Leslie Cane Articles

By: Leslie Cane: Many of the wives who visit this blog believe that their husbands never loved them. Some believe this claim because of his behavior. Others believe this because he has initiated a break or separation. And some believe this because he has straight up told them.

The husbands who claim not to love their wives often do it during a fight or in times of high conflict. Someone might say, “whenever husband and I get into a pretty bad fight, he will say that he’s not surprised that we don’t work as a couple because he never loved me in the way that a husband should love his wife. Once, he told me that he ‘settled’ for me. I started to cry and asked him how he thinks this makes me feel. He claimed to be sorry, but then said he was just trying to be honest. Then he’ll say that it’s never going to work between us because the feelings just aren’t there. This confuses me because I know I’m not crazy or delusional when I say that there are times when I deeply felt his love. I have memories of him crying when we started a family. I have memories of him staring deeply into my eyes with so much love reflected back at me. I don’t believe that I was imagining these things. But perhaps I saw what I wanted to see. Why would someone do this to another and marry someone that they don’t love?”

I will try my best to answer this question below, but first I’d like to explore why a man might make this claim when it actually isn’t true. 

He’s Trying To Hurt You or Trying To Get a Reaction: It’s no coincidence that your husband is making this claim when you fight. You’re most likely to get this claim when he is frustrated or he is trying to get a reaction out of you. Often, he feels that the two of you are just going around in circles and nothing is getting resolved. So he may say something shocking or hurtful in an attempt to make you finally pay attention.

Or he may be trying to lure you into a reaction. Sometimes, people crave a negative exchange when they are truly angry. This doesn’t mean that he doesn’t love you, but it means that he’s quite angry at the time and he’s not getting the response or reaction that he hoped for.

If this is ringing true for you, ask yourself if you or your husband are continuing to have the same, old unresolved fight. Often, he’s trying to hurt you because he desperately wants to break this cycle so that something actually changes. By bringing about real change, you might be able to avoid these hurtful (and often untrue) comments.

He May Be Trying to Convince Himself that He Doesn’t Love You:  Sometimes when you continue to have unresolved, nasty fights, your husband is trying to convince himself that nothing will ever change and that he needs to take some action.

When this happens, he will sometimes attempt to convince himself either that he doesn’t love you now or that he has never loved you. By doing so, he’s hoping that it will be easier to take a break or distance himself from you, or whatever else he is pondering. 

Don’t make this easy for him. Don’t fall into the trap of acting unlovable so that has justification for his actions. 

Instead, try to have good humor and grace. Try to uncover what is really under this claim of his.  

Is he trying to get you to pay attention to what he’s saying? 

Is he trying to scare you into finally making that change he’s been waiting for?  

Is he trying to get you to open your eyes to a problem that is right in front of you?

Don’t make it necessary for him to need to make dramatic claims to see real change. 

Legitimate Reasons People Have For Marrying Without Love:  As I said before, I think it is most likely that your husband doesn’t legitimately mean that he doesn’t love you.

I find it very rare for a person to stay in a marriage or other committed relationship for a very long time without love. I find it even rarer that someone would actually actively build a family, a life, and a home if there was no legitimate love present. That’s just a bridge too far.

But for argument’s sake, let’s play along. 

Sometimes, a man will convince himself that he has fallen out of love with you when he’s about to pursue a break, separation, or divorce. If he can convince himself of that, then the task is easier. 

And other times, he’ll take this a step further and convince himself that he never truly loved you at all, so that all of this is a mistake that should have never happened from the very beginning. 

Of course, I’m not completely naive.  

I know that there are cultural reasons that people will get married to someone they don’t love.  

I also realize that some people are pressured into a marriage that they don’t want.  

And sometimes, a person will marry someone who they are extremely fond of, but perhaps not madly in love with. However, in those cases, the love will often grow over time. So even there, it’s not 100% truthful for him to say that he didn’t love you.

My hope with this article is to show that a husband claiming to have never loved his wife is usually not without some ulterior motive or kernel of untruth. If your gut is telling you that he’s posturing and that you have genuinely felt his love over the years, you are probably right. 

Rather than obsessing over his feelings, ask yourself what you can do to take concrete action that will improve things so that he no longer has to make these outlandish claims to scare you into taking some action.  

I wish I’d followed this advice. My husband claimed to love me all of the time before we separated. This unfortunately DID NOT scare me into taking action and I almost lost my marriage until I woke up, changed course  and saved my marriage.  The rest of the story is at https://isavedmymarriage.com

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