How do you feel about love being a choice, a decision, and not a feeling? It is a choice to keep and work on your love with your spouse, that also makes it our choice rather we want to work on it or not. A feeling, sometimes some of us get our feeling mixeed up for something else. What we like could be love may be lust or a high on being in love.
In what ways have you, and your partner, might have let your love dwindle, and not made your marriage a priority? We started to drift apart, stop spending time together. H did his own thing alone without me. I was left alone...wondering what I could do to bring our M back to the way it was, I was hopeless and depressed because I could find the answers I was trying to find. It seemed we did not agree even on the small stuff. I finally gave up and went my own way.
How do you feel about Michele's staement of "If your spouse reports falling out of love, just say nothing and remind yourself that nothing is permanent. If s/he fell out of love, s/he can fall into love again"? I agree I think my spouse is confused and doesn't really know what he wants. He has made it clear that he didn't want to make a choice between OW and me. Then all of a sudden he told me that he loved her more and would rather be with her. I still don't think it was really what he wanted. He never said he didn't love me, never.
What do you think about NOT talking to him/her about your, or their, feelings of love? About not putting any pressure on them to talk about it?
I'm afraid of talking about it, I might not be what I want to hear. I don't want to hear that he doesn't love me and wants a divorce. Which he hasn't done that yet. I was the one to file for D, I told him the 1st of this month I didn't like I wanted one anymore. Was that all right. Should I tell him I would like to work on M?
Great Questions!! I believe that love IS a choice and you either decide to love or you decide not to. From my perspective, Once my H found sobriety (20 yrs ago)he shifted his priorities away from me and our R and made himself and his needs/wants etc his top priority. He grew resentful of me because I'm not like his AA friends. I haven't made the mistakes, the journey thru recovery from addiction etc....so he began to see me as an "outsider." Over the years I begged him to make me an active part of his life, I tried to get him to include me in his AA activities etc as so many other AA members do with their non-addicted spouses but he refused. He wanted me kept out of the loop...out of his "circle"....he had/has convinced himself that I would think I was better than them. I think it also became a way to hurt me by using his AA against me. He enjoyed me being on the outside looking in. And eventually he used the AA group to pick up his two A partners. And now he wonders why I see that group as MY enemy.... I use to talk him to death about my feelings...it doesn't make a dent. Still to this day I think he is unable to see anyone's feelings but his own. It's still all about HIM. He sees the pain he's caused me and our sons...but in his mind I believe he thinks that's the price we all have to pay so that he can be gratified in whatever way he chooses at the time. He doesn't want to look "into" himself, he doesn't want to "see/know" what's really there. I probably am wasting my time.
In the years leading up to the "I'm not in love" statement from my wife, I was the die hard husband. I worked incredibly hard trying not to have any excuse for to be called a poor husband. However all my efforts did not seem to make my wife happy (enough). She tend to have a ambivalent attitude toward our marriage. Even though we would go out and do things together, this did not seem to improve our relationship. Finally when I pushed her hard enough one night about our relationship she finally came with the "not in love with you any more" statement.
Since I found DB and have studied most of it, it has become quite clear that she felt love was an in or out thing/ feeling, and not a work in progress. She felt it was all her problem and didn't want to hurt or bother me with it. She worried that I would take it very personal, and that would only make things worse. Perhaps that would have been true, I think I would rather have dealt with things a little earlier in the game.
Although things have changed and I have made a lot of big 180s, we are only now starting to feel comfortable with each other again. My feeling is that love is a work in progress and not a uncontrolled state of mind. Although the later makes those of us who want to put little effort into it feel good (not our fault), a loving relationship becomes what you put into it. Although my wife and I were doing the external stuff to build a relationship, we were not taking care of the interpersonal stuff (expressing inner feelings about how we truly felt). Needless to say the problem just piled up till something had to be said.
I know hind site is 20/20 but all I would say to new couples these days is work on your relationship and realize that love is not just an uncontrolable phenomenon, but a day by day work in progress. The sooner my W and I learn this lesson and apply the new principles, the sooner we'll be back on track. Since a marriage is a team effort, we'll both have to apply this lesson.
I have certainly come round to the opinion that love is as much a choice as a feeling, assuming there was an inital attraction. I also believe that my W thinks that love is a feeling and that her love for me no longer feels right to her. I could counter this with love is a choice, but I feel that even if I did that her reply would be "ok, then you have to accept that it is my choice not to love you anymore".
I don't really know what to do about this. I feel so isolated and powerless. Why doesn't she love me anymore, what caused her to think that it no longer feels right? These are the answers I want and may never get.
Me 36 W 37 Bomb (Easter 07) Sep (WAW July 07) "It's over" (end Oct 07) T10.5 years, M2 (before bomb)
