Your wife fell out of love and left, pulled the rug out from under your world and, in your stunned disbelief you can’t, for the life of you, figure what went wrong.
Many men are blinded sided by divorce, slapped in the emotions by a wife who says, “I’m not in love with you anymore.” Most, I’m afraid, fail to look inward and own the role they played in the lack of love now being shown them.
Happy marriages are difficult to maintain and, it is possible for a woman to fall out of love with her husband. It’s difficult for a couple to maintain the level of excitement felt when they first met once they are sharing their lives day in and day out.
Add to the monotony of daily life, marriage stressors and a lack of skills for dealing with the stress and it is possible for a wife to lose those “loving feelings” toward her husband.
Wondering why it happened to you?
Below are 9 Reasons Your Wife Fell Out Of Love With You
1. You Missed the Mark When It Came to Communication
Not only is communication important in maintaining a bond with each other, how you communicate will determine how strong of a bond. The way a couple communicates is as important as the ability to communicate.
Below are four negative communication traits that may have killed her love for you.
Giving her the silent treatment
When you refuse to talk and discuss problems you slowly destroy the love that is the foundation of a marriage.
Refusing to communicate is a disrespectful manner of communicating how you are feeling. Did you give her the silent treatment when she pissed you off? If so, all you managed to do was push her away and build a wall that restricted intimacy.
Being on the defensive
If you viewed statements made by your wife as accusations, you probably responded in a defensive manner. Being defensive is not communication, it’s a game of who is right and who is wrong. When you start keeping score, love eventually pays the price.
Being overly critical
Constantly expressing how you feel about your wife’s negative traits isn’t communication, it is tearing down. Nothing kills feelings of love for a husband quicker than feeling like you can do no right. If your communication style causes your wife to feel worthless and depletes their self-esteem, don’t be surprised when you find the love has died.
Name calling
This is a no-brainer! If you tell someone who loves you they are an idiot, stupid, can’t do anything right, that person will eventually fall out of love with you. Name calling is a form of emotional abuse!
2. You Were a Clingy Husband
My 8th grade home economics teacher taught us that once couples marry they “became one.” She was wrong! Couples do not become one and believing so is a death sentence to autonomy and love.
For love to thrive a wife and husband should remain autonomous, fully individualized outside the relationship and marriage.
Wanting your wife to spend all her time with you because you believe it is an expression of how much she loves you is a sign of immaturity in you, not proof that she loves you.
If love is to grow, a husband and wife must continue to bring your own individuality to the relationship.
If you were clingy, insecure, jealous and possessive you weren’t feeding love, you were smothering it. Want to choke the love out of someone quickly, man or woman, keep a tight noose around their neck!
3. Your Marriage had a Bad Beginning
In order for a couple to weather the storms…the ups and downs of marital life, they need a strong, healthy beginning. Below are a few examples of poor relationship foundations. Beginnings that could cause either spouse to eventually lose loving feelings for the other.
A rush to marriage
You fell in love and had her standing at the alter two months later. True love takes time to grow, two months, isn’t enough time. If you rushed her toward the alter before she was ready to go there, your marriage was doomed from the beginning.
Long-term relationships riddled with problems
We all know that couple. They dated for six years, broke up and got back together on a regular basis and were always in the middle of conflict. If you can’t hold a relationship together before you marry, you aren’t going to be able to after you marry.
4. You Didn’t Meet Her Needs
Forgive me for going all “Venus and Mars” on you but, as individuals, we have needs in romantic relationships. If those needs aren’t met, love dies.
If you were consumed by work, came home late, ate dinner and watched television that means you had very little leftover for her. Was golf or football your weekend go toes? How often did you help her with the laundry, clean the house or do a sink full of dishes? Rarely? I’m sure she felt drained AND unappreciated!
If, as her husband you weren’t tuned into her emotional and physical needs and putting effort into meeting them, she may have gotten to the point of finding someone who would.
And let’s talk about sex! If you expected sex after weekends of football or golf and no effort to help with the kid or around the house, you EXPECTED WAY TOO MUCH from a wife who, more than likely, felt belittled, dismissed and cringed at your touch.
5. You Didn’t Put Enough Effort into Resolving Marital Conflict
Problems are common in all marriages. Both spouses need to have the ability to constructively work through those problems. When a husband avoids finding solutions to marital problems, leaving his wife holding the bag, love eventually dies.
Putting the onus on her to solve problems by refusing counseling or communicating about the problems causes resentment to grow toward you and the relationship.
Unresolved marital conflict, especially when a husband tries to sweep them under the rug, negatively impacts feelings of love her husband has for her.
6. You Stopped Caring About Your Appearance
You let yourself go. You gained 50 pounds and never lost it, you started wearing nothing but sweatpants and just generally became someone no one would find attractive.
Physical attraction between spouses is important. If your wife looks at you and her motor doesn’t start humming love is doomed. Part of being in love with someone is feeling passionate and drawn to their physical appearance.
Just because a woman has said, “I do” doesn’t mean her love will always be there regardless of how you look and how well you take care of yourself.
7. You Rejected Her Sexually
Sex in marriage is important because it brings a couple closer together. If a couple has a great sexual bond they can weather almost any storm. In a sexless marriage, there is no bond, storms are not weathered!
Sex is also an expression of love between two people. Few men understand that women bond with their partner via the act of sex. It’s true! Marital sex, for women, is a way to feel closer to their spouse.
It isn’t just sex for the sake of sex.
For love to continue and grow it’s important that a husband understands and respects his wife’s normal sexual needs. And, at times, give a spouse what they need (within reason) because you care about her needs being met.
Let me add a qualifier here, she isn’t going to be the least bit interested in sex with you if you’re an abusive, lazy, slob, who never lifts a hand around the house. Don’t take what I’ve written here and used it against a wife who has every reason in the world to not desire sex with you.
8. You Were Impossible to Please
It didn’t matter what she did, you were never grateful. She gave you that extra baby and you bitched because it was another girl. She bought you a riding lawnmower for your birthday and you whined because it didn’t have enough horsepower.
Whatever she did, you took her efforts for granted and failed to show appreciation.
9. You Changed After Marrying Her
Before marriage, you were up for anything. You enjoyed going out with her, doing things she was interested in. You were invested in your career, had a full and rewarding life. You were the total package!
After marriage, you turned into a boring, grumpy, uninteresting person who was in bed asleep by 8 in the evening and spent your weekends on Facebook or binge-watching football on the couch. That interesting man she fell in love with became a snooze fest she had no respect for and very little feelings of love toward.
From a Reader
Here’s a list from the perspective of a reader who fell out of love with her husband. I’m sure there are many women who can identify with what she has to say. And, I suggest you take it to heart if you’ve still got the opportunity to save your marriage.
- He couldn’t keep his thing in his pants.
- He was lazy and uninvolved when it came to helping around the house.
- He was lazy and uninvolved when it came to helping with our daughters.
- He was obsessed with money and how he was perceived by others.
- He was a bad lover and expected that while he did nothing to help with the kids/house I should want to have sex with him….which became a chore and left me often times feeling sick.
- He is a narc….and blames women for all his failures–something friends warned me about at the start but I was too blind to see.
- He resented any friends I made and after while I stopped making them.
- He resented any time I spent with my family even though I had just spent almost 20 years overseas away from them.
- He snored; I never got a full night’s sleep in 15 years.
- He never wanted to do anything and when asked he would act like he was doing us a great favor.
Leave a Reply