When did you know it was over?

Relationships sometimes last forever, but, let's be honest, they usually do not. How does one tell if it’s time to move on?

“Every single time my bf starts fucking other girls is a good sign it's over,” advises one Coast reader.

When they cheated was a very common answer for when this year's Sex + Dating survey-takers knew it was over. Right up there with when the love was gone and when they got bored.

“I didn't want to speak to him anymore,” writes one Haligonian. “We were quiet. It felt like we were just haunting the same house.”

“We just kept arguing and one day we couldn't remember why we were even together. Then I found out he cheated on me,” says another.

Lest you think all relationships are doomed, though, there were plenty of case-specific reasons for why it was time to move on—like when one reader learned her boyfriend's life “revolved around drinking multiple nights a week,” or another whose partner “moved in with her new girlfriend for a month without telling me.”

“When I saw him doing cocaine by himself at 5pm on a Thursday before we went to dinner with our friends. He still doesn't know that I saw him through the window. I didn't even know that he had a cocaine habit and at that point, we had been dating for a year. He knew I was not a drug user so I think he hid it from me the entire time.”

Then there's the ultimate deal-breaker for a Halifax-based relationship: moving for work, particularly if it's being “asked to move to North Battleford, SK.” Yeah, no thanks. Or the reverse situation, where they don't want to move here.

“When he said he didn't want to move to Halifax, I arranged to get my old job back where he lives. Only after that did he tell me it wasn't just that he didn't want to move.”

Here are some other choice answers we received:

“They got mad at me for the smallest things. I could tell they were growing away from me, but I didn't want to acknowledge it, so it came as a surprise.”

“When you think about how happy you were in the past more often than you think about how happy you are currently.”

“When you envision life without them and you don’t feel anything.”

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“When two of her friends broke into my apartment to ask why I hadn't called. My phone was broken.”

“When he kept getting late night texts and answering them laying next to me.”

“When he said ‘no one will love you like I do.’ Fuck off, buddy!”

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“When I no longer thought about them being in my future or shuddered at the thought.”

“When I stopped caring what he was doing. I didn't care if he was at work or at a strip club. He just wasn't my concern anymore.”

“Woke up one day and realized I loved myself too much.”