Leslie Cane Articles

By: Leslie Cane: I sometimes hear from wives who have been given the very devastating and shocking news that their husband is no longer in love with them. Needless to explain, this hurts. And this can leave the wife so sad and shocked that she isn’t sure of her next course of action. Despite this confusion though, many wives are clear on the fact that they still very much love their husbands and they don’t want to give up on their marriage. So, the only question left is what to do next.

I might hear a comment on my blog like: “my marriage has been deteriorating for a while. My husband and I have been under a great deal of stress because of the issues of one of our children. This impacts almost all areas of our lives to the point where sometimes it feels as if we are barely staying afloat. So, I never thought that we had the perfect marriage. But I was always sure that, despite all of the stress, we were still a family who loves each other. Imagine my shock and devastation when my husband announced that he doesn’t love me anymore. I could almost understand it if we were arguing because it might have been something that came at the spur of the moment. But it wasn’t like that. We were just sitting there watching TV quietly and there was a scene on the show about a couple who were being passionate. My husband just said in a deadpan voice: ‘I wish that we were still like that. I don’t even think that I love you anymore.’ I asked him to repeat what he said because I honestly couldn’t believe it. And then he replied with ‘oh c’mon. You had to have seen this coming. We haven’t had true intimacy in this marriage for years. This just isn’t doing it for me anymore. You’re a wonderful person and I will always love that you are the mother of my kids. But as far as being in love with you, that ship has sailed.’ I am devastated. I still love my husband. I want my marriage. What can I do about this? Is there anything at all that I can do?”

Well, I might not be the most objective person to ask. Because I have heard these words before and I didn’t accept them. I am not saying that this is by any means an easy situation, but I think that there are some things that you can try to turn this around. But before I cover this, I want to go over what I think that you shouldn’t do. These are the things that, in my own experience and observation is more likely to make things worse.

What Not To Do When Your Spouse Says He Doesn’t Love You Anymore: The first thing that I would like to stress is that you do not want to panic. I know that this is easier said than done. But panic can lead you to do and say things that are just destructive and wrong. I am not going to tell you that your husband absolutely didn’t mean what he said, because I can’t possibly know that. But I can tell you that people often react to stress by saying or believing things that just are not true – but that feel true at the time.

It’s also common for people to project their disappointments and resentments onto their spouse and onto their marriage simply because this person is so close to them and this marriage is so convenient. Another thing that you want to avoid is telling your spouse that he is selfish or wrong or claiming that you don’t love him either when you know this to be untrue.

Finally, you don’t want to announce that you are going to “prove” to him that he still loves you. Or that you are going to “make” him love you. This is going to put him on the defensive and make him more likely to dig in his heals and to show you that he was right and that, in fact, he does not love you. The last thing that you want to do is to set up that type of dynamic.

What You Do Want To Do When He’s Saying That He Doesn’t Love You Any More: While as I’ve said you don’t want to panic, you do want to very calmly just focus on creating an easy relationship between you. I know that it’s tempting to turn on the charm or try to seduce him in an attempt to make him love you or to make him remember why he loved you in the first place. But frankly, this is often so transparent and it seems a little desperate. The success rate of this strategy is pretty low in my opinion.

Instead, you’ll want to take a more gradual, low pressure approach. You want to back up and make it clear that, since you don’t know what the future holds, you just want to improve the way that you relate to one another. Is the idea for this to eventually show him that he actually does still love you? Absolutely and you bet. But you don’t want to be obvious about it. The reason for this low pressure approach is that you are much less likely to meet with resistance. You aren’t pushing too hard. You are sort of going about this in an underhanded way so that it will feel effortless and natural.

And, by doing it this way, you can easily build on the gains that you are able to make. You’re not trying to prove to him that he still loves you. And you’re not acting in ways where he might avoid you. Instead, you are just taking small steps to restore some sort of relationship, with the full knowledge that somewhere along the line, you’re going to build upon your progress until he realizes that he was mistaken about not loving you anymore.

So often, it is the circumstances that cause him to believe that he doesn’t love you when in fact, it is his situation that he does not love. That’s why I’ve found that it’s important to take a very low stress approach. This helps with some of the pressure that he is under and it paints you in a very positive way so that he is more apt to move toward you instead of away from you.

I am pretty sure that my husband believed that he didn’t love me anymore when we were separated.  But, by restoring our relationship, the love came back. If it helps, you can read more on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com

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