Would you accept your DH not loving you?

[iifsn]

Hi - just wanted some feedback as to how other MNs would feel about my situation where DH quite open abouly has always told me he does not love me (since soon after our marriage) and how it has always bewildered him how I have found it hard to live with that fact.

iifsn it sounds as though you have been told that men 'are totally different from women, they will never talk about their feelings' etc so many times you are starting to believe it and see it as all there is to expect from a relationship.

A lot of the guys I know are very loving towards their partners, some of them tell me themselves, but mainly you just pick up little bits of emotion/support/intimacy through hearing stories of their lives. My DH tells me every day he loves me and when we're in a bad phase and we don't say it to one another, I feel it missing from my life a great deal.

Also my DH says to our children that he loves them - not every day but certainly whenever they are cuddling etc, at least weekly. A good friend of mine, male, was chatting about how his son fell over recently and got a piece of grit in his lip and the dad took him to the GP. It was a small accident, lots of blood but nothing major. Yet this guy had tears welling up in his eyes when he told me, he sniffed, was a bit embarrassed and said 'I never knew before they came along, how much I'd love them'. He expressed his love for his kids openly to me, standing in the school playground - I'd say that was normal.

" I am not obsessed with it - just interested."

Well, sorry but why aren't you obsessed with it? It's affecting everything in your day to day life, it's affecting what your children will grow up with. He is making you into someone as unemotional as he is.

What does he think of love for children? Yay or no?

loves2walk - yes, warmth was important to me, also - as part of a marriage. I think he cares about our dc.

Does he not see that by withholding his love from you, he is making you vulnerable to having an affair?

Surely you must daydream about being with someone who is loving and affectionate towards you?

Yes - regards love for children.

I do not want to be obsessed with it because I have spent endless time and emotion to no avail over it. Yes, I have had to become/try to become more unemotional but I will never be, because I am not wired that way.

Your last post leaves me a bit cold:

you think he cares about the DC - you only think this? And you only think he cares, not loves them?

That must hurt you in itself, regardless of how he feels about you. I don't think I could bear it if my DH wasn't as adoring of our kids as I am.

Yes, I am still a human being and someone being affectionate would be nice. Thank goodness for my lovely dc!

loves2walk - I do believe he loves our dc. Yes.

It sounds as though you get more affection from your DC than you do from your DH. If this is the case, have you told him that?

Why should you try and become less emotional, as you said in an earlier post? Why should you change your emotional needs to fit in with what little affection he can give you? Maybe what you need to do is change your circumstances

Lifsn - I usually try to be the very opposite of blunt in relationships, ime, there's always someone else willing to do that. For myself, I feel that the journey towards understanding is the answer. Bluntness can be a shortcut that the person is not yet equipped to hear.

But, here's an idea: Both you and your husband find emotion/love threatenting. That's why you are together. That dynamic started before the fact you had a relationship with someone else while engaged to your dh. Now you have had your dc, and things have changed, a bit, for you. You have experienced the fact that love/emotion need not be overwhelming, or quite as dangerous as you thought.

That makes your entire relationship with your dh very different. I suspect it no longer works for you. And has become damaging. So, now you are wondering ... .

And here you are, posting to find out if this is the norm, if there are others in your situation, how other people manage intimate relationships/intimacy.

I think you're at the start of a long and complex journey.

I don't know how else to describe it but - I have often felt I have had to keep 'a stiff upper lip' alot of the time.

animula - I think my H and myself are very different emotionally. I always believed in love.

It really sounds like you are Princess Diana circa 1990.

Having to pretend anything fundamental to your partner is bound to end in unhappiness. The last person who should need you to show a "stiff upper lip" is your husband.

Is he in the army by any chance? Do you see similar behaviour in his family?

And what do YOUR friends and family think about him?

I am sure that my expectations were different from my H's regarding marriage.

I hope I am not being insensitive talking about my relationship on here, but you said you wanted to know, so...

Have been having a hard time with work lately, am knackered and hardly had a day off for weeks. To everyone else I am being quite controlled etc, but to DP I have once or twice just burst into tears of exhaustion and frustration, and he will hug me and let me get his t-shirt all teary/snotty (yuck) and listen to me, and calm me down and make me tea. He can't solve my problems but he will listen and be lovely, and enable me to feel stronger and able to carry on.

If for any reason our relationship were to end, I would never now settle for anything less. In previous relationships I have had partners who won't listen properly, or more "standoffish" situations where to some extent we were both quite proud and unwilling to lose face - but would never be able to put up with that for the long haul, especially with kids.

EAAM - Princess Diana cira 1990. Please elaborate?!

"Urged on by his impatient father and under huge pressure from the press, Charles finally proposed marriage. In a pre-wedding interview, when asked if they were in love, Diana answered with mock reprovation "of course", while Charles made his famous and telling reply, "Whatever love is"."

Diana was in a marriage with someone who didn't love her, but married her because she was "suitable", while continuing an affair with another woman. She was expected to keep a "stiff upper lip" about it and keep quiet for the sake of the royal family etc, but famously broke out, had affairs and eventually divorced him.

My H was under no pressure to marry me. But yes, he has said about the reality of whether love actually exists. Yes, I can identify with the 'no love' similarity - but keeping a stiff upper lip is more to do with my H not wanting to deal with others' emotions at all.

Sorry - I mean that I shouldn't be too emotional.

I think he was looking for someone very different to me really.

But surely a massive part of a long term relationship is dealing with each others emotions. You don't ask casual acquaintances to mop up your tears, you ask your partner.

Yes, I agree. But you can't change other people into being how you want them to be.

You're right, you can't change someone to that extent. That's very sad for you. Are you OK?

It sounds to me as if he is one of those "well I always told you what I was like so you can't complain if I shag other women/don't kiss you/refuse to make tea" people.

And to a certain extent, arses as they are, those people have a perspective that I can kind of understand.

BUT and it's a biggie - THAT'S NOT WHAT HE DID. He did say he loved you, he wanted to marry you, presumably he clarified that he still wanted to marry you after your affair THEN once the ring was on your finger he retracted it. He has been dishonest with you, and expecting you to bend yourself out of shape rather than pointing this out to him is just wrong.

Being married without being loved was not part of your agreement, he has rescinded - not you.

It sounds like you are parrotting his words - are these the things he says to you?

You do know that there are people out there who would show you love and affection, don't you?

He's aa wanker.