Leslie Cane Articles

By: Leslie Cane: I sometimes hear from people who are beside themselves because their spouse is being honest about his conflicting romantic feelings toward them. Often, the person in question has noticed that their spouse is distancing himself or pulling away. So they finally get up the nerve to ask him how he really feels. And that is when they are hit with the realization that he doesn’t actually know.

I heard from a wife who said: “for the past six months, my husband has been very cold to me. At first, I told myself that I was only imagining it. I didn’t want to acknowledge this. But then, my husband started saying hurtful things and making hurtful comments to me. His negative attitude towards me was becoming so obvious that I could no longer ignore it. Finally, the other day, I asked my husband how he felt about me because his change in attitude toward me is impossible to deny. He said that he no longer knows how he feels about me. He said his feelings about me change depending upon how our relationship is going on that day. This sounded crazy to me and I asked him to elaborate. He went on to say that when we are fighting or when I am exhibiting behaviors that he doesn’t like, then he honestly doesn’t feel any affection or love toward me. But he says that on certain days when we get along well or bond, then he remembers how it used to be and he feels actual loving feelings for me, although he admits that it isn’t the intense love he felt early in our marriage. This is very confusing to me. Because I love my husband even when we are fighting. Yes, I might be angry or frustrated, but I always feel affection and love toward him. But it appears that he doesn’t feel the same. Does this mean that our marriage is over? Does he not love me anymore?”

I think that there was a better than good chance that the husband still loved his wife. What he likely didn’t love was the direction that the marriage was going. And, sometimes spouses (especially men) will project their frustrations about the course of the relationship onto their perceptions about their marriage. So they will think that they don’t feel enough affection for their spouse when actually, it is the course of the relationship that is inspiring those feelings.

Unfortunately, the spouse in question often can’t see this and they just assume that perhaps they are falling out of love with their spouse or are starting to feel differently toward them. As unfortunate as this is, I don’t think that it means that your marriage is over. Because I feel that you can fix this. I will offer some tips on how to do that below.

Don’t Make Negative Assumptions About What He Is Telling You: It is absolutely normal and understandable to take this personally. It really hurts to hear your spouse say that his feelings for you are changing. But please don’t panic or allow your fear to drive your actions. Please understand that he is likely projecting the negative things happening in your relationship onto his feelings. I firmly believe that once you address and hopefully fix what is going on with your relationship, then you will both find that his feelings are favorably mirroring those positive changes.  Once this happens, he should hopefully be very clear on the fact that he loves you consistently.

Get To The Heart Of What Is Causing His Frustration: Hopefully, by now you are at least somewhat receptive to the thought that it is the issues that are going on in your marriage that are the real problem. Often, just identifying and removing the core issues that are causing the conflict will allow the feelings to return. Because if your husband is no longer regularly getting frustrated by what is happening in your marriage, then he will no longer need to process those negative feelings. So it’s vital that you uncover what is really bothering him, without making it seem as if you are nagging.

Embrace Activities That Bring About Fun And Bonding: A very easy way to begin to turn this situation around is to try to introduce a sense of fun, adventure, and light heartedness in your marriage. Often, when there are troublesome issues, people tend to place their focus only on these negative things and this can drag down your marriage even more. With all this doom and gloom around you all of the time, it can be hard to remember those loving feelings that can be taken for granted.

I do not want to suggest that you ignore your problems. This isn’t what I mean. But sometimes, if you can take a short break from your problems and go and reconnect and blow off some steam, you will find that your problems aren’t as huge as you once thought since you are reconnected with your spouse again. Frankly, when the two of you are clicking and you feel loving toward your spouse, then you have much more patience and much more willingness to bend and to give a little.

So anything that you can do to restore a sense of shared fun and laughter can often bring back the loving feelings relatively quickly. Not only that, but it can make the process of working through your problems easier. I know that this might seem like common sense. But honestly, I can’t tell you how many couples make the mistake of focusing only on what is wrong with their relationship rather than on what is right.

But to answer the question posed, it can be common for your spouse to have conflicting and changing feelings when negative issues or complacency crops up in your marriage. But very often, once you address those problems and focus on what is right between you, then you will often find that the feelings have returned.

Unfortunately for me, I didn’t pay close enough attention when my husband started to get critical and distant.  But one of the first things he said when he told me he was leaving was that his feelings had changed.  I am pretty sure that if I had paid more attention earlier in the process, saving my marriage would not have been as tricky as it ultimately was.  If it helps, you can read the whole story on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com

Filed under: Uncategorized by admin