5 body language signs you're about to break up

Before the verbal confirmation that you're broken up or worse, ghosting, here are five body language signs to brace yourself, or do something about the situation.

1. Facing away from each other

The emotional connection between couples tends to syn their body language, sometimes without them realising it. The opposite is true if the emotional connection is broken. Facing away from each other, sitting farther apart, less fronting with shoulders, hips and knees and more standing beside each other.

2. Lack of eye contact

The power of a sustained gaze in a relationship is powerful. In 1970, social psychologist Zick Rubin attempted to measure romantic love by tracking eye contact between couples left in a room alone together.

The couples that felt more love held eye contact the longest.

A change in loving gazes spells trouble, since people tend to not take their eyes off things they like!

3. Less smiles, more grimace

Relationships feed off the little interactions, physical and otherwise. They remind your partner that you are still invested, still notice, still interested.

In one experiment, by psychologist John Gottman, couples who stayed married tended to turn towards each other in "bids" for affection or support, with a smile or wink.

If you sense that the smile is not genuine, no crinkled cheeks or eyes, frequent half smiles and tight-lipped smiles, you could be in trouble.

4. Feet pointing away from each other

This leaning away of any kind could be silently spelling out "break up" for you. Feet pointing inward signals attraction, subconsciously at least. The opposite is a sign that the emotional connection is off.

5. Shudder when you talk to each other

A body shudder comes from deep inside a person's emotional brain. Recoiling from any interaction is the ultimate teel-tale that the relationship is over. According to body language expert and psychotherapist Paul Hokemeyer "this reaction, especially to romantic advances, is primal."