– How Do We Fall Out Of Love With Our Spouse?

Last Updated on July 31, 2014 by Chris Roberts

HOW NASHVILLE MARRIAGE COUNSELING CAN HELP US UNDERSTAND WHY WE FELL OUT OF LOVE WITH OUR PARTNER

References “Hold Me Tight.” By Dr. Sue Johnson

Marriage counseling in Nashville, TN is about helping couples restore the love they once had for each other. None of us enter into marriage with the belief that one day we will no longer have loving feelings towards the person that we have committed to spend the rest of our lives alongside. Yet, it happens…often. Technically, more often than not. How does this happen? Typically, we start falling out of love with our spouse slowly. So slowly, in fact, that we usually don’t notice it until much damage and distance has been done. The original reason(s) we begin to lose loving feelings towards our mate are usually quite small and insignificant. There is a missed love cue here, a misunderstanding there, a hurt feeling back then. These “small” misunderstandings and hurt feelings don’t feel significant enough in the moment to address them. So we go on. Some of us think our love is invincible. Others don’t believe the small hurt is enough to really have a conversation about which might dampen the mood. And so they build and get dirtier and eventually deeper.

In marriage counseling in Nashville, I have seen time and again where the original hurt or misunderstanding is actually not that big of deal. But over time, and left unaddressed, this hurt feels bigger and the original pain becomes the cornerstone to a lifetime of blame and justification. In a fantastic book about creating healthy marriages called, “Hold Me Tight” by Dr. Sue Johnson, she addresses some of these core, original issues that tend to build into ultimate marriage breakers. She writes with the simple logic of a child, “If we love our partners, why do we not just hear each other’s calls for attention and connection and respond with caring?”(p. 31) This is a core and simple component of love. It is also the basis for which most of are willing to make a life-long commitment to be with another person. Yet, the answer to this question is at the heart of uncovering how struggling marriages arrived at their current situation. At our truest self, I believe most people want to be loving, caring people. I believe most broken marriages are made up of two people who are caring, loving individuals. But, at some point, the train began to slowly slip off the tracks and now they find themselves in a massive wreckage of piled up cars and bodies.

Dr. Johnson gives some fundamental reasons why we don’t respond with caring to our lifemates. She writes, “We are distracted or caught up in our own agendas.”(p. 31) This is such a simple reason. Yet, this reason is the demise of most marriages. The point of marriage is to help both partners learn to love and be loved more deeply. But this process requires change. Most humans don’t like change. We don’t like feeling stuck and in a rut, but we just as equally hate the process of change. It’s uncomfortable. We all have our own agendas. There is no escaping this. We are not designed to be wholly “giving” or wholly “loving.” We have to learn to receive love and be loved. The distinction here is that we have to willing to be honest with ourselves that we don’t typically have pure motives in love. We are all working things out in our lives, constantly. If we aren’t aware of our ulterior motives or our “own agendas,” we won’t be open to learning how our agenda affects our partner and in turn allows for greater connection and intimacy. We have to know our agendas!

Dr. Johnson gives another reason, “We do not know how to speak the language of attachment, we do not give clear messages about what we need or how much we care.”(p. 31) We have all learned ways to love and be loved from our original caregivers—usually our parents. Our parents aren’t perfect. We always have some deficits from the lack of love or attention from our parents. These “little deficits” are the mirror images of our “small hurts” we receive and give to our spouses. The problem with labeling these hurts as “small” is that it diminishes the effects they can have on our lives. We have to learn to be honest about the ways we were loved and not loved by our original caregivers, because it’s the way we learned HOW to love and to hurt. We need to know and understand the language of attachment, because it is often at the heart of so much conflict with our partners.

Dr. Johnson gives a final reason for why we don’t respond to our partners with love and care, it is “because much of the time we are not tuned in to our partners.”(p. 31) We must practice love. We must learn how to learn, how to listen, how to be attuned. For most of us, the desire is there. We all WANT to love and care. But, we must draw on that desire and take the time to learn and practice. Oftentimes, we can deeply hurt our spouses by simply not noticing how they are reaching out to us or responding to the subtle communication they are trying to portray. We must learn how to be attuned to the nuances of our spouse. This takes an incredible amount of time and effort. This is also a significant portion of what it means to love another person.

If you are looking for a couples therapist in the Nashville, Tennessee area, Chris Roberts at Two Trees Counseling Nashville would love to be of assistance to you on your search. Chris has experience working with couples who feel hopeless and lost and is committed to helping them understand how they got to the current situation and giving them tools to address the issue.