Maybe you have had problems in your marriage for a while now. Perhaps communication has broken down, or you disagree about parenting. You might feel like you’re on a different wavelength than your husband.
The spark might have gone out months or even years ago. So instead of cuddling, you sit on opposite ends of the sofa.
It occurs to you that you’re no longer in love with your husband.
Falling out of love is a scary feeling. It might have started with you noticing less interest in your husband and feeling less excited about spending time with him.
You might still care about him.
You might question whether you’re with the right person because your marriage is on a downward spiral.
You have a history together and might have children, a home, joint bank accounts, and more. But spending time with your husband feels like more of an obligation than a joyful, romantic adventure.
How did you get to this place in your relationship?
Why do you feel so disconnected?
What went wrong?
You’re probably aware that relationships shift, change, and evolve.
Perhaps you blame yourself, that if you were a better wife or lover, you wouldn’t have lost feelings for someone you thought was your soulmate.
You might worry that you married too young or you committed too quickly.
Maybe it’s a lack of sex, dwindling intimacy, increased stress and pressures of raising a family, financial issues, or other life events that shook the foundation of your marriage.
All of these issues can slowly erode loving feelings over time.
You might recall when you were madly in love with your husband. The sex was sizzling hot, and you were happy to spend every moment with him.
Now, he might annoy you, and any romantic feelings you had are long gone. You might dread getting into bed at night with him. The truth is, the falling out of love feeling is entirely normal.
This article will help you sort through your feelings (and lack of love for your husband!) and help you identify whether or not you can (or should) rekindle the passion.
Is It Normal to Fall out of Love?
Many women experience this sad yet common problem. They wonder if they should fight to save their marriage or find a lover and move on.
Over time, marriages can become stale and eventually fail to provide for your needs. The stress of daily living, and any number of life’s problems, might lead to exhaustion, frustration, and resentment.
Maybe your husband has taken his frustration out on you. The lack of support and your discontent might have eroded the relationship.
If you don’t take time to nurture and care for yourself, how can you nurture and care for your relationship with your husband?
Is it any wonder you fell out of love?!
And you wonder – is it possible to fall back in love?
The answer is YES.
Why Would I Fall out of Love With My Husband?
The primary reason people fall out of love is because they’re human.
Humans fall in and out of love all the time, and if both people are mature, understand love, and created a healthy relationship, they fall back in love.
Falling in and out of love happens, and it only gets complicated when one partner thinks the marriage is over at the first sign of falling out of love.
All relationships have ups and downs, and there are times in all marriages when there is little love, no romance, and plenty of challenges.
But, other than being an average person, you fell out of love with your husband for one (or several) of these reasons:
- Your relationship has stagnated, requiring time and attention – a “reboot,” so to speak.
- You feel burdened by health problems, financial issues, the responsibilities of raising a family, and so on.
- The marriage is toxic – your husband is controlling, abusive, manipulative, or behaves in unhealthy ways toward you.
- He puts his needs over yours.
- You can’t find the goodness in him.
- Mental health or addiction issues are affecting your relationship.
There are some instances in which it’s time to leave a marriage.
For example, if there are abuse or addiction problems, it might take an incredible amount of work to rekindle your love for your husband.
You might not even want to save your marriage, and it might be time to consider separation or divorce.
If you or your husband aren’t willing to change – and if you believe your husband is the problem – your marriage might be over.
But there are solutions if your relationship isn’t toxic and you’ve just disconnected from one another over time.
If you don’t love your husband anymore – and you’re not in a toxic or abusive relationship – you might be struggling with your next steps if you want to rekindle the love.
Here’s the key: you have to WANT to fall back in love and rebuild your marriage!
So, What Are Your Options?
This article won’t tell you what to do, but the more information you have, the easier it is to make choices that feel right for you.
You might be paralyzed with worry because you don’t know what solutions are available – and you’re not even sure if you can feel love for your husband again.
As mentioned before – as long as your relationship isn’t abusive or toxic – and you’ve fallen out of love, divorce doesn’t have to be the way to go.
Realistically, You Have 3 Options:
- End the marriage
- Separate for a trial period
- Work on rekindling the love for your husband
What to Do When You No Longer Love Your Husband
This article doesn’t address divorce and separation.
Instead, the focus here is rekindling the love you have for your husband if you have decided to rebuild your marriage.
Consider and reflect on the following steps to bring the love back.
1. Start With Self-Care
It’s challenging to love and nurture your husband if you’re burnt out, worried, frazzled, and at the end of your rope.
In addition, you might not feel physically great, spending your days exhausted and stressed.
So, it’s essential to focus on your well-being by getting more physical exercise, spending time with friends, dedicating time to hobbies, and working toward personal and professional goals.
All of these so-called self-care activities will help you feel better, and they will influence your attitude and your approach to your marriage.
Once you feel peaceful, energized, and emotionally healthy, it’s easier to take an honest look at your relationship and decide what you can do to rekindle the love and passion.
Remember – you’re in control!
2. Take Some Time to Reflect
Take a step back and detach to make sure you aren’t letting your emotions or negative thoughts drown you.
Though you are emotionally disconnected from your husband, you still experience emotions – making it difficult to take another perspective and problem-solve constructively.
Spend some time answering the following questions:
- What do you love the most about your husband? What do you like the least?
- How has your marriage stagnated?
- Have you become complacent, controlling, or overbearing? (be honest!)
- How has your husband contributed to the erosion of your relationship? (don’t play the blame game!)
- What exactly changed in your marriage? When did it happen? Was it a specific event or a slow decline?
Once you spend some time deeply reflecting on the state of your marriage, you can begin to focus on enhancing the connection to your husband and empathizing with what he’s experiencing.
3. Practice Active Listening
When you’re frustrated, confused, and feeling less than loving, it can be hard to listen to how your husband feels.
So, allow your husband to express his feelings and discuss his concerns without getting angry or annoyed.
Listen without judgment and avoid taking things personally. Instead, acknowledge the situation for what it is and be as honest as possible.
Talk about why you are not emotionally connected anymore and seek to find out how your husband feels to discover what happened that led to the current state of your marriage.
4. Think Back to a Time When Your Husband Felt Unloved
As you analyze your marriage, try to think back to a time when your husband felt unloved. Recall what he said and what he believed was missing.
What are his emotional needs?
How can you make him feel valued and safe in your marriage?
Empathy and compassion are essential elements to falling back in love.
You must relate to and empathize with your husband to understand his reality.
Doing this will allow you to begin to reconnect with him and help you determine if you’re going to continue to grow and move toward the same goals or if you have outgrown each other.
5. Reflect on How You Can Make Him Feel Loved – Even if You’re Not in Love
There are other ways you can rebuild your connection. Think about what you can do to make your husband feel appreciated and valued.
Want an easy way to feel love?
Give it.
This isn’t about having a codependent relationship where your positive feelings depend on making your husband happy.
True love blossoms from the genuine desire to bring joy to your husband and offer support in ways that feel loving to him.
If you can change your belief that love is something you get to the idea that love is something you give, amazing things can happen.
6. Practice Gratitude
It’s easy to focus on what you don’t love about your husband, what’s missing in the relationship, and what you want to change.
Instead, think about the history of your relationship, focusing on your growth and your growth as a couple.
What have you built together?
How much are you taking that for granted?
It’s so important to pay attention to the good things in your life and genuinely appreciate them. Write down everything you are grateful for in this marriage.
7. Bring Romance Back
Start dating each other again and bring the excitement and sizzle back into your relationship. It will help if you increase your attraction to your husband.
Practice seducing him. Bring the butterflies back and think back to when you were excited to see each other – those times when you couldn’t keep your hands off one another!
Do new activities together, travel, and schedule weekly date nights. Surprise one another with small gifts, love notes, or other sweet gestures.
It’s easy to fall into a monotonous routine if you’ve been with your husband for a long time.
When things start to feel predictable and boring, that intense feeling of love begins to evaporate. You’ve got to mix things up and keep things exciting!
Schedule time at least once a week to do something fun. You don’t need to plan an extravagant date night. Instead, cook dinner together or spend time talking and just being with each other.
Do something you enjoy one week, and then the following week, do something your husband enjoys.
For example, have a movie and popcorn night at home. A sense of novelty is a huge asset when you’re working on falling back in love.
8. Rebuild the Relationship
There will come a time when you start to strengthen the foundation for love to bloom.
- Learn to accept your husband, even when you don’t agree with him or appreciate his behavior.
- Don’t take it personally if he’s in a bad mood. Instead, find ways to support him.
- Practice being vulnerable with him, telling him what your needs are, and expressing what you feel.
- Do small things to let him know you’re thinking about him and that you care, like leaving a note for him with something written on it that will make him smile.
- Don’t live exclusively for your husband, depending on him to always make you happy.
9. Consciously Keep the Lines of Communication Open
Regularly talk to each other about your needs and expectations and where you disconnected from each other so you can avoid this happening again. Get to know one another again and nurture your friendship.
Working through difficulties together will bring a more profound sense of satisfaction and contentment to you both.
10. Choose Commitment
Lasting love is about commitment, not sometimes-fleeting feelings.
Basing your choices solely on how you “feel” will reduce the chances of you ever experiencing true, deep, enduring love – because love is ultimately a choice.
You can’t force yourself to “feel” a certain way. If you believe love is just a feeling, its fickle nature will trap you.
If you don’t currently feel love for your husband, you might assume your marriage is over, but true love is always a commitment. It’s a choice, not a feeling.
When you choose to love your husband every day, your feelings almost always catch up.
11. Get Help if You Need It
This article provided you with some tips and next steps, but you might want to seek marital counseling or relationship coaching to receive additional guidance.
Having someone knowledgeable about marital issues, someone who will listen to you and provide unbiased advice, can make all the difference.
While a counselor or coach can’t do all of the work for you, they can provide you with support, tools, and resources as you work through this.
Additionally, there are marriage workshops and virtual relationship boot camps that are available.
Here’s a tip: If you genuinely want to rekindle your love for your husband, having an affair isn’t the answer.
It might be tempting because you might “feel” that you’re in love with someone else. After all, new romance and attraction are enticing and intoxicating.
However, those feelings will only betray you.
If you want to have a deep and lasting love, intimacy, and vulnerability, you probably won’t find it outside your marriage.
It’s better to focus on increasing sexual intimacy and rekindling passion and love with your husband.
Wrapping Up
You’ve probably accepted the Hollywood ideal of “happily ever after,” and you might subconsciously believe (even if you know better) that in-love feelings should last forever.
Now you know it’s perfectly normal for those loving feelings to come and go.
Just because you don’t love your husband doesn’t mean that your marriage will end in divorce.
The great news is that even if you fall out of love, you can learn to sustain real love. In a healthy marriage, genuine love grows over time.
You might want results as quickly as possible, but if you follow the steps outlined in this article, you can begin to make the changes to rekindle your love for your husband and rebuild your marriage.
Of course, it might just take some time. You didn’t fall out of love overnight, so don’t expect to wake up tomorrow deeply in love again.
You’ll be happy to know that couples who persevere tend to have the happiest and healthiest marriages. Sometimes, “just keep going” is the best marriage advice of all. Your feelings will catch up eventually.
