Leslie Cane Articles

By: Leslie Cane: I often hear from wives who are struggling to get their husbands to think more favorably of them or their marriage. Some of the wives have their husbands tell them that he doesn’t love them anymore. Another common declaration is “I love you but I’m not ‘in love’ with you.” Sometimes though, you may be dealing with a husband who isn’t sure (or doesn’t know) how he feels about you.

I recently heard from a wife who said, in part: “my husband has been cold and distant to me lately. This weekend, we were out with friends and he made little digs at me several times throughout the evening. When we got home, I told him that the way he acted was no way to treat his wife. He made a sarcastic comment like he wasn’t sure if he wanted me to be his wife anymore. I asked him what this was supposed to mean and then he started making comments about our marriage not being the same and not making him entirely happy. Of course, this lead me to ask him if he loved me anymore. And do you know what his response was? He said ‘I don’t know how I feel about you anymore.’ What is that supposed to mean? And what does this mean for my marriage?”

I will try to address this wife’s questions in the following article.

What It Sometimes Means When Your Husband Doesn’t Know How He Feels About You Anymore: Many wives assume that when their husband can’t or won’t say how he really feels about them, this means that he doesn’t love them anymore. Or, he’s sure that he doesn’t feel the same way about them, but he doesn’t want to hurt your feelings or create more conflict by saying so.

Both of these are possible, but it’s important that you do not automatically jump to conclusions. Because sometimes, when a husband says he isn’t sure how he feels about you anymore, he is being completely truthful about this. Sometimes, he is genuinely confused about you, his feelings, his life, or the marriage.

I hear from many men on my “save my marriage blog” and I can tell you that their feelings truly run the gauntlet Some of them aren’t all that happy with their wives anymore, but they want to save the marriage because they made a commitment or because of their children. Others still feel love for their wife as a person, but they no longer feel as much romantic love toward her. This is sometimes because of the circumstances surrounding the couple’s marriage or lives and other times this is because that the couple have grown apart or have allowed the spark to leave their marriage.

But the good news is that it’s completely possible to change his feelings about you. This often happens when you change your circumstances, habits, or behaviors – which leads me to my next point.

What Can You Do When Your Husband Isn’t Sure How He Feels About You?: The first thing that I want to stress is that you should not panic. You can fix this. And, you should also know that its fairly common for a husband to mistaken in his assumption that his feelings for you are changing. I will explain. Sometimes, he feels stress, disappointment, or ambivalence about something else going on his life and he projects those feelings onto the person closest or most convenient to him. Who do you think that person is? You, of course.

If you’re thinking this isn’t fair, you’d be right. But, the truth is, since you can’t entirely know for sure why your husband isn’t sure of his feelings, you can take action no matter what the cause really is. Try to take an objective look at your marriage and your interactions with your husband and see if there are any areas where you might make improvements. How much time do you spend showing, giving and receiving both physical and emotional affection? How often do you laugh and play together? How often do you talk to maintain the feelings of intimacy and closeness?

I’m asking because many people do not realize that the way your spouse feels about you has nearly everything to do with how they feel about themselves and their situations when they are with you and when they are interacting with you in their marriage. So if things feels tense, or forced, or stressful and heavy, that’s when you start to get those ambivalent or negative feelings. As a result, one way to improve your husband’s feelings toward you is to improve the marriage that he shares with you.

I know that this sounds simplistic, but it really is a nearly universal truth. If your presence or interactions makes your husband feel insecure, angry, stressed, doubtful, dissatisfied, or anxious, all of these things are going to affect how he feels about you. Likewise, if you feel loved, appreciated, understood, funny, smart, and just a better version of yourself when you are around him, this too is going to affect the positive way that you feel about him and you will want to be around him more as the result.

I don’t mean to minimize what you are going through. I know that it is hard to hear that your husband isn’t sure how he feels about you, but I feel strongly that if you address whatever circumstances, stressors, or issues are standing between you or within your marriage, you can improve the feelings in the same way that you improve the circumstances.

Before we separated, my husband repeatedly told me he wasn’t sure how he felt about me. I panicked and immediately assumed the worst case scenario, which only made things worse. So, I had a lot of ground to make up when I tried to save my marriage. Once I learned that if I changed the circumstances, his feelings would also change, things improved immediately. If it helps, you can read the whole story on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com

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