Love

[minisausage]

How do you know if you are still in love with DP? Especially after 7 years.
I can't actually bring myself to say it and I don't think it. So I'm confused.

[minisausage]

I think if I'm asking it then I'm probably not in love. (And a shameless bump)

[Happybunny19]

It's easy to get really bored after a few years of and when you don't feel the excitement it's hard to tell. Do you think you would miss him if you didn't speak to him any more? Do you still share some likes? What drew you to him at the beginning and can you still see that in him?

[minisausage]

I would miss him. We've lost the affection and intimacy. We row. But having counselling.
He drives me nuts as he's annoying. We have 2 kids 1&4 yo

[Tryingmybest4them]

How would you feel if you split and he met someone else and was all loved up?

[minisausage]

I would feel awful but Wouldn't I feel like that anyway just because of having a past

[Tryingmybest4them]

I'm not sure, I think if you would be very upset and want him back then that to me means you still love him. It's very easy to loose sight of the important things when the day to day stuff is so mundane.
Does he treat you well?

[minisausage]

He does treat me well. But we get so snippy with each other, and get fed up with the kids and the hum drum of working/kids/messy house/money.

[Happybunny19]

The hum drum happens but you can get past it and get deeper feelings back. I've lost count of the amount of times I have felt like I've fallen in love with my dp over the two decades together.

The thing to remember is being kind to one another. When it gets to the bickering stages of annoyance it's really easy to get out of the habit of just being nice. I always find we are most intimate in all respects when we're both taking time to be kind to each other.

Are you able to talk to your oh about this?

[Dadaist]

OP - it can be really hard to disaggregate all the struggles, difficulties and disappointments in life and work out a way to overcome them. Daily life really can be engulfed in drudgery and lack a great deal of joy. However there can be a tendency to focus those frustrations on our nearest and dearest - and more often than not...on DP. And often they're doing the same. It means storing up resentments, a loss of intimacy, arguments and a loss of love.
Sometimes the distance becomes too great. But provided that things don't become abusive, or infidelity or mistreatment occur, then it is possible to reconnect. The first step is recognising that things should feel better, that there are probably faults on both sides, and that things need to change.
There are masses of articles, websites and books offering advice. But for now - I'd say don't imagine that because you are wondering, it must already be too late. There are so many stories of people who blamed their partner for their unhappiness, or who decided that the feeling was lost, who discover too late that their partner wasn't responsible for their unhappiness anyway, or that they'd just stopped seeing them as a person first. It happens.
So maybe stop seeing your DP as someone you are just hitched too, and start seeing them as a person with agency and choices just like you. And perhaps talk about the things that might make you happier. And look out some ways to start improving trust, intimacy, connection, appreciation, kindness, forgiveness. It's great you've started counselling, but sometimes these can become sessions that are divorced from the rest of your lives, as if you open a book, read a few chapters, and then close it shut and don't dare to discuss it later. It's meant to help beyond the sessions, and I hope it can. You need to talk properly, and maybe the counselling will at least help in showing how to to that. Your children are very little and it can be hard work, but all families need some joy - and you usually have to find it - it doesn't always come looking for you!