Should I try to rescue our relationship? My situation is that I have been married for 21 years and my husband recently told me that he no longer loves me. He says he doesn’t hate me, just does not have any feelings for me as a wife.
He is the father of our 2 children. The problem is that he feels that I have worked too hard for the last 3 out of 4 years – I support the family. He has maintained the home and done most of the childcare for the last 10 years. On the side, he has a landscape architecture business. Most days, he is able to either run, swim or cycle for exercise while the kids are in school.
I feel that I provided him with a “good” life that allowed hime to bond with the children (both boys) and still have an outlet for his creativity. There has been no expectation that he would “make money” in his business but hope that at least he could break even. Although he “know” he has had it easy, he still resents the long hours I worked 3 years ago – I haven’t had to work long hours for the last year.
He claims his loss of love has been occurring over a long period of time but because “I was so stressed”, he couldn’t communicate to me his feelings because he did not want to add more stress. Since his “revelation”, I have tried to reassure him that I do love him but he has emotional barriers up. He won’t even discuss our situation. He sleeps in another room and continues to stay in the house.
What should I do? I think he is in the midst of midlife crisis – he is in great shape but is showing the signs of aging and his business is not doing well. I know that I need to pay more attention to him now that I know he felt lonely. But the attention is now making him uncomfortable. Should I just be patient or should I let him leave (I don’t know how he’ll support himself) or perhaps ask him to leave?
I still love him very much and would do anything to save our relationship – including quitting my job. He says it won’t help because then we’d have financial problems as well as relationship problems. Any advice is appreciated. — Lani
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Lani, he apparently has a problem with the relationship as he sees it and he has to want to help fix it as much as you do or nothing will be accomplished. Can you get him into couples counseling or marriage counseling?
Does he want to work on the marriage or just throw everything away? You have children that must be considered here and he may not be taking their feelings into account.
Perhaps he’s feeling ‘less than a man’ because the two of you have reversed the traditional roles within a marriage. Counseling might help uncover whatever it is that’s got him running away from this marriage.
Don’t give up on your marriage until the two of you have given every last effort to work things through. You’ve got too much at stake to call it quits right now. — Queenie