1. IS IT NATURAL FOR THE PASSION TO DISAPPEAR AFTER MANY YEARS OF MARRIAGE?
My husband and I have been married for eighteen years, and are more like best friends than lovers. We have sex very infrequently, and have settled into what I would call a "comfortable" relationship. There’s a part of me that longs for that passionate emotional connection we used to have, but many of my friends tell me I’m being unrealistic, and that all couples feel this way after years of marriage. Am I expecting too much?
Don't buy into the popular but misinformed attitude that losing romantic attraction to your partner is an inevitable part of marriage. That's like saying becoming unhealthy and having a heart attack is an inevitable part of growing older. Are heart attacks common? Yes--but now we know they are preventable IF you take good care of your body. In the same way, just because it's common for many couples to lose the passion in their relationship over time doesn't mean it is natural. It all depends on how you take care of your relationship.
Relationships don't just lose their chemistry overnight. It takes years of neglect, not making the marriage a number one priority, not talking about your needs, not resolving and healing hidden resentments, and not actively learning how to make love work. All these unhealthy emotional habits are what takes a couple from feeling "in love" to feeling like roommates.
I strongly believe that you do deserve to have a marriage that grows in love, passion and connection year after year. Is this realistic, even in an eighteen year relationship? Yes...IF both partners decide to do what it takes to rekindle the passion and learn some of the skills you were never taught about successful loving. Start by sitting down with your partner, taking his hands, and telling him how much you miss the physical and emotional closeness you used to share. (Believe me, he misses it too!) Without blaming him, tell him you want to work towards transforming your "comfortable" relationship into one that is intimate and exciting. Tell him he deserves more than he's getting, as you do. When you both recommit to learning how to love, and use some of the skills I teach in my books and programs, you’ll find renewed levels of communication, closeness and excitement.
2. HOW CAN I GET MY HUSBAND TO PAY AS MUCH ATTENTION TO ME AS HE DOES TO OUR CHILDREN?
I consider myself lucky to have a husband who is my best friend, and two healthy young daughters. So I feel even more guilty to admit that I'm jealous of my girls! The truth is, my husband gives them more attention and affection than he gives me. I always brag about what a great Dad he is, but I need more physical and emotional closeness with him. I've tried to talk about , but he ends up feeling criticized and pulls even farther away. Am I expecting too much?
Guess what? Millions of wives and mothers feel the same , secret envy you do about how much love their husband shows the kids, so be assured that you’re not "bad", "selfish", or "weird" --you’re just not getting everything you need from your partner. (I hear this same complaint from men, too, by the way, about their wife showing the kids more affection) So the first step is to stop making yourself wrong for longing to be the recipient of the tenderness and caring your husband showers on your daughters. Of course you’re jealous: the little girl inside of you is hungry for the intimacy you know your mate is capable of, since you see him share this with your girls. I know it feels awful to see your own daughters whom you adore as rivals, but that’s what’s happening.
It might help you to understand where your husband is coming from. You see, it’s easy for him to be so emotionally generous with his children. They don’t nag him, criticize what he says or does, or see his faults.!! In other words, they still love him unconditionally. That feeling of being loved purely and completely allows him to feel safe enough to open his heart and share the most giving part of himself with them. With you, it’s a different story. You don’t have him on a pedestal, like the girls do; you don’t think everything he says is so smart; you see him as he really is. So it’s much more difficult for your husband to feel as safe and loved with you as he does with his daughters. This is true for all parents-- it’s a lot more challenging to be as consistently loving with our mates as we are with our kids, but that’s the whole point of marriage--to hopefully learn how to love another person in spite of their imperfections.
That’s the compassionate part of the answer, but the second part is more practical: Your relationship with your husband must be placed first before your relationship as parents to the kids. I believe strongly that, as a wife, you need to feel you are Number One to your husband, and not that you get the emotional leftovers, if there are any, after your daughters are loved.
If your marriage isn’t healthy, it won’t matter how much your children feel loved...you will end up feeling resentment towards them, and they will not grow up with a positive example of how a woman should be treated. The stronger your relationship with your husband is, the better both of you will be as parents to your kids. Keeping you happy and well loved should be your husband’s first responsibility to the family, because that ensures a stable and lasting home life for your children. And the happier you and he are together, the happier your girls will be. Tell him I said so!!!!
3. IF A RELATIONSHIP TAKES A LOT OF WORK, DOES THAT MEAN SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH IT?
At times, I find myself wondering whether my wife is my perfect partner, because our relationship doesn’t ever seem to be completely effortless and without issues. We love each other very much, and have grown tremendously over the past eight years, but it seems we’re always "dealing" with something--balancing her needs with mine; learning to ask for what we want; giving each other enough attention, or space. Should it be this complicated?
Yes! Show me a relationship without conflict and issues and I’ll show you a couple who is either dead or in denial! A conscious relationship requires a lot of work, because it asks you to push past the fear that would keep you protected and invulnerable to your partner and, instead, to reveal all of you --the giving and the selfish part; the forgiving and the angry part; the compassionate and the blaming part. In other words, a truly honest, deep and committed relationship will continually confront you with all the parts of yourself that are not totally loving, and thus will make you uncomfortable as it stretches you beyond the boundaries of your ego.
Where I think people get stuck is in the erroneous belief that a relationship is always supposed to make you feel good, so if it feels bad, it must be bad. Actually, it is often during the times when the relationship doesn’t feel good that something good is happening: You are being forced to see a part of yourselves or a dynamic between you that is not healthy, so you can change it and make your relationship even stronger. It may feel like things are falling apart, but actually, they are trying to come more together. It’s at these times when you need to be careful not to misinterpret your difficulties as signs of doom, but rather, opportunities for growth. (This only applies if you are actually with the right person in the first place-see section on compatibility.)
Of course, both partners need to be willing to work on themselves and the relationship. And it’s essential to share a vision and understanding of the purpose of your relationship, so that when stuff comes up, and it will, you remember what you’re doing there in the first place. Here are three understandings I suggest couples adopt:
- We have been brought together for the purpose of helping each other grow, and will be each other’s teacher.
- Our relationship is a precious gift--it will take us through whatever we need to learn to become more conscious, loving human beings.
- The challenges and difficulties we experience will always illuminate our most needed lessons.
4. HOW DO YOU CONVINCE A WORKAHOLIC PARTNER TO PUT MORE TIME AND ENERGY INTO A MARRIAGE?
I feel like I’m always competing with my husbands job. He’s an attorney, and works sixty to seventy hours a week, not to mention most weekends, which doesn’t leave much time for me and our two boys. When I complain, he argues out that he’s doing this for us, and points to our lifestyle, which I have to admit, is very luxurious--we have a beautiful home, a boat, a vacation cabin (which we hardly use), and all the money we need. The only thing missing is him! He blows up when I call him a workaholic, and tells me I’m being ungrateful. Is he right? How can I convince him to pay attention to us?
You’re not ungrateful...you’re just lonely, and with good cause. You can’t snuggle up to a check book, or hold hands with a shares of stock, and neither can your kids. I have a saying: Marriage is not a noun, it’s a verb. It’s not something you have, like a house or a car. It is not a piece of paper that proves you are husband and wife. Marriage is a behavior. It is a choice you make over and over again, reflected in the way you treat your partner every day.
Men tend to define themselves by what they are doing, rather than what they are feeling, and so it’s no surprise that your husband has gotten caught up in the "doing more must mean I’m successful" mentality. That’s the way society, and perhaps his family background, has trained him. He may feel like he’s on a treadmill, running as fast as he can, and he doesn’t know how to stop. Along with this, he may have other unconscious emotional reasons for working so hard. Some workaholics actually use their busyness to avoid intimacy and to maintain a sense of control over their lives. After all, it’s probably easier for your husband to feel in control when he’s doing business than it is for when he’s interacting with you and your children, and dealing in emotions, needs, and all that amorphous stuff.
Here are a few of my favorite methods to wake up workaholic partners. Whether or not these approaches are effective will depend on how addicted your mate is to the illusion of power and control that work gives him.
1. Give him some perspective: Have him close his eyes and imagine that he’s at the end of his life, on his death bed. As he looks back on his life, ask him to share what moments will have made his life truly meaningful, what , in the end, will really matter to him? You can bet he won’t say "I can die happily because I closed ten big deals in 1997," or "I feel content with my life because I owned a 5000 square foot house, " or even "I feel at peace because I left my children a lot of money. " No, the moments that really matter, the moments that will have filled his life with meaning will be moments of love, connection, and sharing. I call these "real moments," and he probably isn’t having enough of them because he’s too busy doing the things he has decided are more important. Tell him you want to share more meaningful time with him.
2. Use fear to scare him into slowing down. Sometimes, this is the only thing that works to snap a guy out of his workaholic stupor. Ask him how he would spend his time if he knew he had only one month left to live. (Trust me, he won’t say "I’d work like a dog for twelve hours a day." ) Then, remind him of some men he knows of who have died at his age, either accidentally or of natural causes. The truth is, we never know if a day , or a month , or a year will be our last. We live as if we have all the time in the world, and we don’t. Share this anonymous quote with him:
"First I was dying to finish high school and start college.
And then I was dying to finish college and start working.
And then I was dying to marry and have children.
And then I was dying for my kids to grow up.
And then I was dying to retire.
And now, I am dying, and suddenly I realize,
I forgot to live..."
3. Use guilt as a last resort. Ask him to imagine what his children will say about him when they are grown. Does he really think they will look back on their childhood as happy because of their big house and expensive toys, and not care that they hardly say their father? Does he really think that now, they don’t care that he is hardly ever around? All children really want is to feel they matter, that they are important to us. The toys and treats may buy the children’s silence now, but when they grow up, they won’t even remember what he bought them--they’ll only say "I hardly knew my Dad." And they will wish he hadn’t sacrificed " for their sakes" , because whatever he leaves them will never be as valuable as the cherished memory of a good-night story, a game of catch or the sight of Mommy and Daddy snuggled close together on the couch. Warning: Have tissues ready before trying this tactic.
5. IS IT POSSIBLE TO "FALL BACK IN LOVE" WITH SOMEONE AFTER YEARS OF FEELING DEAD AND DISINTERESTED?
I've been married for twenty eight years, and for the last ten, I've felt numb towards my partner. We've discussed divorce, but neither of us really want to go out and start dating at this point in our lives. Is it possible for us to fall back in love again, or should we just accept the fact that our marriage is over?
Yes, it’s possible to fall back in love again, or more accurately, to break through the numbness you are both feeling and rediscover the love that is still there underneath. If you’re a couple ( and I’d bet anything you are) who never worked on maintaining the intimacy in your relationship, avoided major confrontation, suppressed unpleasant emotions, and didn’t talk about your feelings, then of course you are feeling numb. You’ve spent years becoming experts at numbing yourselves to the little things, and now you’re wondering where the love went. It may still be there in hibernation, underneath all the other frozen emotions.
It sounds to me like you are both not only numb to one another, but numb period. You aren’t interested in dating or starting your love life over again, and I’ll bet you feel kind of tired and blasé about everything. This could be a major turning point in your life, a moment where you look at one another and say, "I’m tired of feeling this tired of everything...I’m tired of feeling numb.... I’m ready to make some changes."
The first step is to break through that numbness by confronting some of the issues that are sure to be lurking beneath the surface. You won’t be able to do this on your own--you’ll need help, and I suggest you find a well-trained therapist or marriage counselor who has an excellent reputation for helping couples in trouble. If you don’t get the results you want, try someone else, read books, attend seminars, etc. You won’t be able to tell if your marriage can be saved until you try everything. Then, if you decide it’s over, you can do so knowing you made every attempt to resurrect the relationship.
Here’s something to give you some hope: I’ve personally worked with thousands of couples who believed they were on the verge of divorce, and after giving the relationship the attention it needed, fell back in love again; every week I receive letters from couples I’ve never even met, but who share this same kind of success story with me. So it’s not just possible--it’s happening all the time, and I pray it can happen for you too.
6. HOW SHOULD YOU HANDLE A PARTNER WHO SMOTHERS YOU WITH TOO MUCH LOVE AND AFFECTION AND IS TOO POSSESSIVE?
I have the opposite problem of most women--my boyfriend loves me too much. He wants to be with me every second; he never takes his hands off of me; and when we aren’t together, he calls me every few hours. I’ve asked him to back off, to give me some space, but he gets really hurt and rejected, and I end up comforting him. I really care about this man, but I’m starting to turn off, and even feel scared of him. How can I make him see that I need him to love me less?
Your problem isn’t that your boyfriend loves you too much--it’s that he doesn’t love himself enough. He’s what I call an "emotional vampire." His heart is like an emotional container that’s empty, and he desperately needs you to fill him up, only there’s a hole in the bottom, so no matter how much you give him, it will never be enough, and he’ll always crave more. No wonder you feel uncomfortable: although he appears to be giving in his desire to be with you, touch you, and call you, he’s actually taking. He’s feeding off of your attention, your presence, your energy.
People like your boyfriend who seem to "love too much" are almost always desperately needy, seeking to distract themselves from their pain with a temporary dose of love, sex, or affection. They can fall in love instantly, and become easily compulsive and obsessed, sucking their partners in by sweeping them off their feet, and, eventually, keeping them around with guilt and pity. Your boyfriend has been very hurt in his life, probably by a family member, and has an emotional wound that will not heal until he deals with it at it’s source. Your relationship and all the others he has had are like band-aids, temporary solutions for a deep and chronic problem.
What am I telling you? Probably, to end this relationship now, before things get worse, and they inevitably will. The only circumstances under which you should keep seeing him would be if he admitted to the problem and sought help immediately There’s a chance that, if your boyfriend receives some intensive counseling, you could work things out together. However, I sense that you’ve already had enough. And don’t forget to take a look at why you got sucked in by this kind of person. (Hint: He begs for your love--you withhold it...Are you punishing Mom or Dad? Are you staying in control?)
7. HOW CAN A COUPLE LEARN TO TRUST LOVE WHEN THEY’VE BOTH BEEN BADLY HURT IN PAST RELATIONSHIPS?
After surviving a very bitter divorce and custody battle for my children, I finally met a wonderful man who is everything my ex-husband wasn’t. He’s kind, open and willing to talk about everything. Our problem is that his ex-wife left him for his best friend, so he’s afraid to trust love again, and so am I. How can we leave the past behind us and make this new relationship work?
First of all, Congratulations!! You are faced with what I call a "high class problem", a problem that looks like a problem, but is really a great situation with some challenges attached to it. In essence, what you’re asking is, "How can my partner and I get rid of the fear in our relationship so we can love fully?" That’s a wonderful question to be able to ask. So the first step is for you and your sweetheart to remind yourselves that you’ve worked very hard to get to this place. Before you get too intense about climbing your next mountain, take a moment to stop and really celebrate how far you’ve both come to finally have found a healthy relationship.
OK, now , back to the fear. I’m going to say something that might sound strange--a little fear isn’t such a bad thing for you and your boyfriend to feel...it will keep you on your toes and force you to pay attention. I’ll bet if you and he look back on your failed marriages, you will notice that you didn’t pay attention to warning signs, problems, conflicts, unfulfilled needs, and all kinds of stuff. Eventually, it was precisely what you weren’t paying attention to that sabotaged your relationships, right? You didn’t treat those relationships carefully enough. So here you are with a new, wonderful partner, and you’re both scared of making mistakes again, and a little reluctant to just blindly trust. I say, that’s great! It’s about time! You should be afraid of making mistakes, all of us should. You should be careful to make sure your needs get met. You should be paying very close attention, because the more you pay attention to your relationship, the better it will be.
Do you get my point? It’s like someone who carelessly used a sharp knife and cut herself badly. The next time you pick up the knife to use it, you are afraid. You respect it’s power much more, as well you should. A relationship is like that--a powerful tool that can be used to help us or hurt us, and I feel not enough people respect that tool.
Here’s something practical you can do to help. Each of you should make a "Relationship Mistake List." Go back and honestly assess your former relationship from the very beginning to the end. Write down every mistake YOU made. EXAMPLE: "Let my ex-husband talk me out of my feelings, and then stuffed my resentment, " ; "Didn’t ask for what I wanted in bed, and felt dissatisfied." Don’t be surprised at how long these lists are. Share yours with your partner, and have him share his. Talk about each item. Then, together, come up with a new "Relationship Rule" for each old mistake, and write these down. EXAMPLE: "When I disagree with something my partner does or says, I will express my feelings, even if it causes tension between us." , or "I will let my partner know what I enjoy sexually so he doesn’t have to guess."
The point of this exercise is two fold: First, it will help you understand that your prior relationships didn’t just go bad. There were specific unhealthy behaviors and love habits that caused the relationships to fail. Second, by paying attention to these unhealthy love habits, and committing on paper to new, healthy behavioral choices, you have a great chance of avoiding the old mistakes and getting hurt again. Throw in some good books, tapes or seminars on making relationships work, and you will have a great foundation to go forward into this new romance with excitement, enthusiasm, and high hopes.
8. WHAT DOES IT MEAN WHEN YOUR PARTNER WON’T INTRODUCE YOU TO HIS FAMILY AND FRIENDS?
I’ve been dating a man for nine months who won’t introduce me to his family or his friends. I know he has children from a former marriage, and I haven’t even met them. Most of the time, we spend alone at my apartment or his condo, and when we do go out, it’s always at the last minute. He claims that he is a private person, and that he doesn’t want to bring other people into our relationship, but something doesn’t feel right to me. What does this mean?
I hate to be the one to tell you this, but this behavior means just what you secretly suspect it means--that your boyfriend is ashamed to be seen with you or associated with you, and is hiding you from the people in his life. It could be that, for some reason, he doesn’t think you’re "good enough" to be an official girlfriend--maybe you don’t look the way he thinks you should, or come from a background he thinks is acceptable. This may sound terrible, but it’s nothing compared to the second possibility you need to look at: Your boyfriend may be married or involved with someone else, and is cheating on her with you! Thus, the sneaking around, staying inside, and keeping you isolated from the rest of his life. The signs all add up, don’t they?
I’ll bet you’ve known this deep inside yourself, but haven’t wanted to face it, because it means confronting him and , if you have any self-respect, ending the relationship immediately. And respect is the key word here. He obviously doesn’t respect you--his behavior is totally disrespectful. So once you’ve broken up with him, you need to ask yourself some difficult and confrontive questions: Why did I put up with this kind of treatment for so long? What in my emotional past attracts me to men who treat me like I’m not important? What are some of the ways I kept myself in denial about something so obvious? How can I begin to heal my own emotional wounds so I don’t get hurt like this again?
It’s time for you to love yourself enough to know you don’t deserve to be treated like some awful secret too grotesque for the world to see. The man who is lucky enough to be with you should be proud and honored to have you in his life, and excited about showing you off to everyone he knows. And the sooner you get rid of this character you’re with, the sooner you’ll meet a partner who will treat you like the wonderful human being you are.
9. HOW DO YOU HEAL OLD, EMOTIONAL HURTS FROM THE PAST SO YOU CAN HAVE A HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR PARTNER?
Even though I know that many of the problems in my relationship are caused or aggravated by some past hurts from my childhood and from painful love affairs, I still can’t figure out how to let go of the past. My husband has his own issues, and between the two of us, I wonder how we’ve survived this long! Is there a way to heal the past so it doesn’t sabotage our relationship?
This is one of the most important questions any of us can ask ourselves: How can I identify and heal any unhealthy emotional patterns formed in my past so they don’t sabotage my adult relationships? In fact, you’ve just taken the first step in healing yourself: acknowledging the existence of your emotional baggage and expressing a willingness to get rid of it! Sadly, most people in the world will never even admit that their past experiences are emotionally handicapping them in their present lives, and therefore will never have the opportunity to experience what I call "true emotional freedom". I define emotional freedom as the freedom to live as the person you want to be, and love as much as you want to love. It’s freedom from the past to be all you can in the present.
In order to heal the past, you have to understand what I call your "emotional programming." Your emotional programming is simply a set of decisions you made about yourself ,others and the world in general when you were growing up. As an infant, you came into the world like a blank slate. Even though you were born with a certain set of genetic predispositions, you had no experiences yet to effect you either negatively or positively. But each day that you are alive, you collect experiences, and each one teaches you something about yourself and people. You are either treated well, or treated harshly; you are either loved or neglected; you are either praised or put down.
Each of these experiences helps you form a decision about yourself, about people and about life. For instance, if your parents had an unhappy, turbulent relationship, and as an infant or small child you heard constant fighting, you might have unconsciously decided: "I have to always be good, so I don’t make people I love unhappy, " or "It’s not safe for me to express angry feelings. Here's another example. Let's say your father was emotionally distant and not there for you. You may have unconsciously decided "I can’t count on the people I love, " or "People who love me abandon me." Each experience you have as a child helps you make certain decisions, until you have a collection of decisions you have made about life. This collection of decisions or beliefs is called your emotional programming. In the same way you would program a computer with basic information, and the computer would use that information to do tasks or solve problems, so you program your mind with this emotional programming. For the rest of your life, this "program" effects how you think , how you behave, and especially, how you react to circumstances that remind you of your painful childhood experiences.
The majority of this emotional programming occurs when you are still very young. Psychologists estimate that:
Between the ages of 0 - 5 years old..........you receive 50% of your emotional programming
Between the ages of 5 - 8 years old...........you receive 30% of your emotional programming
That means, by the age of 8, you are 80% programmed psychologically. In other words, 80% of the decisions about yourself and others have already been made.
Between the ages of 8 -18................you receive 15% more of your emotional programming
So by the time you are 18 years old, you're 95% done! That leaves 5% left for the rest of your life. This may not seem like much, but it's that 5% that I work with when I help people make changes in their lives. And the good news is that you can use that 5% to understand and change the other 95%!
Perhaps now you can better understand why it's easy to be so unaware of what motivates you in your relationships .The 5% of your mind that is conscious says "I want to be a loving husband to my wife " but the 95% of your mind that is unconscious may be programmed to avoid intimacy and keep a wall around your heart.
In my Making Love Work at-home video and audio seminar, I talk about a three step healing process that you can use to eliminate your emotional programming:
- Identify, feel and express the old, unresolved emotions that are trapped inside your heart so that you can "Work them out, not act them out."
- Understand your old, unhealthy love choices, and then make new, healthy love choices which will heal your old fear and build new trust.
- Open up to new, positive experiences of love that will heal the old pain which was caused by some lack of love.
I strongly suggest that you find a system of emotional healing that incorporates both experiential work in releasing old emotions and practical, action-oriented behavioral changes to build healthy new habits.
Now I’ll bet you’re thinking, "Boy, this sounds like a lot of work." And it can be. But the rewards are worth it--the freedom to give and receive the kind of love you’ve always wanted!
10. HOW DO YOU MOTIVATE SOMEONE TO WANT TO CHANGE AND OPEN UP EMOTIONALLY?
Every time I try to talk to my husband about working on our relationship, he says he's "happy with the way things are." I'm not happy, but no matter what I do, he shows no interest in changing or growing. How can I motivate him to want to open up more?
I’m going to give you answer you don’t want to hear: You can’t motivate another person to grow and change. He has to motivate himself. That may sound logical, but I know how painful it is to accept when you really love someone, and know that if he doesn’t open up and grow, your relationship probably won’t make it. In my own life, I’ve faced this same dilemma several times, and understand how much it hurts to see your partner resisting the very kinds of help that would ultimately save your marriage. It’s like watching someone you love drowning in the ocean, and wanting to save him, but when you throw him a life preserver, he pushes it away, claiming he doesn’t need it. You know that if he doesn’t reach out, you will lose him, so you plead with him to grab hold. Stubbornly, he refuses, and you are forced to see him slip away.
Here’s one of the most important lessons I’ve ever learned about love: Some people just aren’t capable of loving you the way you want to be loved, or capable of having the kind of relationship you need. It’s not that they are trying to be difficult, or stubborn, or deliberately make you unhappy. They simply cannot operate on the same emotional level you operate on, nor do they want to. Unfortunately, most couples never sufficiently discuss these issues in the beginning of the relationship so they can determine whether they have enough emotional compatibility to live happily together. They fall in love, have a family, and then realize they are two very different people with very conflicting pictures of what they want and need from an intimate relationship. One partner isn’t right, and the other wrong--the problem is that their love styles are incompatible.
This is what I suggest: Without blaming him, and without making him feel like the bad guy, sit down with your husband and share something like the following..."I love you very much, and have tried for "X" years to make this relationship work. I know you’re aware that I’ve been begging you to open up, to work on our marriage, to talk about issues we have. I’ve been doing this for one reason--to try and save our marriage, because I’m not happy with the way things are. You’ve always told me you’re satisfied with this kind of relationship, that you aren’t interested in growing or changing in the way I am, and I haven’t respected what you’ve said, and have tried to get you to change. Now, I realize that I was wrong in doing this. You have the right to live just the way you want to, and so do. My way isn’t better than yours--it’s just different.
So honey, I need you to take as much time as you need, days or a few weeks, to ask yourself one last time if you are happy living as the person you are, and do not want a relationship where you’re partner needs you to open up or work on yourself. If you come to me and tell me this is definitely how you feel, then I will know it’s time for me to go on without you. See, I do want a relationship in which I and my partner are always growing and changing together, and actively working on becoming more intimate and more loving. That is one of the most important things in my life. I would love to have that kind of marriage with you, but if that’s not what you want, I will understand, and free myself to one day find someone who shares my vision of love, and free you to find someone who loves you just the way you are."
Find the emotional courage to have this conversation with your husband. It will be one of the most difficult yet loving things you’ve ever done, not just for you, but for him. I’ve had people tell me that, after hearing it put this way, their partner miraculously went through a total change and dedicated him or herself to tremendous personal growth, so it’s possible. Whatever the outcome, know that it’s time to turn the corner in your life, one way or the other, and experience the kind of relationship you’ve always dreamed of.
