to try and fake smooth sailing with your partner when things just aren’t going that well at all.

1. You’re Moving In Together After Two Months

Or some equally inane, small increment of time. What’s the rush? If you have good feelings about each other, you’ll probably be together in the future, when a more appropriate time to consolidate your belongings into a single apartment reveals itself.

2. You Can’t Respond To “I Love You”

Saying it for the first time can be so extremely difficult that it verges on the impossible. However, if your partner’s said it so many times you can no longer count them on your hands while you have yet to breath the words once, you may want to think a little harder about whether your feelings match.

3. You Deny Your Level Of Commitment

You’ve been dating for fifteen years and refuse to acknowledge that you’re a “serious” couple. This indicates that words like “serious” and “couple” scare you more than they should for having been with another person for over a decade.

4. Your Views On Marriage/Kids/Etc. Are Polar Opposites

You’d like to get hitched and have children as soon as possible—who wants to be an elderly parent? Unfortunately, your partner cringes every times he passes a playground and thanks god when kids start crying on aircrafts because he has none himself. Maybe he’s just hanging onto his youth. On the other hand, you might be looking for someone who’s let that youth go.

5. You Think You’re More Important Than the Dog

People get pretty serious when it comes to their pets. The human-dog bond is deeper than many a human-human connection. If you come between a dog and his owner, chances are, the dog stays and you leave.

6. You’ve Started Making Mental Lists About Why You’re Together

After “He’s really nice,” comes “Regular sex,” and then… You shouldn’t have to be wracking your brain to figure it out.

7. You Live By Opposite Schedules

Some couples work really well being on opposite schedules. It can mean that coffee is already made for your when you wake up in the morning, or that when you’re stressed out from just leaving work your partner is relaxed, having been home for hours. In many cases, though, you will start to resent each other for never being around, waking one another up at odd hours, and wanting sex at completely different times of the day.

8. You Feel Trapped

If you’ve started to let out a sigh of relief every time you come home and your partner isn’t there (and you can’t breath when she is), chances are, you’d be better off by yourself.

9. Your Lifestyles Are Not Compatible

Let’s say you’re a bartender and he’s a recovering alcoholic. That’s a perfect example of this sort of conundrum.

10. You’re Always Forgiving

If you find that you’re constantly forgiving your partner for one mistake after another, you’ve got to step back and wonder when the cycle is going to stop.

11. You’ve Been Dreaming About Your Exes

If night after night these insidious figures keep cropping up in your dreams (to your sleepy delight), it may be in your best interest not to ignore them. Your subconscious is trying to tell you something, and it’s probably not how great in bed your current boyfriend is in comparison to your dream ex.

12. You’re Waiting For Your Partner To Change

Hate to break it to you, but change is unlikely to manifest in a full-grown adult (at least, not when it comes to certain, fundamental personality traits). Also, “change comes from within,” as people seem to say. As far as your partner changing is concerned, you are without.

13. You’re Comparing Yourself To Other Couples

“Sally and Jamie seem so content… it’s probably because Jamie hardly works and Sally’s job has basically zero stress.” If you start convincing yourself that this is the case, it’s your relationship you should be ruminating on, not Sally and Jamie’s.

14. You’re Unfathomably Wealthy And Your Partner Is… Hot

If she’s also twenty-five years younger, and you’re positive she’s not after your money, try and withhold her ample allowance for a couple of days and see if she changes her tune.

15. You’re Feeling Obligated To Spend Time Together

When disappointment sinks in because you told your partner you would have dinner with him tonight instead of getting drinks with the ladies, this might mean more than that you’ll miss your female companions that evening. Remember how early on in your relationship, you would pass up anything to spend time with the guy?

16. Making Decisions As A Couple Feels Like A Chore

Down to issues as simple as what you should have for dinner are leaving you both exhausted and hungry when it used to be so easy. It seems as if you guys no longer “click” like you used to. Relationships are work, of course, but that doesn’t mean that every single moment of your time together should constitute a struggle.

17. You Pretend Not To Hate Each Other’s Families

If it’s looking like marriage or bust at this point, and all you can do not to explode in the presence of his mother is to clench your teeth and grin like a maniac on the verge of a heat stroke, you should consider how marrying a person means committing to his family, too (to a certain extent, of course). In this situation, your man being a mama’s boy will not make for the happiest ever after on your part.

18. Your Wishes Keep Getting Lost In Translation

It seems that no matter what you tell your partner these days, she’s always hitting the ball just a hair shy of a home run, winding up with the foul instead. There’s got to be something off if all of a sudden you feel like you need a translator when you two are talking in the same room.

19. The Sex Is… Eh

It’s been how long and you have yet to achieve an orgasm with this man? And you’re holding out, still, because…? If you really care for the guy, perhaps the problem is that you’re not being open enough about what you’d like to do between the sheets (or in the kitchen or wherever).  If you’ve already talked it out and it’s still not happening, that’s unrealistic for sure.

20. You Still Haven’t Shared A Moment Of True Honesty

First dates do tend to have an air of acting about them. You’re putting on the show of your best self to impress someone you think you want to impress. Being in a relationship, though, means dropping that act. If you haven’t done that since date one, you’re only kidding yourself.