Keeping feelings quiet as like the lifestyle ??

[keepingtheIckquiet]

Has anyone fallen out of love with their DH/DP and just kept quiet?

I can’t say anything as it’s not my place to mess up someone’s relationship but my friend has admitted she doesn’t like let alone love her DH but doesn’t want to end it as likes the lifestyle she has and doesn’t want the kids affected. She said she has felt this way for a while and needed to offload and begged me not to judge her but I can’t help it (I didn’t say to her). Her DH is really good friends with my DP and I feel awful for him. I suggested she should tell him and maybe go to couples therapy (was that right to suggest?)

I would. Why is it different? Lots of couples coast, sometimes for a few years, sometimes forever. As long as all parties are content and the relationship is functional what business is it of anyone else?

A year ago I was considering whether I wanted to stay married to my DH and the financial impact, i pact on DC etc. Few weeks ago we were having marathon bonking sessions and holding hands all the times. If you had asked me a year ago I probably would have said “I’m here for the moment because of my DC”. Relationships ebb and flow all the time, they go through different seasons. I wouldn’t judge someone for this.

Nothing wrong with judging, it is a natural response.

The issue is what do you do with that knowledge and judgement. I would think you have done as much as you can. Recommending she takes steps to improve the situation is as good as you can do.

Becas she’s using him for his money.

That's exactly what I was thinking. How can it be morally ok to be emotionally checked out of a relationship and not even like/respect your spouse and not even tell them about it? That's as bad as an affair IMO. I don't actually judge affairs that harshly, but I don’t like this double standard.

Not to mention the love-bombing cocklodgers. Apparently they’re doing nothing wrong after all.

She's ripping her husband off.

Imagine if someone only wanted to be with you because of a nice lifestyle.

Fuck that.

Well the point is that you wouldn't be very content if it turned out your husband didn't actually love you after all, and in fact hadn't done so for several years. Not many posters in this thread would. Just like you wouldn't be very content if your husband had been cheating on you for several years.

We could say he’s using her for domestic tasks and childcare 🤷‍♀️

How can you possibly know what or how anyone but yourself would feel? You are solidly projecting your own feelings onto other people.

You absolutely do not know how I or anyone else on this thread would feel in any given circumstance, nor how they'd respond to this situation if it arose.

I'm sorry to pop your bubble but a fucking lot of people are in marriages of convenience where the spark fizzled out for one or both partners long ago. It's usually both but it's not always, and the unloved partner chooses to accept the status quo because they're comfortable too and realise they can live quite happily as friendly companions without the love. It's really, really not uncommon at all.

The fact that it doesn't apply to you personally doesn't at all mean that it just isn't a thing. A world exists outside your bubble of personal experience.

In a long marriage, you go through phases. Life changes and feelings change. You make a commitment to someone and then you (hopefully) grow up and grow old together, raise your family, develop careers, deal with health issues and wider family life etc. You’re not the same person as when you met. I’ve personally fallen out of and then back in love with my husband twice as far as I can recall. He has probably had wobbles about me too! Ultimately, we are two decent people with joint responsibilities and a family who have chosen each other repeatedly over the years. Maybe others would have divorced in a bad spell but I’m glad I didn’t as I would have been wrong and happier times then arrived. Marriage is a long term commitment, it would be unusual to spend forty years in a state of perpetual bliss and I would have been very unhappy to have confided in a friend about domestic grumbles and then have her attempt to blow up my life.

Many marriages wax and wane, especially when children are small.

She may not always feel like this.

If she’s not having an affair, there’s little to judge.

How many of the unloved partners have you spoken to, to confirm that they're totally fine and dandy with that situation?

Yes, it's possible that some people with very low self-esteem would be happy in a marriage where they weren't love. I suppose it's also possible that some people would be content in a marriage where their spouse was having affairs left, right and centre. Maybe some people would even think they were happy in emotionally abusive relationships (God knows a couple of people I know who were the victims of abuse insisted for YEARS that they were totally OK, honest, this is just what normal couples do).

Maybe even you would be happy in those situations. But if a woman posted on MN from the perspective of the unloved husband in this situation, you know as well as I do that the vast majority of posts would not be understanding of her husband simply following a noble tradition of transactional relationships. They would tell her to get some self-esteem, LTB and kick the cocklodger out. (And they'd be right.)

Not the same. He could pay for that, probably cheaper than it costs to support her "lifestyle." How would SHE replace what he provides?

Loads of people have marriages like that. I'd mind my business. Doesn't affect you in at all

Being honest with one another about the waxing/waning is one thing.

But this woman is actively lying to her spouse, from what the OP describes. Playing a part so she doesn't have to split up and go out to work.

Going from being a SAHM in a very comfortable home, with a man who is alright, but she's no longer in love with, to being a single mum scraping a living somehow, is not a trade most people would make easily. If he was abusive and making the children's lives hell that would be different. Moving children from, what they see as their great family life to being juggled between parents is also something many women would not want to inflict on their children.

Love may or may not last a lifetime, but just having a comfortable home with a nice family can be enough, we all get older, less attractive, maybe more grumpy, less sexually active (probably) but would life be better splitting up in search of something more perfect and more exciting? I think people have really unrealistic expectations of very long term relationships.

The point is that the choice shouldn't be 100 percent in her hands.

Maybe she's ok feigning affection for her meal ticket. But if he's not OK with that, he should have the choice to move on and seek fulfillment elsewhere.

Mutually agreed-upon marriages of convenience are fine. One person hoodwinking another because it's easier than going out to work and living in a 2BR flat is just flat-out immoral.

She's only lying if she's expressing undying love every day. If he's happy with the relationship, and she's happy enough with the relationship to stay there, why burst his bubble by saying the brutal, 'I don't love you any more'? They seem to get on, the children are happy, not everyone lives in a perfect romantic relationship forever.

What she wants may be immaterial.

If DP told me he didn't love me, the relationship would be over. I would make that decision even if he was OK with the "enough" you describe. I think most people would. And they should be able to make that choice for themselves.

I have a couple of friends in quite unhappy marriages. I really feel for them. I’m single and it’s not easy either, I think often people just have to pick their hard!

"He's only lying if he expresses his fidelity every day. If she's happy with the relationship, and he's happy enough with it to stay, why burst her bubble by telling her he's been cheating on her for 10 years? Not everyone lives in a perfect romantic relationship forever."

Come the fuck on. In a long-term marriage you should be able to assume that your spouse a) loves you and b) is faithful to you unless there's an explicit conversation otherwise. If neither of those are the case, their failure to inform you does not mean they're being honest.

Has she got the lifestyle you’d like?

I'm sure she has affection for him as the father of her children, and as the person she spends her life with. Some men like their wives to be at home, he obviously does and can afford that. This was not an arranged marriage, it was a love marriage where she has fallen out of love (or felt like that the day she talked to her 'friend' about it), but is still happy enough to stay in the relationship and he is happy in the relationship, it's not a perfect marriage but very few are. Why ruin everyone's happiness, would he be happier without his wife and as a part time dad, would the children be happier split between parents? These things are not black and white, life is full of shades of grey. Is it immoral to wreck your children's happy home, just because you are not 'in love' any more?

@Stormwhatnow What would you say to her husband?
It's not her business.