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 I still love my husband - lost
After a year and a half of marriage and many problems
my husband and I decided that we needed some time apart.
Well, I shouldn't say me and my husband I should say
"I decided" I moved to my own place and began
to try and figure out what had happened. We began to talk
again. I told him I still loved him and that we should
give this marriage another try. After many tears he told
me he though we should just be friends, as we were such
good friends before we got romantically involved. He told
me he still loves me very much but he can't take the
chance of being hurt by me again. Through all of our
problems before I was always the one who kept things
together and now I can't understand how he can say that
he is the one who is being hurt. I love my husband very
much and would do anything to make our marriage work. The
only thing is he doesn't want to try. How do I get him to
try again? How do I know if he really doesn't want to
try? Do I continue to tell him how much I love him and
want our marriage to work or do I let things go? We're
friends, we always have been, but how can I be his friend
when I love him still? Please, anyone, I need help.
 From: Bernd
You left him, and in his mind, he doesn’t see any
real difference between the original commitment you made
in your marriage vows, and the one you are trying to
convince him of now. And I think it goes deeper than
this, something that many men are terrified of deep
inside: a fear that there’s something really
defective inside of us, that means we’ll just get
dumped again somewhere down the road, so what’s the
use of trying???? It’s not worth the hurt.
No matter how good friends we are with someone,
nothing tears away the walls of protection we’ve
constructed faster than in-your-face real intimacy. As
friends, we are able to have some sense of control over
our emotional boundaries. In marriage, the
“rules” are totally changed, and we’re
naked, and vulnerable like we’ve never been before.
If you really want to be committed to this man, my
sense is you have to fully support his - and your own -
need to heal, and to make some sense out of the struggles
you’ve had as a married couple, and both your
feelings and thoughts during the split-up phase. A
commitment to someone doesn’t mean you need to be
married to them; it means valuing having them in your
life, and sharing yourself and your time with them, and
supporting their right to be themselves without pressure
from us to change anything. It also means, in my opinion,
accepting and asking their help in understanding them,
and whatever ways we’ve hurt them. I suspect your
partner has some very clear ideas as to what he feels he
needs from you to chance another go at the marriage. He
may not be willing to tell you what they are right now;
he may not have faith that you’ll listen without
judgment or defensiveness. You don’t have to agree
with him however, to listen to him.
Can you tell me more about what you meant when you
said you were always the one that kept things together?
And can you also tell me what changed from the friendship
to the marriage, and what problems you ran into during
the first year of marriage?
My guess is that you won’t be able to recapture
the type of friendship you had before, until you both
come to more of a peace with what happened in the
marriage. That marriage is now part of your history
together, and that history didn’t exist BEFORE your
initial friendship. You can’t go back now, you can
only go forward.
My sense is that restoring the marriage is very much
tied to building an even truer friendship than you had
before. Remember what you liked about that friendship -
being able to talk about anything, sharing your deepest
feelings and thoughts, supporting each other emotionally.
Those things are wonderful parts of friendship AND
marriage. The phrase “I love/like you just the way
you are” are also magical parts of
friendship/marriage. When I feel unconditionally accepted
by someone, I want to nuzzle up nice and close to them -
it’s a natural instinct. Often in a marriage, that
kind of acceptance gets sacrificed when we feel our
partner isn’t meeting some important needs we have -
we react with anger or hurt, and then our partner has the
GALL to withdraw even more!:)
Anyway, I’m babbling. If you want this
relationship to blossom again, my suggestion is let your
partner know that you are okay with his fear, and his
hesitation at risking again. Tell him you want to learn
how to be a safe place for him again, and you want to
learn how to tell him about your needs without sending
the message he HAS to change for you to be happy with
him. Let him know that you support his freedom to choose
whether to share his life with you, or to move on - that
you want what’s best for him, and that if
what’s best for him is to share his life with
someone else, you’ll support that with love. Share
whatever time, and whatever parts of yourself and your
life that feel good for you, and that he’s willing
to share. Make your commitment a commitment to TODAY, and
let tomorrow take care of itself. That’s what our
relationship is based on - “today”. When I make
the most out of our time today, and do that each day,
“forever” takes care of itself quite nicely.:)
Hope something helped a little bit.
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