How to properly love my DH again?

[Macandcheeseplease]

Married 11 years, together 14. 2 DCs (4 and 6).

He is a hands on, excellent dad. The children adore him. He is handsome, he is a nice person and he loves me deeply.

I don't know if I love him any more.

He has had issues with gambling which nearly broke our marriage up earlier this year. As a result of this he reached out and addressed his gambling problem, attended counselling etc.

My feelings for him have changed. I don't want to break our family up, he is a great dad and our children would be better off with us staying as a family unit. If it wasn't for the kids I would probably have left him by now.

I have started to have feelings for a work colleague. To be totally clear, I would never act on this or do anything about it. But it's made me feel sad because if I stay with my husband I'm afraid I'll never feel like that about him again. If that makes sense?!

I get people have ups and downs in their marriages. I want to love him like I used to but I don't know how I do this?! Has anyone gone through something like this? How do I fall in love with him again? Or is this really the beginning of the end?

I also don't necessarily think it's better for the kids for you to stay in an unhealthy marriage. Isn't it better for the kids to learn what a healthy loving relationship is through your examples? Otherwise all they will think they're worthy of when they grow is what you showed them when they were growing up. It's something to think about anyway.

I would also suggest couples counselling. It might not be completely dead, you won't know until you try :) Best of luck OP, do try not to feel bad about it if things don't work out. You are only human, and you deserve happiness.

I went through something similar and developed strong feeling for a colleague. I chose to address my feeling for my husband and focus on counseling and rebuilding our marriage and rebuilding trust after years of building up walls and carrying resentment about different things.

I believe love is an act of will and you can choose to love him and focus on him, keep building. Or you could choose to leave him. From your post though it sounds like you don’t want to leave him.

All the best op.

I'd say, too, that love is like a hedgehog. You can't order it to come and live at the end of your garden, but you can create an inviting environment. If you keep going back there and poking about to see, it will never settle.

If both of you are tender and kind with each other, and DH is able to hear your anger sometimes without defensiveness and deflection, you may start to feel flashes if love to build on. But you can't force or hurry it.

The fact that you can be so honest about your feelings is a good sign. I don't think you should repress or ignore this (I suspect disaster may lie that way). Couples counselling is the right way forward - if you do decide to split, it also means your DH has some psychological support already in place. Counselling isn't just for 'repairing' relationships, it can also be for breaking them in a more sensible and civilized fashion.

Similar situation but DH was hiding debt we're really trying and sometimes things are good but I definitely don't have the same love for him I once did. Sorry I'm not very helpful but I hope you do get things back on track.

Really sorry you've gone through this.

Hoping that you guys stick through it. I've heard that marriages where couples are unhappy, if they stick through it, they generally become happy again.
Basically what i'm saying is that, marriage is a covenant made by two people for life. In good times and in bad. Whilst love can be a wonderful emotion, most times its a choice.

You need to work at it. Definitely couples counselling. He has let you down, you thought you were a team and he crushed that with his gambling and lies. Counselling isn't just about staying together. It will.help you work through your feeling and help you decide if the relationship can really come back from this. We did individual counselling for a few sessions then did couples counselling.

I needed to be heard by him and work through exactly what I wanted - to stay or go.

Thanks everyone. Appreciate all the comments. We spoke about everything when the gambling stuff came to a head. I was very honest with him and told him I felt differently but was committed to our family. Since then things have been ok but I'm definitely a 'put a brave face on it' type person and probably come across happy even though I'm not! You've all given me food for thought.