What is love anyway??? Am I being unreasonable for not being able to love my ex anymore?

[MeMySonAndI]

Several months after we separated and we can still claim we have had an extremely friendly divorce: we are friends, we have very little in common, but still can have this looooooong very interesting conversations. We enjoy each other's company, can meet with friends or alone as if nothing has happened, I worry for him and do as much as I can for him to be OK, he does the same. I love him, I really do, but I'm no longer in love with him. He feels the same.

And I'm so bloody very annoyed at having to let go the most important relationship I have had in my life, a complice, a friend, an intellectual challenge, who gives me a combination of things I feel will be unlikely to find in another person again, just because we can not bring ourselves to feel in love with each other.

Before somebody tell me I am crazy (which perhaps I am) and that that's the way love ages, I must add that I can not bear the thought of kissing him or even holding hands with him. It is soooo unfair!

And I'm weeping like an idiot at writing this post... can anyone here make sense of this?

I think a lot of what is perceived as 'proper' love ie a monogamous couple relationship that is romantic and passionate etc, is just a load of old cock really. People can and do live happily in a variety of different ways (single, celibate, threesomes, tribes, open couplehood etc). ANd I wonder how much of the problem in the OPs case might have been a percieved need for labelling? To be blunt, if you like each other that much why not continue to live as a family with separate bedrooms and a mutual agreement that you can date whoever you like (with sensible and mutually acceptable ground rules about guests in the family home etc).

if i thought we could have lived like that madamez then i would have, but realistically that was never going to happen. My ex would never have coped with me seeing other people.......not while i was still living under the same roof, and i would have found it hard too. My ex replaced me three weeks after we split, with someone who was a mutual best friend and suddenly the need to move out became urgent for me, as the original plan was to stay living under the same roof until we had sorted out the financial side etc.
Having said that there were other issues in my relationship which would never have been resolved because my ex refused to talk things through........

QR: I appreciate that it wouldn't suit everyone (sorry are you the OP as well or am I just confused)? but I think sometimes people feel they have to separate from a partner/co-parent, not to move in with someone else but just because they no longer feel romantically monogamous towards the other. If the feeling is mutual with a strong friendship behind it then there is actually no need for separate households just because that's what the rest of the herd does.
But if one party is romantically in love with someone else, or therre are other issues (money, domestic laziness, addictions, violence) then it's a different matter.

i'm not the OP madamez....just been contributing to the thread.
I have known couples who have lived like that quite happily, and for my son's sake i wish myself and my ex could have found that middle ground, but like i say there were other problems.

Madamez, funny you mention that. I supose that for some, an open relationship will sort the problem, but in our case that was not an option. Perhaps because part of the problem once we fell out of love was that we also needed some space for ourselves, not exactly to fill it with other persons but perhaps to re build ourselves up IYKWIM.

I think we go through life surprising everyone, I suspect many people wonder if we have an open relationship in the terms that you suggest as we still go out with friends together (new man inclusive), we can visit each other, and are comfortable with each other presence, sometimes we even feel "pressed" to act in a more "normal" hostile way by people who can't understand that not all divorces have to be a catastrophe. There are so many people who say "I couldn't do it, sorry" in a way that almost feels incorrect to end in such good terms.

I have a very idealist idea that romantic love is a mixture of admiration, attraction, and love. If one of those is missing I wouldn't call it that. I want those three things in the person I'm with, missing either of them would make him a friend or a fling. So I preffer to keep a very good friend and a boyfriend, each covering their respective "responsibilities", but then I am fortunate to have two wonderful men to my side who understand that the presence of each other is not treatening to each other.

MMI, sounds like you have it all sorted and nothing to worry about - except maybe other people's perceptions. Well, learning that other people can stick their perceptions up their arses is a good start . Would you like a few snappy comebacks for halfwits who say. 'Well I couldn't do it?'

Why not? go ahead!