Leslie Cane Articles

by: Leslie Cane: Many of the wives who read my articles feel sure that their husbands don’t love them. Occasionally, I hear from someone who tells me that their husband has never loved them. An example is the wife who was beside herself and very upset about the way that her husband has been treating her. He’d been shutting her out, spending less time at home, and was basically just ignoring her as though she didn’t exist.

One day she got so frustrated at this that she snapped: “This isn’t how you treat someone you love.” This did not sit well with the husband who snapped back: “I don’t love you. I’m not sure if I ever have loved you.” Needless to say, the silence and the tension was thick in the room after this. And, since then, the two had just been completely avoiding each other. The wife was furious that he would speak to her in this way. But, deep down, she was also very hurt because the suspected that there was a lot of truth behind that outburst.

The points she made went something like this: “I don’t think we would even be married if I hadn’t become pregnant with our daughter. When I got pregnant, we had just broken up. He was the one who broke it off. And at that point, I think he was relieved that the relationship was over. But of course, once I got pregnant, everything changed. I hoped that our daughter would bring us closer together, and for a while, she did. Eventually though, my husband seemed more and more unhappy and it became obvious that he resented the situation. Sure, we’ve had some good times and I wouldn’t trade my daughter for anything in the world. There are days when he’s sweet to both of us and this does make me feel loved. But there are also days when I think he just wants to pack his bags and leave us. I don’t know what to do. I want a stable home for my daughter, but don’t I deserve someone who really loves me?”

Of course she deserved to feel loved. Everyone does. However, I have to say that claims made in anger aren’t always true. It’s quite possible that the husband was only trying to get a reaction and knew the precise words which were going to cut the deepest. This couple had been together for a year and a half before the wife became pregnant. Clearly, there was something other than their daughter that was drawing them together over that relatively long period of time. I think this was a situation which could potentially be worked out which I will discuss below.

Do Not Allow For Your Husband’s Hurtful Claim That He Doesn’t Love You Now (And Has Never Loved You) To Derail You From Getting What You Really Want: Feeling loved is an inherent desire that we all share. Everyone who has invested time and emotion into a relationship very much want the pay off of knowing that all of the feelings are mutual. No one wants to feel as though they are the only person experiencing love in the relationship. Everyone wants to feel desired and special.

With that said though, both people in the relationship know this. So, pulling the rug out from under someone is a surefire way to get the hurtful response that you are looking for. There’s no doubt in my mind that this husband knew full well that claiming not to love this wife was going to be the most hurtful (and hard hitting) thing which he could possibly say to her.

And, yes, it got the desired result. After those words were spoken, she retreated and stopped nagging him to spend more time with her and to treat her better. And this is likely precisely what he wanted anyway.

However, after listening to this couple’s history, I just did not buy that this man had never loved this woman. He had spent much of their time together working quite hard to raise the funds to build a home for them. He made sure to buy into a neighborhood with the best schools for their daughter. He regularly surprised the wife with books because he knew that reading was one thing she missed as a busy parent to a toddler. Some of the things he did showed that he loved, understood, and valued his wife very much.

But, it was also very clear that he felt pressured and afraid with all of the new responsibility on his shoulders. These negative feelings may have been at least in part behind him recently lashing out at her. And, although these behaviors were hurtful (and frankly unacceptable,) I honestly didn’t feel that the whole truth was behind them.

Try to Approach it From a Place of Solutions Rather than Resentment and Pain: So, where does the wife go from here? Looking at it from the surface, this is a tough situation. It hurts to hear those kinds of statements. But, I felt very strongly that the wife had to step back and ask herself what she really wanted the most. It seemed relatively clear to me that she wanted to be part of a loving and stable family. Her daughter was a wonderful reality. She was here in the present time. Whatever happened in the past needed to stay there.

Right now, the most important thing was for them to raise their family in a loving environment that fulfilled them both. They were relatively young and had all kinds of time to learn new behaviors that weren’t based on pushing each other’s emotional buttons.

A Positive Way to Address it: I felt strongly that the wife should try to put the hurtful words behind her and address this with her husband. The things he said were hurtful and needed to stop. Besides that, no one had spoke of what he had said for days. It needed to be addressed. I suggested that the wife approach her husband when she could be calm and know that she wasn’t going to engage with them.

Then, I suggested that she say something like: “Your saying that you don’t love me now and never loved me really hurt me. It wasn’t a fair thing for you to say, but I suspect that you don’t really mean it. I don’t want for either of us to fall into these patterns. We both grew up in volatile homes and I don’t want this for our daughter. I know that the way we got married and started our family wasn’t planned. But we are here now and we have to move forward in a positive way. I love you and I want to work with you to lighten both of our loads so that we aren’t snapping at each other because of all the pressure we are under. Will you work with me to create the loving family that we both want and deserve? Let’s stop hurting each other. We’re better than that.”

Now, the husband may not fall into the wife’s arms and spew apologies like she was hoping for, but dealing with this in a loving and honest way was going to begin to break those destructive habits and patterns that had formed. And, if the two of them were able to alleviate some of the tension and stress, I suspected that those hurtful phrases about not loving the wife were going to hopefully stop.