Leslie Cane Articles

By: Leslie Cane: Sometimes, I hear from women who are deeply conflicted about their troubled marriage. At this time, their greatest wish is to convince their husband to try to make their marriage work. Usually, it’s become crystal clear that the marriage is crumbling. And, because the wife is still invested in her marriage, she’s trying to get her husband on board with trying to save it.

Initially, that might be all that she can think of and she may even consider it her only goal – until her husband tells her something that stops her in her tracks. This can happen when her husband discloses that he is no longer in love with her.

A wife might say: “I have known for about seven months that my husband has been unhappy in our marriage. He seems to have totally checked out with our family. He’s in the home, but he’s not really there. He’s distant from the rest of us. He never shows me any affection. He can be sarcastic and he can care less about things that are important to me. Despite this, I love him. I’ve never stopped. We’ve had some issues with one of our children that introduced a lot stress into our lives. I believe this is what changed our marriage. But I also believe that we can change it back if we’re willing to work hard. So I approached my husband about working on getting us connected again. At first, he told me that he wasn’t going to make me any promises. The other day, my husband and I made the mistake of fighting in front of our kids. The youngest one started to cry and said she was scared that we were getting a divorce. After this, I told my husband that our marital issues are negatively affecting our kids and that we needed to get serious about saving our marriage. My husband agreed that he would try, but I could tell that his heart wasn’t in it. So I asked him ‘don’t you love me anymore?’ And he said: ‘I love you but I have not been in love with you for a long time.’ I was devastated by this. On the one hand, I want to take him up on his offer to try to save our marriage. On the other hand, I have to wonder if it’s even worth saving a marriage to a spouse who is no longer in love with me. I feel like I’m settling for less than I deserve. I feel like our marriage can’t ever be complete.”

I can understand why you might feel this way. When my husband and I were separated, it had begun to become increasingly clear that he wasn’t feeling a great deal of love for me. And when I was trying in vain to get him back in any way possible (a strategy I later abandoned for a better one) I often wondered if we could ever truly be happy when only one of us was sure of their love.

Here’s the belief that I formed about this over time. Many people think that they have fallen out of love with their spouse when their marriage is in trouble. When you aren’t connecting or when there are major issues that weigh on you, then you start to see every single negative thing about your spouse. You start to look for and focus on their flaws. You aren’t receptive to the good things in them. You aren’t receptive to experiencing any loving feelings.

In short, you are seeing things from a very slanted perspective. You are likely resistant to anything positive that might spark between you. But, when your problems begin to fade or the stress lessens and you perhaps feel the slightest flicker of a spark once again, then your perspective changes.

You can once again be receptive to the positive. You can remember the way that things used to be. And that is when the loving feelings come back. Once you are receptive again and things continue to improve, you may eventually find that you’ve “fallen back in love with” your spouse. This is semantics, really. What has essentially happened is that you were able to change your perspective because the circumstances have changed.

What I am trying to say is that when people have troubled marriages or their marriage is affected by problems or stress, they very commonly think they’ve “fallen out of love.” But when the problems disappear, suddenly they are in love again.

It happens over and over again and it happened to me, to an extent. That’s why I believe that you might want to consider moving forward with trying to save your marriage. I’m admittedly biased but I think it’s always worth it to try to fight for a relationship that is so important. And I know from experience that once you are successful with it and when you have done it the right way, you’ll likely find a husband who is in love with you all over again so that you haven’t had to settle for second best.

As I alluded to, I think that there was a point in my separation (and even earlier in my marriage) where my husband merely tolerated me.  And there were days when I thought that his lack of feelings meant that we weren’t going to make it.  But today, I am confident when I say that he loves me very much.  You can see how we got from feeling estranged and frustrated to feeling in love on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com

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