I actually believe that I've never been in love

[nannytothequeen]

I am 51 and am increasingly convinced I've never been in love in a romantic way. I llove my children and my parents and some of my friends, but I have never felt this strength of feeling for a partner. Sure, I've had lustful relationships and have felt real affection but not love. There are always doubts and even on my wedding day I was not entirely convinced. My ExH left me for another woman and whilst I was really upset, it was to do with betrayal and lies rather than lost love. I feel like the betrayal has shut down another part of my heart which was kind of closed off anyway and so can't see now that I'll ever experience romantic love. I have talked to a friend about it who is clearly very much still in love with her H and she just doesn't believe me. She says that I must have loved my ex , it's just that I'm choosing to not remember given His behaviour in recent years. My feeling is that if what I felt for him was love, then I'm not seeing the fuss. I actually wonder if there is something very wrong with me.

I'm the same, never really been in love and never had anybody in love with me.

I've two DC and the love I have for them transcends any for anybody else, that has to be enough for me.

I'd love to fall in love and be loved back.

Different people experience love differently and it comes in many different forms. What do you imagine being in love is like? Have your ever felt you were loved romantically?

nannytothequeen this doesn't really surprise me. I have been on the dating thread for about a year and I really think a lot of dating is about luck - meeting someone you have a strong connection with to start with and then feelings developing. There are people on the thread who have gone on so many first / second dates and never got further and I don't think it's that they're fussy, just that they haven't been lucky.

So I don't necessarily think there's anything wrong with you. I have been in love and loved at least twice and it was the most amazing feeling, I was definitely aware of it. I think I'm now in love again but it's more nervewracking as my ex-husband left me so i have baggage.

I feel like I have been loved romantically, although in a short lived way.

I'm the same. Love my DS fiercely but never been in love or had anyone love me properly. I've been married but like OP it was the lies and deceit at the end that broke me not the loss of his so called love. I'm not sure it'll ever happen for me and kind of reconciled too that

I’ve never been loved. Had an abusive childhood, abusive relationships and then an abusive marriage.

I have 2 beautiful children, but now they are teenagers I’m not sure they love me !

😢

And I would love to fall in love but I know it won't happen now. I think that things might have been different had I made some different choices

Same here, OP.

I've never loved or been loved 'romantically'.

I have friends who have loved me and I love my children but romantic love? No.

I once thought I was in love but it soon changed to hate when he cheated on me.

This is something I have been pondering on myself for a while now.
To be loved in my mind equals to be secure in your relationship. To know that your partner has got your back, that he treats you with respect, that you can make mistakes and nothing bad will happen, that you can just be yourself and still smile and have an easy heart.

Now, I was married for 23 years, I got married very young. To a guy I thought was all that, I didn’t want to admit for years I got it wrong and ploughed through years of emotional and financial abuse from him. I genuinely don’t think he ever loved me for who I am, and as I grew older and changed, he absolutely hated and despised me.

I then got into a relationship with an addict who never loved me, but loved the attention, the respect, the love I gave. I was with him for 3 years.

It all came to a head for me when in therapy I said I am expecting my DD to not want to have anything to do with me when she’s grown up, because everybody I ever loved didn’t last.

Then I went back to basics, my relationship with my parents, which frankly was abysmal.

I am still working my way through this treacle. It’s still not clear, in my head, whether I chose men to replicate my father or I just turned the relationships into what used to be familiar to me, whether it was just bad luck...🤷🏻‍♀️

I thought I had a pretty clear idea what my father was like, a seriously abusive man. I thought I knew what to avoid. I also became aware that healing has to come from within, so it was never like I expected the two men I had relationships with to ‘make me whole’, or rescue me. Or was it that I have been so hurt before, that I swore never to depend on a man again ( or anybody, really) emotionally or financially.
It’s a bloody mess, I’ll spend some time untangling this.

I don’t want somebody to sweep me off my feet, jeez, I’m a middle aged single mum with a terrifying (for most people) job. I’d like somebody who hasn’t had this kind of trauma in their childhood and have solid secure attachment traits, enough to give me the space, understanding and hugs to be able to heal myself. I don’t want a therapist for a partner, I need to do the work myself, but it would be nice if I had the security, that I don’t have to worry about them as well.

What I am saying is: is our ‘inability’ to love really an inability, or is it an effect of previous trauma? Do we actually see the walls we have built around us? Do we even have these walls?