Question
My husband and I have been together for going on 10 years. He is a wonderful man, very hardworking, honest, treats me well, is a good father, et cetera. The problem is me.
I have fallen out of love with him. I want to love him. I have tried a lot of things, including both individual and marriage counseling, but I still feel the same, and I have for 3-4 years now. We have no love life because I feel awkward with him now and avoid it altogether, which isn’t fair to him.
I want to file for divorce but haven’t brought it up for many reasons, the biggest being that I don’t want to hurt him when he has done nothing wrong. I am having a hard time finding a way to tell him how I feel. How should I bring up this painful, miserable subject?
I also want him to know I am not out to screw him over and want to solve things very amicably, and will not be seeking alimony or anything.
Answer
I’m not going to give you permission to get out of your marriage. I don’t have that right and neither does anyone else. This is a promise you made to him and your children that requires your full accountability. If you were really done with your marriage, you wouldn’t be writing me for help. So, I’m going to encourage you to keep facing your marriage and not give up.
I’m glad to hear you desire to feel love toward him and that you’ve sought professional help to stoke your affections. That desire, though wobbly, is still enough to keep you facing him until you get more stable footing.
Most marriages pass through difficult times, even years, when partners feel distant and struggle to feel close. This can happen during times of transition, such as having children, moves, health problems, and other challenges. It can also happen as individuals realize their spouse isn’t the same person they thought they married. It takes courage and a brave community of support to pass through these difficult times.
Dr. Bill Doherty, a strong advocate for helping couples endure these lonely and difficult stages of marriage, issued the following challenge to disillusioned couples:
I think of long-term marriage like I think about living in Minnesota. You move into marriage in the springtime of hope, but eventually arrive at the Minnesota winter with its cold and darkness. Many of us are tempted to give up and move south at this point.
We go to a therapist for help. Some therapists don’t know how to help us cope with winter, and we get frostbite in their care. Other therapists tell us that we are being personally victimized by winter, that we deserve better, that winter will never end, and that if we are true to ourselves we will leave our marriage and head south.
The problem of course is that our next marriage will enter its own winter at some point. Do we just keep moving on, or do we make our stand now – with this person, in this season? That’s the moral, existential question.
A good therapist, a brave therapist, will help us to cling together as a couple, warming each other against the cold of winter, and to seek out whatever sunlight is still available while we wrestle with our pain and disillusionment.
A good therapist, a brave therapist will be the last one in the room to give up on our marriage, not the first one, knowing that the next springtime in Minnesota is all the more glorious for the winter that we endured together.
You asked how you could tell him the miserable truth about how you feel. The only problem with your approach is that you only want to tell him part of how you feel. You want to share the miserable stuff and leave out the parts about how you used to feel, how you want to feel, and how conflicted you feel. Those vulnerable parts are exactly what he needs to hear and what you need to share.
I want you to try something with your husband. I invite you to tell him the whole range of feelings you’re having right now. Tell him how you want to feel desire, but don’t know how. Tell him how you have tried hard for several years to generate feelings of desire for him. Let him know of your struggle. Make sure to include the fact that you want to love him.
Don’t try and fix these feelings in isolation. Pull him close and let him know of your struggle.
I believe there are reasons you’ve lost the connection to him. Often it’s because couples drift apart as the demands of life pull them in separate directions.
If there are any unresolved injuries in the marriage, commit to do the hard work of repairing those. If you need to return to marriage counseling, find a therapist who won’t give up on your marriage and has the training to help you find connection again.
As difficult as it is to feel this way, please know that divorce isn’t a simple and clean solution. Divorce is like an amputation that becomes a last resort when everything else has failed.
Give your husband a chance to work with you to restore connection. I am confident there is more you can both do to be stronger together.
Stay connected!
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Geoff Steurer is a licensed marriage and family therapist in private practice in St. George, Utah. He specializes in working with couples in all stages of their relationships. The opinions stated in this article are solely his and not those of St. George News.
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Copyright St. George News, SaintGeorgeUtah.com LLC, 2015, all rights reserved.
You don’t say it, but I’m guessing you’re in love with someone else and no amount of counseling is going to make you feel better about your marriage or your husband. And I’m also guessing (but not quite) that he already knows you don’t love him. You won’t have to tell him this.
Also, when you tell him that you are having these problems, don’t expect him to answer right away. Give him time to mull it over and to respond in his time. Men are different from women (shocker), so give him time. If you try to force a response out of him, you may end up exacerbating the situation.
I would also recommend focusing on the things that you do love about him, like his fathering ability, if he is able to support your family, make you laugh, love your family as much as his own, the things (big or small) that he does for you that make you feel special, etc. Changing your focus from yourself to your husband may help immensely.
Yeah I agree with AH, she’s been messing around with some guy on the side and just wants to not feel guilty about how she’s destroying the family.
Suck it up cupcake….get rid of the other man!
That is, the “alledged” other man…..
Or just be straight, tell the truth and take the consequences.
Well just keep on dating his brother eventually he’ll leave
Maybe she’s one of those mormon trophy wives that gets bored easily and goes to the gym to find men on the side.
“I want to file for divorce but haven’t brought it up for many reasons, the biggest being that I don’t want to hurt him when he has done nothing wrong. ”
I think you’ll be doing him a favor if you let him know you want a divorce. Then he can find somebody who loves him, wants the sex you’re withholding and appreciates all his good qualities as listed by you. Are you by chance a sister wife?
Check with Paul Simon about 50 ways to leave your lover.
Oh really…? so lame