“What if they don’t love me anymore?”
Whether or not someone in a loveless marriage feels brave enough to admit that fear out loud, or just pushes the thought away, it’s very normal to be scared of the answer.
My husband Paul and I have come across several versions of the loveless marriage while helping our students transform their relationship. Here are just a few of the ways it can look.
There’s the woman who blurts out, “Geez, do you even like me anymore?” in the middle of an argument because she can’t imagine that her husband even likes her, let alone loves her, with the way he talks to her.
There’s the man who feels like he’d probably be doing his wife a favor by cutting her loose, because these days she only ever looks at him with disappointment.
There’s the person going through a life-phase change (like the kids moving out) who wonders what it will be like when it’s “just us” with no “buffer” from the kids.
As much as we might try to push these fearful thoughts to the back of our mind, they keep creeping in, because it used to be so loving when you first got together, and it’s hard not to notice how far things have fallen.
Back then you felt SO loved when their eyes lit up as you walked in the room. You knew they had your back. They would champion you to win, and you felt like you could do anything.
Back then, they were overjoyed to be with you. They would ask you to do all kinds of stuff with them, from a day trip to the beach to joining them for a work thing.
But now? Now you dread being around them because all you see is a look of disdain or an eye roll (if they look at you at all).
Now you’re tiptoeing on eggshells because anything you say might erupt into an argument, criticism, or contempt.
And instead of feeling unstoppable, you second guess everything you do, afraid if it will set them off.
You’re exhausting yourself trying to figure out HOW to say or do ANYTHING in a way that won’t create backlash from them, but it’s no use.
The bottom line is that you just don’t feel loved like you used to.
The pain of missing that love you used to feel, and see, and hear…some days it’s absolutely unbearable, and you can’t help but ask yourself, “How much longer can I really do this?”
If you’re anything like our students, you WANT to do the right thing. You WANT to keep your family together. You DON’T want to put your kids through the trauma and heartbreak of a divorce.
At the same time, how much longer can you stand to live in this misery of a loveless marriage?
A loveless marriage is not the problem.
Tactics like planning a date night, trying to talk it out, couple’s therapy, doing things that used to work, and asking friends and family for advice all seem like they should help.
But when none of these outdated, broken tactics work, and instead backfire into an argument or an even colder shoulder, the love you remember slips further and further away as doubts about how much longer you can live this way grow louder and louder in your mind.
Feeling the love fade is SUCH a common relationship problem that most people think “the love fading” is the problem. But it’s not!
A loveless marriage is actually a symptom of a relationship problem that is still UNSOLVED. It is not caused by you, your partner, or the two of you together.
And it’s not even because you changed, or they changed, or that one of you has stopped loving the other because somebody changed.
What’s actually going on when love fades over time is what Paul and I call the brick wall between you and your long-term committed love partner.
Think of the brick wall like this….
Each time you and your partner have an upset, kerfuffle or pain that goes unresolved, it’s like you put a brick down onto the wall between you and your partner.
In a long-term, committed love relationship, those unresolved “bricks” keep stacking. Sometimes it’s a disappointment or hurt feelings, and a brick goes in the wall. Sometimes a fight comes out of nowhere, like a whirlwind, and five bricks go into the wall!
The point is, that wall gets higher and higher and higher, until one day you look over at your partner and you don’t even see them anymore. You don’t feel them anymore. You don’t know who they are anymore.
All you feel is the love you USED to have, and all you see are the bricks in the brick wall between you, each one is a memory of an unsolved pain or upset.
THAT is why love fades over time, and why you feel trapped in a loveless marriage.
That’s why a friend of yours can say the exact same words to you, and it doesn’t trigger you, but when your spouse says those words, it triggers the crap out of you.
Everything you do or say, or that they do or say, is getting filtered through the pain and upset of every brick in that brick wall.
How to save a loveless marriage
Your loveless marriage is not about you or your partner, and it can’t be fixed with date nights, couple’s therapy, stuff that used to work, or advice from well-meaning family and friends.
The solution to a loveless marriage is to take each brick in the wall between you and solve that brick, brick by brick, until the wall is gone.
When you do that, each brick in the wall becomes part of a rock-solid foundation the two of you stand on, together, in rock-solid alignment.
That means even your biggest upsets or blowups can actually become the strongest part of the relationship and actually hold your relationship up going forward.
Relationship problems—like bricks in the wall—are solved with relationship skill sets. One of the great things about skill sets is that they can be learned!
Paul and I have spent decades learning and developing our relationship skill sets, and for over a decade now, we’ve been teaching people these skill sets to save their marriage, find their forever love, and create Unshakeable Love, Unleashed Passion, and a peaceful, harmonious household.
Learn the relationship skills, tools, and strategies you need to solve those bricks in the wall between you and your partner. That is how you fix a loveless marriage.
If you’re interested in getting started with the same skill sets Paul and I use in our marriage and teach our students, check out our 14-Day Boost To Your Relationship at https://14dayboost.com.
