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Name: Hope
[ Original Post ]
I am so confused. I do not know if I am in love with my husband anylonger. There is no one else by the way, and I have felt this a long time coming. I feel alone a lot. I do not feel like I am important as I should be to him. It is not anythign huge he has done it is small things that grow over time. We have 2 kids and I have been thinking mostly of them. I use to daydream about getting in my car and driving away startinbg over from scratch somewhere else, I would never do that ofcourse. I love my kids and want them to be happy but I am not happy. I have tried talking but all he says is that all relationships change and that this is normal. It does not feel normal to me and if all couples are like this, well I do not think they should be. We have been married for 8yrs now and I miss who we were more and more as the days go by. It hurts to remember how it use to be. There is no desire now, no passion only need, and I am not speaking just sexually here but more emotionally. No one in my family has ever been divorced, and just the thought of it makes me feel ashamed and guilty. I do love him and I know he loves me but not in the way we both did in the begining. Can anyone here relate or have any words of wisdom?? thanks
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Name: Sonia | Date: May 20th, 2006 12:11 AM
Have you talked to him about it? Maybe you two need a break and could use a vaction for just you two. You can also try to pick one night where you two go out or just some time to spark things up again. I hope that things work out and if they don't I still wish the best for your family. 

Name: E | Date: May 20th, 2006 12:20 AM
We are such complex creatures. Limits of one role (a wife, a stay-at-home-mom, a working-mom) will eventually lead to routinisation to boredom to wondering if this is all there is. I'm currently reading "The Feminine Mystique" by Betty Friedan. Though it's an old book, about generation of women in the 50s (when the baby boom happened and women were supposed to be only housewives and find fullfillment in the house-making), the resentment they started to feel is not unlike a resentment a person would feel in any limiting situation. I am not saying that a marriage is limiting and everyone would get bored in a marriage. I am trying to say that imposing any status quo and expecting it not to change becomes limiting over time that we as human beings resent. We need constant evelvement - seeing and reaching for something new and exciting beyond family life, be it politics, arts, travel - any type of human adventure. Don't know if this makes sense but I wouldn't want this discussion to become self-limiting as it usually happens - whether he or she does this or that right or wrong. I think being interested in many other things in life makes you as a person more interesting, including for him, and it's not for him that you would do that, but for your own fulfillment, too. 

Name: Laura | Date: May 20th, 2006 2:23 PM
I don't mean this to sound harsh, just true.

You are at the stage now where the feeling of love is no longer based on the chemical reaction. One of the reasons we have such high divorce rates is because there is a fallacy that love is an emotion that just happens, that we don't have much to say about it. But real Love is a choice.

True Love stands the test of time, not because the emotion stays with you through thick and thin, but rather that the person who knows how to truly Love stays with you, cares for you, and makes best out of what goes on, even when they don't 'feel it' anymore.

Then an amazing thing happens, the emotion that comes with caring for the other person even when the emotions aren't really there, turns into a real form of Love, and you realize that what you felt before was not the fullness of Love, but rather a precurser to what Love really is.

And the emotion that you feel for the other person, is not the hot burning flames, but rather the steady warmth of maintained coals.

Love is not an emotion, Love is sacrificing for another when it is in their best interest even though it puts you out. Love is sacrificing an emotion as temporary as 'happiness' for the good of the family, because you know that in time you will feel happy again.

Too many people end their 'marriages' because they believe that they no longer Love each other, when the truth of the matter is, they never started.

Unless your spouse is physically abusing you, marriage requires you to stay with them even if you no longer 'feel' 'in love'. Otherwise you are breaking your vows.

Marriage is designed not just for us, but for the children that come from our union. We say "until death we do part" so that we have the solemn vow from each other to be assured that our children will be raised together. We do not say " until we stop feeling love for each other do we part" for this does not provide security for our children.

Our culture has the false belief that marriage is for adults. But it is not. Marriage is for the family.

Your husband is right. But this doesn't give him, or you, the permission to neglect the care of your relationship with each other. And you can find a passion again. It won't be the hot first in love sort of passion, or the second 'We still are sort of hot for each other kind of passion', or maybe a third sort of passion, depending on your relationship.

Love is constantly growing, and it has it's down side as well as it's up side. Sometimes the dry periods can last for months or even years. But if we are TRULY COMMITTED, we realize that it is in no one's best interests to let 'sleeping dogs lie', we will work at maintaining the relationship.

It will be a marital passion that can only come knowing that even if the other person is temporarily not in a passionate mode, they are not going to cheat on you or leave you.

Be committed to your marriage and realize it is not all about your happiness here on earth. Sometimes you have to take one in the gut for the family. But then your family will bring it all back to you with extras.

We live in a disposible culture. If it no longer works, we don't bother trying to fix it, we just toss it and get a new one. But if we knew that the item we have is the only one we are going to have, we treat it well, and keep it well maintained. We don't just toss it.

Take for instance, the cars from the 1950's. Here in the U.S. we rarely see such things, they are collector items. But in Cuba, where they knew that they no longer will be able to get new cars, such vehicles are everywhere, and they run well.

Your marriage is a once in a lifetime thing. Treat it as such.
If you end this and go out and find another one just because of the emotion of 'happiness', it will not be a real marriage. Real marriage is a commitment. It is not contingent on an emotion as fickle as happiness.

Stick with it, get counseling if you are really bothered by this. We think nothing of taking our vehicles in for maintanance checks, why don't we give our marriages the same consideration? They are much more valuable.

A book that helped me at one point is called "Courtship after Marriage" by Zig Zigler. 

Name: Hope | Date: May 22nd, 2006 8:26 PM
than so much for all the advice, it all makes a lot of sense and you are right Laura marriages do require work and are not disposable. And E you are right about needing constant evolvement as humans and I think that is where I have gone off the road, i stopped and just settled into being a sahm only and nothng else. 

Name: Lizzi | Date: May 25th, 2006 9:27 PM
Sometimes,sadly ,being with someone becomes more of a habit than a relationship and it feels like all the love is lost. The only thing you can really do is talk it out and find out what you each want NOW in the marriage or if you even want a marriage at all anymore and then go from there. 

Name: p.c. | Date: May 27th, 2006 5:09 AM
I agree with Laura.

Love is a choice that is constantly made. So many people think their marriages are over, not realizing that it's their very own choosing that is destroying their marriage. Did they really mean their vows?

My mom used to say to my brother and I when we fought so terribly: "If the two of you who have been raised the same can't get along, how do you think you will ever get along with a spouse?!"

lol, now to take a new twist to her words, 'If we can't get along with our siblings, yet we still love them, why do we expect to be perfectly matched with our spouses? Why can't we also choose to still love them even when we don't get along?"

Hope, stick with your name, don't lose hope. Real marriages have ups and downs all the time. It's the people that go with the flow and ride the lows with the highs that end up with long lasting marriages. 


Name: homemommichele | Date: May 27th, 2006 9:10 PM
Would he consider counseling with you? An objective professional may be able to put it in perspective for you and may even have suggestions of how to breathe new life into your relationship after chasing kiddos all day, a challenge for all of us!! 

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