For all the divorcees and those out of long relationships, I have a question for you. Have any of you had problems sleeping with your DH or SO when you felt "done" with the relationship? As in, not exactly turned off, but that there was no connection anymore?

I've been feeling like this for a few months when things went down hill with my SO. We were together for 13 yrs, 2 kids, the house, etc. When I hit 30, I had a little breakdown and really re-evaluated my life. I felt like the guy that I've been with since I was 17 is a good guy and a good dad, but we've just changed so much it's like we're comfortable strangers. I started to feel like I lost the connected we had, especially during sex. To me, that was devastating. Intimacy always meant a lot to us.

Then a few months ago, we had a fight and he flat out told me he didn't love me anymore and wasn't sure if I ever did. I was crushed. I mean, I've said some messed up stuff to him before, but nothing like that. He ended up kissing my a$$ for like a week or two, overdoing it which I know wasn't real. We are okay now, but I can't get that connection back. I tried. I don't know how. I feel it most when we are intimate bc there is this emotional void and I hate it. I just don't know what to do. He refused couples therapy several times so that's out.

Any ideas? Or, it this the end of the road?

Counseling, please try it.

Agree with counseling. People say things they don't mean when they are upset... I know it sounds like a poor excuse but it's true. If he ment it he wouldn't have tried to "fix" it. I know men can be jerks at times.

I agree with couples therapy. the thing is, if he isn't prepared to go to counseling then he is no longer the one for you. You deserve to have the best and need to feel the connection. 'team building' , new activities could help spice up the attraction--by doing a new activity, you both get to experience it and support each other

My first marriage was like this. Near the end I ended up staying up all night and sleeping during the day, just to avoid him, and the fights that would always happen. Our situation was a little different though, ex had severe intimacy issues, and an addiction to porn. Finally I couldn't take any more and I asked him to leave. Honestly it was the best thing I ever did. If you really feel like it is over, it probably is.

Relationships are like weight loss. Sometimes we're motivated; sometimes we're not. But are we COMMITTED?

I have fallen in love with my husband three times since the day we met. There have been many times that I was completely convinced we'd just hit our "end of the road" and should probably just kiss & say goodbye. But for many different reasons, I just kept staying. He is a wonderful man! Sweet, funny, handsome, hard worker, etc. But there are times when I look at him & wonder "WTF ARE YOU!?!??!?!" - and believe me, those times are a kick in my own arse.

We've been married 19 years; no children, & 4 pets. We have basically nothing in common except some music & movies. He's a sports nut - I couldn't care less for sports. He's a "sit on the couch & watch football" all day on Sunday... I'm a "hey! let's go to that new place downtown & see what's going on!" kinda gal. He works outside & is on his feet most of the day. I'm inside & on my butt most of the day. Come weekends, he wants to be inside on his butt & I wanna be outside doing SOMETHING.

I'm 8 years older than him; we met when he was 21 & I was 29. Almost a decade between us. That matters! - and yet, it makes no difference.

Because... somehow.... "we" work. Our relationship is kinda weird in some ways (according to some!) but 19 years speaks for itself. It's not always easy, it's not always hard - there are ebbs & flows. There are times when I think "Ok, this relationship has really found it's ending." I contemplate leaving. I daydream about a new & different life. I think that's normal.

But I don't leave. WHY? Mainly because - I'M COMMITTED. I know that things aren't always moonbeams & butterflies. Sometimes he can get on my last **** nerve & I want to throttle him! But sometimes he is the most wonderful awesome person I know. I realize that's true of anyone.

If your spouse won't go to counseling with you, then you should go by yourself. You can learn techniques and ideas to help you deal with your own inner turmoils. Believe it or not, a person's actions are quite often only REactions to what someone else has said, done, etc. So if you learn a different way to communicate, perhaps he will too, and your relationship may be better for it.

Also know that yes, sometimes people grow apart & never seem to be able to "grow together" again. That's OK too. If you decide it's time to separate, then try to do so amicably. Try to remain friends. Just because a relationship ends doesn't mean it was never real to begin with, and you've spent some wonderful years together & have two awesome kids to prove it.

~peace to you~

My first wife left me about 23 years ago after almost 15 years together, 11 married...

She didn't "feel" love for me or our kids...

(let me say she has never quit being as good as a mom/grandma as she can be with those non- feelings or a friend to me)

And I think I would be right if I said she has never felt them. She has had a SO for over 20 years and I would bet a dollar to a donut she has never "felt" love for him either. They are both friends of mine and my guess is they stay together because they care about each other and both need each other for companionship. It seems to work for them.

Angie and I have had a roller-coaster ride on the love boat

We're up...we're down...I'm up...she's down...she's up....I'm down

But through it all we found a way to develop "other" things to share with each other.

We both have our "I need my space" times...and we know it's necessary for our relationship.

We do to do things together, which has kept our marriage strong over the years...through challenges that all second marriages have.

Together we have our "almost" every Friday date night where we go out to dinner, even after the kids have been gone for many years we still do this. We like to try new places, nothing ever really fancy. Last Friday we tried a newer sandwich and beer place in a strip mall in the next city over.

Most of our date nights now include time with one of our GRANDdaughters...making it even more special.

We go to church together every week and always..ALWAYS! hold hands during the sermon ...no matter how or we are with each other...it has been a very long time since we have been with each other about something...that always seemed to ease us back into "communicating" better...

We love to walk our dogs to Starbucks on Saturdays...or the beach and get breakfast in the outside cafes...

We watch BIG BANG THEORY reruns every night together...over and over and over and play separately, in the same room...side by side in our recliners...on our computers. Me here and FB and sports....her FB, Pinterest and yoga stuff.

It works for us

We have spent the better part of the last 3 months remodeling our home, it has been upside down but almost finished. We love to work together...each doing our own thing.

I have learned to allow her to do ALL of the decorating w/o EVER voicing my ESHO

We spent the better part of the last 2 days shopping for bar and counter stools and sofa tables...a lot of fun for us.

Yesterday we worked together to pull off another family BBQ that was a blast, we do this often.

We have spent many date nights walking through Barnes and Noble.

We don't spend a lot of many...we use coupons and groupons a lot for eating out.

It is rare that we ever get mad at each other over anything, we have learned that most of that stuff really doesn't matter much! If we find ourselves having PO'd the other about something we instantly throw it out!

We have learned to turn a potential "heated" argument into a "nice" conversation about our GRANDdaughters, the kids, the dogs...ANYTHING...in less than 2 seconds!

Relationships are hard sometimes...

Feelings can come back...

Look for ways to "grow" new things together...

I will say it does take 2 people working towards the same goal...

We all say stupid stuff to our loved ones at times in our lives...

I may be the KING of saying stupid stuff...

It's how we get past that that makes relationships stronger. He said a stupid thing. It's not the end of the world.

I joke on here sometimes about it....Angie being in menopause and all and me having to handle things myself

We have not physically together in some time now...

but I can tell you that our love grows stronger every day.

Divorce turned out to be a good thing for me...it doesn't always. I never wanted it and fought against it for years but in the end there was nothing I could do. As I said it takes 2 wanting it to work....

If you both want it, you can make it work...

if not...it won't...you have reached a point where you need to determine what your relationship will be based on.

I hope the best for you

You hit some of it there.

"Relationship" implies there is some back and forth RELATING going on. Not just coming together of bodies for sexual intimacies. But shared moments for mind, heart, and soul intimacies too.

You don't just lack emotional connection -- you need to check on your mind connection, your soul connection.

As we age, the body intimacy bucket can change and shift to mainly touch, hugs, kisses. The full monty may no longer be possible.

But mind, heart, and soul intimacies can happen all along without age affecting those buckets too much.

We had a VERY stressy year last year with my dad's eldercare. Our marraige took some hits from that -- outside the rship stress. But hits nonetheless.

We sat down together and each filled out our priority wheels. Here's one article for how to do that.

http://www.coachingbreakthroughs.ca/...ance-exercise/

You can make the wheel spokes be whatever you want. Career, relationship, friends, etc. Google some more and you get them already labeled. We used this one just because it fit most of what we needed to address.

one we used

It is also set as 0-10 so that's familiar to do like 0-100% or A, B, C, D, F like school grades. A "D" or 60% is at least passing grade even if not ideal.

Tick your categories then connect the ticks.

A rounder wheel means life rolls along for you mostly ok. The plumper the wheel the better -- a "C" average is actually fantastic! 70% feels pretty full and satisfying! You get a few A's or B's in there and you are on top of the world even!

A perfect circle wheel with 1 ticked off all over is super round... but lacks oomph. Feels blaaaah. Bored.

Then a spiky ball of crazy is lives out of whack. That feels crazy, stressy, etc.

One partner being mostly at C passing grade while the other partner is at F -- maybe not just 50% F but BONE DRY 10% -- that shows a problem. C passing grade partner needs to pay more attention to partner... even if C feels great, needs to learn to do partner temperature checks. "Hey, how's your life going? " Take an interest.

F partner needs to speak up and articulate needes more so C is aware -- can expect them to be supportive but cannot expect them to be mind reader! Also take an interest in C's life -- how it is going? Things aren't great for me but I'd LOVE to hear about you! Maybe that would cheer me up. (Certainly would help plump the rship spoke on F's wheel to be spending time with C!)

If he's willing at least to tick his wheel and you tick yours then perhaps you can see where things are falling down on each other's wheel and need help from the spouse to plump up again. Some spouse cannot help with AT ALL. Like I cannot help with DH work stress. I can listen, I can sympathize. But *I* cannot make him put in for his days off. HE has to fill that out himself. So how it is fair that I have to live with him when he's a bear? Freakin' take your days off so you can chill -- own your own baggage and don't make ME suffer for you not owning it.

I had some things too I was placing at his door unfairly and the wheel helped me see that. I was expecting him to be my everything guy with my stressy stories, and I realized some of that I could park at other friend doors so he wasn't being overwhelmed by eldercare crazy. I sought support groups, as well as sharing with friends, and sharing with him. He was willing to LISTEN, but could NOT do the farming out the rest for me. It was also not fair for him to have to live with bear me. I had to own my own bags there.

We were neglecting couple time -- that we both had to own. But we had no time or energy for anything fancy. We made a standing date to play hangman on the ipad before bedtime. Sounds stupid, but just carving out that 10 min game helped reconnect us -- not just the fun of playing the game but showing each other we still counted, we still were each other's #1. Even if demands elsewhere were hogging our time.

This exercise can help you develop shared goals for improvements, suggest ideas, etc. That can help not just to solve problem you might find, but have some emotional/mind connection time and feel like you are a TEAM again on this and not ships in the night drifting apart.

We both had bad sleep on our list so the very next week I bought a new bed -- it was long overdue but again -- a small thing to show ourselves that WE come first. And it helped with the sleep. We brainstormed ideas for fixing the wheel sections and split these things up as short term goals, medium term goals, long term goals.

If later he becomes more open to counseling that would be great, but I hope he's at least willing to meet you on doing this wheel chart thing.

I'm hoping the prob is feeling dry as a bone but still willing to try to plump up the wheels some. I'm hoping you can get to a better place. And not just totally and completely over. But even if it is over, it needs to be addressed calmly, reasonable, and if possible, courteously.

Staying stagnant is not the answer either way.

GL!

A.

FIGHT FOR YOUR MARRIAGE! Have you read Love and Respect by Emerson Eggerichs or The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman? They both offer strategies that you can implement without the cooperation of your husband to rekindle your love for each other.

I am in the same boat as Beach Patrol...over the past 26 years I have fallen in and out of love with my hubby several times....relationships take work..yes there are times and reasons to walk away...but it sometimes it seems like we are such a throw away society even when it comes to relationships...

Long-term relationships evolve and change with time. At first, we are in the "infatuation" or "in-love" stage. A lot of that involves admiration, and physical chemistry or lust (to be honest). It is often expressed through words and a physical relationship; and for women, this is more emotional too. I think that is what your SO was referring to (but I can only guess about that).

Then that starts to wain a bit; and evolves into a different kind of love, one of a "deeper caring" for the other person. The other is still there, but just not as much; and like a few people here have said, it comes and goes. It can die and be restored again. A lot of things can affect your relationship: stress, fatigue, busyness, jobs, boredom, hormones, children, health, time, etc.

At first, we felt like equal peers but that changed after a while. Honestly, there have been times in our marriage when DH & I felt more like sister & brother; or mother & son; or father & daughter (becuz he is 12+ years older than me). These are roles that we can fall into at different stages. I think many women feel this way at times (and probably men too).

A marriage (legal or common-law) is a work in progress. You have to work at it as you go along, esp since we change and grow, just as the relationship evolves. The emotional side of your relationship is warring with the physical one at this time. Often when a women feels hurt, unappreciated, or unloved, it really affects the whole relationship, but esp in the bedroom (physical).

For instance, my DH and I agreed not to use the "divorce" word in our arguments to hurt each other, simply becuz it sounds like a threat, and is mentally cruel, creating big insecurities in the relationship. We cannot call each other nasty or degrading names either. We are still working on the communication part of the relationship (like others mentioned). As someone once said, we have had to learn how to communicate and argue better.

It sounds to me like your SO regrets what he said in the heat of an argument. We all say things we regret, even if we actually felt them at the time. There are moments when we don't feel that connected to our spouses for whatever reasons. It doesn't mean the relationship is over, but you need to sit down and have a talk about how you feel, and what things we do say or don't say from now on.

It will take some time, but with some better communication skills, a new respect, continued commitment, some fun dates, and some time to heal -- you could reconnect emotionally, and salvage the whole relationship ...

Thank you to everyone. I'm in tears reading these posts. I like the idea of the wheel and a date night or just doing things together. That's something that we don't ever have time to do between work and the kids. I guess we have to make it a priority. I'm also going to check those books too. I'd love to get counseling, but I personally don't have insurance right now, so without him it is out of the question.

I never realized that love changes like that either. I didn't expect it to be all fire all the time like it used to be, but maybe part of me thought it should. This gives me some hope not to give up yet and maybe I have a little fight in me (for the right reasons anyway).

well sometimes its just time to move on IMO.

I married at 19 and was married for 15 years, we also grew into different people and basiclly I was plain tired of him and his ways/wants, and felt zero connection to him...I mean after all, I was a teenager when we had common interrests, and at the age (I like Metallica, smoked pot, etc. all things I no longer do/like) what would I even know of Mr right lol when I had but a handful of teenager boyfriends to compare him to..?


I mean realy you met him at age 17, our brains are not even full developed till we are 25. To expect a 17 year old girl to work it out with a BOY for the REST OF HER LIFE, is crazy to me.

I divorced my husband 3 years ago and IT WAS THE VERY BEST thing I have ever done for my self!
I wish I had done it 10 years sooner honestly.

Now I am remarried and blissfuly happy with a MAN I know I can grow further with, cuz Im an adult that has security, independance, and self awearness of my ambitions/weaknesses/ strengths.

best of blessings in what ever you decide ~ just remember that your happyness does not rest on what others think of you, for they dont have to wake up and drudge threw your daily life, than sleep next to someone they wish wasnt there

Love all the advice! Something you don't want to hear is that you married far too young, you didn't even know "who" you were, let alone another person. My daughter is 28 and not married, because her father and I (been married for a little over 30 yrs.) told her that others in our families that married young, it didn't work, because one grows and the other doesn't or tastes and interest change as you become an adult and age 17 isn't an adult. If you do love each other, work on it, if you don't, end it and move on. Good Luck to you, we all need to be loved and appreciated

I guess I was typing pretty much what justanotherchix was saying at the same time!