“My husband told me two weeks ago that he loves me but isn’t in love with me. He isn’t happy in our marriage, work, or things he always enjoyed doing. He wants to feel his eyes light up when I walk in the room and have an exciting sex life. He is on medication for blood pressure and heart problems. He moved out. I cry myself to sleep. I am trying to do things for myself: gym, new haircut, but nothing helps. I put together a photo album for him asking him to focus on the positive things about our marriage. The last pages are photocopies of his love letters so he can remember the reasons he loved me. I sound desperate but my fairytale ending was to grow old with my husband.” (Edited)

Nothing you have done has brought about this change in your husband. There is nothing you can do to make it better. I affirm you for ‘giving him that space’. It must be very difficult for you as you continue to work for him. When we have shared our lives with another, then find that we are totally powerless over the outcome of what is happening, the grief, the loss, comes as a shock that we don’t know how to deal with. Your feelings are totally understandable. Get professional support for what you are going through. Hopefully your husband will seek his own therapy so he can process the inner struggle that he is having.

Your husband isn’t a happy man just now by the sound of it. Unfortunately there is nothing you can do to change him. His unhappiness is inside of him. You cannot make him happy through a new haircut, through the most exciting sex in the world, nor with a photo album. Fairy-tale endings are just that – fairy-tales! Made-up stories we tell children. Real life is usually less certain, and certainly messier. Keep taking care of you! It is your only way out.

There’s no quick fix. Surround yourself with healthy women (not those who “beat up” men and rehash their failed relationships). Attempt, as you have been, to get on with your own life. Trying to re-recruit your husband will only push him away. Take time to grieve, but the sooner you take up your life, the more attractive you will find everything. His issues are his. What he says he wants is unavailable to him – without you.

Being in love is a feeling which never lasts. Loving somebody is a choice with the potential to last forever. Focus on decreasing your dependency on him and increasing your level of self by discovering what you want from life. This will be more attractive then any new haircut or reminiscing over love letters. Read “Passionate Marriage” by David Schnarch. Meet him out for lunch and ask him the questions that you need answered.

Posted on July 13, 2009 at 7:22 am in Difficult Relationships   |  RSS feed |   Reply   |   Trackback URL