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?)

Your logic only applies here though because you don’t see any value in what she provides because it’s invisible. Outsourcing it will still eat into his finances.

It would probably change the way I felt about someone. I don't think it fair to judge. I certainly wouldn't not be telling the husband. It is not yiur place. It's not as if she has made u complicit in an affair.

No one has said any thing about cheating, that is a very different thing. She confided in a friend that she no longer feels in love with her DH, she's not intending to leave, she hasn't found a lover, it's just not how it was for her, it's really not uncommon for love to change/mellow over time. I do love 'failure to inform' it's a marriage not a courtroom do they have the sort of marriage where feelings are discussed in detail?

Cheating is not a very different thing. It's deception in both cases.

Honesty is the foundation of a healthy relationship. Without it, there literally isn't a point.

It's actually quite funny how much you're trying to minimise it. I assume you've never called a man a cocklodger on here...

It's not simply a case of her not feeling love for him anymore. The OP says her friend doesn't even LIKE him. That's very different to two companionable friends raising children together.

Well if she doesn’t like him then I’m sure it will become apparent soon enough.

There will be no need for the op to stick her oar in.

This has happened since marriage was a thing, most women fall out of love. I feel sad for them. I’d rather be poor and being real and feeling only what I want to feel.

I would judge her and be asking her not to offload about it in the future. It’s one thing to fall out of love, but to not even like him. I expect she’s probably keeping up appearances though and being dishonest to him about her feelings or lack of them.

Some of these responses are discomfiting, it seems the issue here is this woman’s lifestyle. The seemingly getting that by dishonest means, if he was poor, but she stayed as she was going it alone l the responses would be different, but as she’s what some perceive as a nice lifestyle, it feels like that’s why some posters are taking issue, I hope not as that’s really sad.

Great friend you are. I mean seriously tons of women (and probably men too) feel this way about their marriages after they have children. Often as children get older things get better if they can get through that bit and other problems.

It's human nature. There's no need to criticize her.

Her life - her choice.

Most marriages aren’t perfect - it’s about long-term commitment and having enough mutual respect to make it work. Your friend and her husband have a deal that works for them.

Also - with the benefit of 35 years of marriage in the bank - relationships change over the course of a lifetime. There have been times when I really didn’t like or love my husband. But a year or two later you realise you’re in a much better place and a lot of the love comes back.

Bottom line is the grass isn’t always greener.

Well, yes. Lying is human nature, just judging it is perfectly fine.

Your friend and her husband have a deal that works for them.

A deal he doesn't know about - sounds great.

Really surprised at the prevailing view here. Staying in a relationship with someone when you don't love or even like them (and this isn't an arrangement you've both decided is ok) is deceitful. To do so for the sake of money is worse. I thought the consensus on here was usually much more pro-honesty.

Not really quite sure why this has been posted on a relationships thread - the exact same post is also on the thread about the John Lewis Christmas ad (from a different account/poster).

According to AI:

The phrase "Super puas, estetiknya bikin kagum" is in Indonesian.
It translates roughly to: "Super satisfied, the aesthetic is amazing/awe-inspiring" or "Very satisfied, the aesthetic makes you admire it."

(I have reported both instances to MNHQ as I don’t think these are genuine posters)

I get what everyone's saying about marriages naturally waxing and waning and how sometimes people feel they need to put the kids first, but when someone comes on here and goes 'my DH is leaving me, he says he's been miserable for years but held it together for the kids, I knew we'd had the usual ups and downs and kids have taken their toll as is to be expected, but im blindsided, it feels like he's rewriting our history.' we all rally round....

It just puts the other person in such an awful position if it ever does end, as well...
'Im leaving you, im not happy'
'Well, can we try marriage counselling?'
'No, I dont want to'
'I feel hurt you wont even try, this is coming very suddenly and I feel like we owe it to our family to try'
'Well, actually I've been unhappy for years, and have been trying, but cant do it anymore'
'What!!!'

Maybe talk to her about the fact that over the course of a long marriage it is usual for people to fall in and out of love with each other. I can tell when DH has temporarily fallen out of love with me, and I up my game a bit. I have fallen right out of love with him a few times, but also suddenly and powerfully fallen back in love with him, which is just as disconcerting.

We have to work at marriage. I'd support her by saying if she is planning on staying, she may as well make the effort to feel as close to him and as warm towards him as she possibly can, for both their benefit. Maybe suggest she plans some dates with him which remind her of why they fell in love in the first place - going to see a band they both love or to a sorting event they both support, revisiting places where they fell for each other. And also making some plans for adventures or projects now and in the future that might bring them closer together.

Also children can observe and understand if we are living inauthentically. Do we want to teach them to do the same when they are older?

You sound very judgmental. You could have supported her and encouraged her to talk to someone. It sounds as if she is going through a difficult time and having to make some hard choices.

There's literally a thread in which an OP's husband has suggested a "marriage of companionship" because he hasn't loved her for a long time next to this one now, and the advice couldn't be more different. He's an arsehole, find your anger, LTB. (And rightly so.)

OP I think you’re getting a hard time here and you are entitled to your opinion. Your friend opened up to you and you have kept her confidence and stayed out of the situation, which is wise and what a friend would do, but I think it’s ok to not be comfortable with what she told you. You are friends with her husband too and it’s not easy to be with someone knowing that you know something that might radically change their outlook on their marriage, which they don’t.
A friend of mine put me in a similar situation where I knew what she was planning, but didn’t know she hadn’t told her husband, who had moved out at her request. At an event for our children, her husband was there telling me that his wife had reassured him that it was temporary, whilst they worked on their marriage with a definite view to him moving back in. She had told me that she wanted him out to make it easier for her to see a solicitor and get ahead of him/ blindside him to her advantage on what was about to be a definite divorce. He was being totally gaslit about his situation and it was horrible knowing that, I was friends wit him as well. I thought what it would be like for friends to know stuff about my marriage that would impact me significantly, when I clearly didn’t. It didn’t feel at all nice.
Your friend is gaslighting her husband into thinking all is well and that wouldn’t sit well with me, either. If a man came on here using his high earning wife in this way, didn’t love her but likes the lifestyle she supplies, he’d get quite rightly rinsed.
The horrible situation you are in is that I think you’ve got to sit on this and say nothing. You don’t know whether he secretly realises this and doesn’t want to rock the boat either, whether he would rather be happy in ignorance or whether or not he even cares abd likes his lifestyle as it is, too.
The wheels will come off at some point, if she’s unhappy, even her lifestyle won’t compensate for feeling loveless. Honesty is always key in relationships and lack of it always causes trouble down the line. When a friend confides in you, it’s ok to disapprove, it doesn’t make you a bad friend. My closest friend will tell me stuff I might not always like, but it’s stuff I need to hear as well as what I want to hear, and I value her all the more for that. We know each other really well (50 year friendship) and are totally honest with each other.
The only thing I would judge her for is putting you in a difficult position like this in the first place.

YABU Historically, it's common to marry for this sort of thing rather than love. It's also very common to marry for love and then grow apart.

While it's not unreasonable for you to be worried about both of them, this is a normal problem and for you to contemplate blowing up their relationship is ridiculous, mean, and really gross.

If you really cared about them, you would try to help her. You would talk to her and find out what the problem is, and then try to help her work through it. If they've frown apart, you would encourage her to try to find common interests with him, to take some classes together or join some activities together, you would offer to take the kids for a few nights so they could have some alone time, you would encourage her to start counselling both by herself and with him to try and work through the problems, you would not ride in on your high horse and try to destroy their family.

Historically, both parties would have been well aware that it was a strategic marriage for economic or other reasons.

The difference is that the Op's friend is living a lie at the expense of her breadwinner. That's reprehensible and basically one step up from prostitution.

Furthermore, OP is not a marriage counselor or a source of free babysitting so that her slacker friend can enjoy even more leisure time.

This is actually very very common. If she had her own money she would likely leave.

But she absolutely knows how hard her life would be if she left now.