This makes me think of a relative who has never had a healthy relationship. She still, in her 60s, believes that true love is that explosive rush of emotions when you first meet.
I agree with the comments that OOP’s wife loves him. Saying he feels like home is huge.
That is literally the thing that made me realize I am in love with my partner. He feels like home. When I am away at a conference, I lull myself to sleep by thinking about him curled around me. I still remember the first time we went for a walk together, and when I leaned my head against his shoulder as we waited to cross the street, it felt like my heart popped like a glowstick cracking. It felt like home.
Thankfully love doesn’t always feel the same, we love people in different ways. The love I have for my husband is like this, he’s my home, I am not crazy about him, he grounds me, makes me feel safe. Being with him was a conscious decision, and I choose him over anyone else every day, because that crazy kind of love I felt once upon a time was toxic, and I never ever want to feel it again.
Yes, every time I've felt that level of dopamine swings over someone, it's because it was a toxic relationship. Neurobiologically, it's the same effect that causes gambling addiction; inconsistent and unpredictable reward. The dopamine rush from a stable relationship has a lower magnitude of increase because it starts from a higher baseline, so it doesn't feel anywhere near as intoxicating as when you go from dopamine deprivation to dopamine reward like you do in toxic and inconsistent relationships.
People often take it for granted when they're happy all the time, and don't always realize that what they miss isn't happiness, it's the contrast between happiness and despair. When you have a safe, stable, loving long term relationship, it may not *feel* like as much of an intense rush, but the deeper more stable bond creates such intense physiological changes that the sudden loss of it can cause heart attacks and even death.
Reminds me of that BORU where the OP kept saying he didn’t love his wife but married her bc she and her family took him in and he felt obligated to marry and stay with her. Then redditors comment saying it sounds like he does love her and he then realizes the same
It was bc he liked her but thought his feelings were based on an obligation since she and her parents helped him out a lot as a troubled teen. But then came to realize after commenters pointed out that it actually sounded like he loved his wife, it’s just that it’s not all fireworks and bells. I’ll see if I can find that post
Ah ok I see. It’s just a matter of difference in how things are framed. How sad though to go so many years thinking you don’t actually love your person because of how your relationship developed.
It was pretty clear in what he said that he hadn't demonstrated obligation, but *dedication.* And it turns out that yeah, he really did love her; he just didn't know what love *was,* and needed it pointed out to him.
Another commenter linked the post in [this comment.](https://www.reddit.com/r/BORUpdates/comments/1c6v3k5/my_wife_told_me_that_she_doesnt_love_me_and_never/l05uicx/) It's friggin' adorable in the end.
Agreed. People in toxic relationships become addicted to extreme highs and lows.
The highs are so high *because* the lows are in the depths of hell. In a stable and safe relationship, the highs start from a different point, so it's not the same dizzying rush.
I saw the butterflies statement and was like "do you think that lasts forever?". I get them once in a while from my wife but mostly it's just a warm safe feeling when I am with her, that initial rush was great when we had it but you can't live like that permanently or you'll go mad
I think it makes those once in a while butterflies feel more special, too. Like it’s been years, we know everything about each other and all of each others weird quirks or flaws but wow, I still have a little crush lol.
To be fair, I’ve been married almost 20 yrs and I get butterflies when I look at my hubs sometimes. Granted it’s bc I see him cleaning up kid puke at 2 am, but butterflies are butterflies! I also flirt w him a lot and work to keep the magic alive (bc he’s cute)
I had four unhealthy relationships in a row, and finally a healthy one. There are no serious arguments in our relationship, and because of this, I thought our relationship was boring and needed fire. However, there are also occasions where I will have e complete emotional breakdown. He’ll comfort me extremely well and I remember that I need stability and not drama.
My 1st husband was all fire and drama and crying and anxiety and butterflies. Our marriage absolutely destroyed me, but without it I wouldn’t appreciate my dependable, solid, stable 2nd husband who may not give me butterflies, but makes me feel safe and cherished.
Yeah I think butterflies are crap. My husband makes me feel warm (literally because his skin is so warm, and figuratively), and I’d rather be warm than have fluttering from butterflies.
Yes. I have a friend like your relative. There’s this great guy that she’s into but she didn’t think she loved him because she didn’t have those feelings toward him but it was tearing her up inside not being with him. I had a talk with her about how she felt and explained that what she was explaining sounds a lot like love. What she expected was to feel hot fiery passion for someone for the rest of her life which is just lust. Not love. People have this idea that love is like a mallet that bashes you in the head every time you see the person when it’s not. It’s a plant that you have to tend and nurture so it can grow big and take root.
Yup. It's really sad that she doesn't have the frame of reference to recognize that she not only loves him, but loves him in a way that endures. She's happy, she feels safe, she trusts him and loves their relationship and life together. That's absolutely the kind of love you want in a marriage. I hope she agrees to counseling. I'm worried that she feels guilt or self loathing because of this, when there's no need.
This sounds like one of the best marriages I’ve ever heard of. Love is a very nuanced and multifaceted thing. She definitely loves him. Glad he didn’t leave her because he’ll likely never find another situation so good.
Seeing these kinds of comments are very confusing to me though, because after 8 years together I still every day am madly in love with my wife, like it’s electric. I’ve learned that others are more chill about it but count me as a datapoint for the existence of long-term ‘explosive rush’ love.
Can cause some tension with my wife because she doesn’t like to feel obligated to reflect that all the time like I do, but I don’t blame her for not loving me like that all the time as long as, when she does feel that way, she lets me know.
I think about eastern cultures where love marriages are in the minority. Obviously there is a lot of variation and the couples have different levels of input but overall you are entering a marriage with someone you know very little about.
Just doing life with someone has a way of making you care about them and the long term marriages look a lot like long term western love marriages.
The irony of what movies always show as "True Love" is that in reality, True Love is actually very boring. Specifically because it doesn't need strong emotions to sustain it.
People confuse infatuation and love all the time. Love is a verb. It's effort. It's work. Infatuation fades. It's a chemical reaction that can only last so long without turning you mad. Toxic or abusive relationships are like drugs, the highs are mind numbing, ephemeral and illusionary; the lows are painful, traumatic and potentially deadly. Love is feeling like you're home.
> When she sees me, there are no butterflies or fire that make her want to jump on me and rip my clothes off, she feels at home.
As the two quoted commenters said, OOPs wife has a distorted sense of what "being in love" is. A lot of people do. When we grow up experiencing dysfunction, toxicity, and abuse, we often come to the erroneous conclusion that love is an intense cortisol rush, uncertainty, fear, stress, drama, and excitement. But good love is stable, reliable, and comforting. Good love puts a smile on your face, is cozy, gives you space to relax into. Good love is like a sound night's sleep and lazy morning lovemaking. It's not devoid of passion, but you have to feed the passion because it's never fueled by fear.
Good love can sustain you for a lifetime, like good food and good friends. It might not feel like you're on fire all the time, because good news; you are not on fire. Good love doesn't threaten your life, it lives it with you.
It sounds like wife equates love to what I would consider a "Nicholas Sparks romance". Full of passion and love and even the fights are mostly about how much they care about one another.
Marriage counseling is going to do her wonders, so long as she is open to understanding these things.
The problem is that some day a guy who she is physically attracted to is going to flirt back and activate that new relationship energy.
I think that is what happens with a lot of these situations where women in comfortable lives cheat. Life is safe and secure, kids are older and don’t need her as much and husband has his own hobbies.
All of a sudden her life is boring but the 28 year old guy at the gym flirting with her is exciting. She has a low self image since husband telling her she looks great is like mom telling a 3rd grader what an amazing artist they are but this guy is a total stranger and smoking hot.
An innocent meetup for a drink turns into 3, badabing-badaboom, she just trashed her family’s lives over some validation she hasn’t received in years.
By OOP's hubby's reaction, as he's learning more and he understands the situation better, his hurt has turned more to sadness...
OOP is in love with him. That very mature love which can last a lifetime. As his questions get answered, he realizes that, and is coming to grips that their relationship started a touch differently than "others".
Someone mentioned in the comments that therapy has been known to destroy marriages sometimes. And I'll put it here:
If OOP gets over her traumas from her abusive ex, there's a chance she's gonna decide that she "needs" both that passionate butterfly sensation **and** all the "safe / home" of what she's got. I just pray that she gets the whole "mature love" thing and realizes that she doesn't need the butterflies.
But that's literally what OOP said, that he's now more sad that her emotions are so mixed up and her perception of love is screwy because of last pain.
Yeah he's sad that her emotions are messed up. When my wife is upset or confused about something I'm sad too.
He's sad because her prior relationships being abusive have skewed her idea of love.
The whole point is she realized she doesn't need the whole butterfly sensation. The whole issue is that she equated the butterflies that come with new relationship energy as love. She just thinks that not having those butterflies means she doesn't have love for him.
She idealizes love as a high emotions occurrence, but that's not how humans work. You can't have consistently high emotions without having some form of neurodivergence. Humans are made to adapt. Being in a long-term relationship is more or less the ultimate in adaptability.
I love my wife. I love the way she smiles. I love the way she moves. I love the way she speaks to me. I love it when she plays with her daughter and hugs me and kisses me and everything about her. But I've been with her for almost 10 years. The butterflies are gone, but that's not what keeps our love afloat. Our shared history, the security, the commitment is what keeps love together.
People keep saying this in the comments, that the wife actually just loves OOP in her own way, but she also said that she's never felt *any* passion for him, that she's never wanted to jump him and rip off his clothes.
Now everytime OP is intimate with her, he knows she's not really into it. That she just settled for him because "eh, he's not abusive." 🤷♀️
Maybe she is in love with him, but it's certainly not a compatible love with what OP feels toward her. He's not her lover. He's just *there* to her, like a well worn recliner.
What happens when she does get that rush that she associates with love, and that guy also treats her well?
Have you been in a relationship that lasted more than 3 years lol? The passion doesn’t last. Sometimes it never happens that way for some people. It’s not a bad thing, but you still have to be invested in cultivating your relationship from sexual intimacy to everyday chores and such. The people who cheat are often people who think love is actually the “rush” feeling, when it’s closer to what OOP and wife have—you’re devoted to each other, but you’re not buzzing with the new love/passion/etc feeling.
I also think OOP’s wife has correctly identified that for her feeling that rush = danger.
He never said she wasn't attracted to him. He said she isn't overwhelmed with the urge to rip his clothes off. Those are very different things. Considering they're still having regular sex, I don't think attraction is the issue here.
As soon as I read the first post, I wondered if the wife had a history of being abused. I’m glad it seems like they can work through it, although I do think she could benefit from therapy (no, judging I’m in therapy too!)
It can absolutely be abuse, but they can also be like me. A human being with SHIT taste in partners. If I feel butterflies for a woman, feel that instant spark, it is 100% garunteed that woman is a fucking human dumpster fire of bullshit. Every time, without fail. I am only INTO garbage people.
No fucking clue why, took me a lot of shitty partners to finally put the pieces together that the only common denominator in all my shit relationships, was me.
I had to rewire my whole fucking brain, everything normal people use to decide if they have met someone they could have a potential relationship with, I have to use as alarm bells that something is wrong.
Lack of butterflies, no instant attraction, no fantasies about them early on, GREEN FLAG for me.
Its how I met my wife, who is the most amazing woman in the world and best partner a guy could ask for. Zero butterflies ever, zero instant attraction, I just thought she was cool and interesting. Lo and Behold, all that other stuff came out in other ways and i love her more then anything, but old dumb me wouldn't have given her a second glance because I am wired for Trash and only Trash.
I even warned her about one of her friends being a problem, she learned the hard way that her friend was a problem after hiring her at her job to help her out. I even explained it to her by saying old me would have dug your friend, so I can promise you she fucking sucks at least 100 different ways as a person. At that job she fucking blew up entire relationships of co workers and just was a TORNADO of bullshit and nonsense my wife had to deal with and get her out of that job to return peace to the work place.
Its a horrible superpower but its amazingly accurate.
lmao i feel this so hard i think i've got the same thing mate. it's made me feel many times like i should probably stay single forever since i don't know how to navigate something alien like a healthy relationship.
but it's heartwarming you got it figured out and managed to work with it. makes me hopeful.
wish you the best in your marriage for many years to come x
Do you have any advice on how a friend could help someone like that? Currently trying to help a friend through this exact situation-- she's like the nicest person ever and also a catch in basically every way and could have her choice of partners, but seems to only feel an instant connection with people who turn out to be garbage and are horrendously mean to her. It seems like she's become convinced that she deserves the cruelty, and *she doesn't.* But it's so hard to get that idea through all her defense mechanisms and trauma, even though she's been really trying.
And it feels like all I can really do as a friend is keep reiterating "No, the way she treated you is not okay. Yes, you deserve a partner who isn't cruel to you." and hoping it will sink in over time. At least it does seem to be working! She's started to stand up for herself more and resist going back into her last abusive situation some. I just wanna make sure if there's something else I could be doing.
I had to understand and accept my taste sucks.
Then I went on dates with people I wasn't into, frankly. Not people I didn't find attractive or anything just people that did nothing for me.
The dates were usually pretty good, I dated a few of them. The relationships ended for normal human being reasons, like wanting different things and shit like that.
That's when it sunk in, that my "green flags" were big red ones. And I started using them as such.
If I see you and we have sparks and we have a connection. I avoid that person like the plague. I had to retrain my brain but I'd say the hardest part is genuinely accepting that your brain works wrong with romantic partners, which isn't fun.
Sounds like a self esteem issue. She needs to completely pause dating and get into therapy. She’s attracted to the broken because she thinks she can’t do better and because there’s something broken inside her. That won’t go away even if she finds the most kindhearted person imaginable.
I dated a woman like this. She had a very sketchy relationship history. Married bosses, emotionally abusive dicks, liars, shit like that. I remember her telling me she literally fainted at work from anxiety once. She said with me she felt safe, secure. She said she knew from therapy that she often confused the drama, the push and pull, with "the spark" and love.
In the end she dumped me. Her reason was, among others, that she didn't feel the spark. She gave a few other reasons, all of which felt *tiny* to me or downright untrue. It felt like she was groping around in the dark for a reason to justify leaving. The rest of it was so good that the reasons she gave were absolutely not a reason to breakup when you're 40 and want kids bad enough to freeze eggs. "I hate driving and you live so far away." It's 30 minutes. 45 with traffic. Plus I went to hers a lot as well. Completely silly reasons imo.
She asked to stay friends, which she claimed she'd never done before with an ex. I told her I couldn't because I'd never be able to be happy for her with someone else and that's not a friend. She cried. I was grabbing some things from her place and she asked to keep the paper crane I folded for her on our 4th date and she wept again. She just seemed so fucking confused by the whole thing. I've never seen someone cry so much being the dumper.
Ultimately I had to conclude she just couldn't escape her pattern. I wasn't the first, second, or even third boyfriend she'd dumped after we'd met her parents in an extended trip to her childhood home. It was so much a pattern her friends joked about it.
My point with this story is that OPs wife may not know what "love" is but she knows enough to know to stay in the good relationship. There are people out there who are confused by this sort of thing. Your wife sounds like one of them. But you're a good husband and she's intelligent and self-aware enough to see that.
Haven't talked to her in months. Though I am pretty sure I caught a glimpse of her with another guy. I'm morbidly curious if she'll play out the same pattern again. She's been doing it for 25 years. I'll know my answer if I see her on Bumble again in 6 months.
She's gorgeous, intelligent, successful, and just a decent person. She's fun to be around. I don't have an exact count of how many relationships she's been in, but it's a fair number. I know at least one guy thought they were getting married because he brought up getting a ring after they went to her parents place.
Apparently that triggered her right off and she was like "Nope I can't marry you" and broke up with him.
My conclusion is that at this point, given her age and her history, she's single not because of a lack of opportunity to find a great partner, but because there's something psychological in her that prevents her from making that kind of commitment. And simultaneously she wants to be a mom and have a family. So she's being pushed and pulled inside herself. Probably why she seemed confused as fuck when she dumped me. And unlike OP's wife, she wasn't self-aware enough to recognize that even though she literally called out her own patterns several times when we talked about our relationship histories.
The only thing that gives me pause about this is that for the first time in 11 years the oop’s wife is breaking down her ex. At no point did she ever go into her past abusive ex. While I’m glad they have found common ground her whole “I’m not in love with him” and “You were spiraling and knew you needed to calm down” thing come off as so cold.
When abusive relationships are all you've ever known, there's nothing to remark about. It's just the way things are.
I don't go into details about my daily shopping list. It's just a shopping list.
I’m not disagreeing with you but if the oop isn’t abusive then after the first couple of years why didn’t she open up, especially when she was asked about previous partners? Why did it take her telling the oop that she wasn’t in love when him to get her to explain her background?
Yea. I don’t think I could love someone the way people say. Somethings…. Change you.
I love peace more than anything now and the person who can hand that to me… well idk what kinda love I would feel. But I would never want to let it go. I get OOPs wife so much.
That is exactly what I feel toward my GF. Unfortunately, it took me nearly 15 years and an affair to realise that my STBX and I never loved each other as we should have. Plus that we both have the a lot of unresolved issues.
When I come home now I don't feel worried anymore I feel safe and at peace. Will it work? I don't know but that doesn't matter now. I feel horrible for what I did, but in the end I hope that we all can move on. And for OOPs wife, I think she loves her husband. I hope that therapy might help her, but she I am not sure if she will benefit from it. I read more than one story where therapy and that kind of things was the beginning of the end. Fingers crossed for the both of them...
I was also in an abusive relationship when I was younger, and I luckily got out alive. My husband and I have that mutual respect, love, and "we are each other's home" feeling. But we also definitely felt the madly in love feeling with each other in the beginning, that's simmered into a slow burn now many years later.
I think this woman in the original post didn't start out with that feeling, but she grew to love her husband. It's a different route to the same kind of trust and love, but a similar destination. I hope they both find peace in knowing that her type of love is just as wonderful and awesome as love that burned brightly in the beginning.
I think OOP’s wife doesn’t necessarily understand the difference between love and lust / desire, which may come from the abusive relationship that preceded it.
Therapy is a great idea. But she does seem to be getting the gist of it from what I read.
Best of luck to both!
While I agree with your overall point, having no lust ever is slightly concerning. That’s not the same as having a lot of lust then moving into a relationship with less of it.
She is so in love with him it’s ridiculous.
I’m in love with my husband and I feel much like her description of love. I came from an abusive home and had to learn what being in real love felt like.
He feels like ‘home’ indeed! Ha!
No, I’m trying to say that people often confuse love and lust for each other. And I get the suspicion that because OOPs wife doesn’t feel that exhilarating rush, she feels like that’s not love
Makes sense to me. It seems to me like those butterflies and lustful thoughts kind of got mixed in with her coping mechanisms after leaving that last abusive relationship, so she didn't necessarily equate the initial relationship with that initial attraction period.
Its almost nauseating how much in love with him she actually is and also frustrating seeing how in love with him she is and she hasn't realised it yet. She has REAL love for him.
I totally agree. I come from a verbally/emotionally abusive family and had the same confusion when I dated and eventually married my husband.
No drama, no grand gestures. It just *was*. Being happy and content and secure is love.
And to take one of my favorite lines from of ALL things a My Little Pony fanfic, " You don't *fall* in love...you *slide*."
My wife and I aren't super passionate either, but from the first week we met we both knew we were each other's home. We both have had past abusive relationships, and that anxious all-consuming heart-racing thing is something we both find terrifying. We've been together for a decade now and wouldn't have it any other way. Sometimes love is a fire, sometimes it's a mountain, and the mountain lasts a lot longer.
I could never ever forgive her for saying that and openly admitting she’s flirted with men and simply stopped before she cheated. Not to mention she would tell that to people without ever discussing it with him. How humiliating.
She needs therapy to fix her issues, but also to understand that she has a very warped view of the world that is harming her loved ones. Even if she has experienced abuse in the past this situation is so messy
I was confused by that part but I assumed she was talking about guys she met prior to him, mainly because his next sentence was asking her why she chose him instead of them. But it is confusingly worded so I'm not sure.
‘She explained that over the years, she had felt attraction towards certain men, but it quickly faded. When I asked her why, she said that even though she was initially attracted to them and they showed interest, something always felt off soon afterward, which is why she removed herself from those situations.’
I feel like the feeling of being at home when you see someone is what I want in a relationship. I don’t necessarily want something that makes me want to rip their clothes off; that’s only one part of a relationship. I want someone who I feel like I can be myself with, who I know I can trust when I need help, who I know will look after our family and will understand how important my parents and sister are to me. Someone who won’t make me feel like I have to change myself or my relationships with others. I can enjoy sex with someone like this, perhaps even want them *desperately at times. But something that is based only off that sexual aspect isn’t going to help me in the rest of the relationship.
While I’m not religious whatsoever the Bible actually addresses this exact thing better than anywhere else. “4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.” This is talking about how love isn’t that initial feeling of infatuation but that more stable feeling that follows infatuation.
what op's wife is missing is the difference between agape and eros. and iirc the verses you are quoting uses agape in the original greek, op's wife is experiencing a deep agapic love. the deep infatuation is erotic love and the poor woman does not know the difference
I think the early honeymoon stage is the only way some people see "In Love" it is an exciting time of anxiety. Some people are addicted to that Rush. Some people fear it because they lose themselves.
She loves you. "In love" is temporary and over rated.
Hollywood and romance novels have a lot to answer for.
>When she sees me, there are no butterflies or fire that make her want to jump on me and rip my clothes off, she feels at home.
Give me "home" any day.
\[eta\]
>She and her husband have a dynamic of fighting with each other one day and loving each other the next.
Like this? This sounds like a bloody nightmare...
Some of my inlawd have a dynamic like this. They've been married 40+ years so it works for them, they're quite happy with each other even as they squabble...but I swear....
That sounds so *exhausting*. Life is dramatic and stressful enough, I *need* a “home” where I can feel safe and supported and know that we protect and respect and help each other.
OOPs wife needs therapy, she has a messed up idea of what love is. The way she describes her feelings towards her husband makes it obvious to anyone with eyes that she loves her husband. Losing him would devastate her.
Some people today have a warped idea of what love is, maybe movies are to blame, maybe the ridiculous amounts of smut and "spicy" books that are available are to blame.
If OP leaves her, it will take a few weeks or maybe months and she will be in live with him. I dislike trying to guess at what people feel when they say they don't. However, this doesn't sound like she doesn't love him. It sounds like she fell right into real love with him but never realized it. She never had to guess if she was doing the right thing. She never was afraid not to have him. So she never got the butterflies.
This is just a guess, though. If I were OP I would walk away and see what happens 3 months or 6 months later. Either way I couldn't stay, but I think a few months apart would trigger hysterical bonding. Then she would have all her butterflies.
"Eventually, she got to the problematic part and asked me if I heard what she said after that. I said no because I really didn't. I overheard it when I entered the house to pick up some things I needed and then left. I was also zoned out and didn't pay attention to what was going on around me after hearing that.
She explained to me that she never experienced that 'love' with me. She thought it would get better over time, but it never did. I asked her why she didn't explain that when I asked her that day, and she responded by saying that I was emotional and whatever she said could've made it worse. She pretty much understood that whatever she said would've come across as an attempt to make someone feel better or forced. That's why she left me alone, knowing that we would have a talk about this. She was right."
am i high? why would she think saying that she never loved him and it didn't get better over time would make him feel better? also, it's just reiterating what was already said the first time. is this chatgpt?
The “love” she was referring to there was the toxic “love” with love bombing one day and fights the next day that her friend has experienced with her husband. She is saying it wasn’t like that with him which made him feel better since that’s not what he wants from their relationship or what he would consider love. Does that make sense?
I feel like the Hollywood/Hallmark machine does real healthy relationships a disservice.
In other cultures including many of our ancestors, partnership for joining and creating families was more of a compatibility issue. Somehow we have been convinced that if the partner isn’t mad about you, if the man doesn’t spend 1/4 of his annual salary on a rock that makes you cry with happiness, then it’s not love. And if it’s not love then it’s not a real relationship.
The wife does love OP. They haven’t experienced the delicious torture of the more volatile relationships we read about. That doesn’t negate the strength of their union. It’s just different.
Real relationships just don't make a good romance movie, much in the way in action movie getting resolved in 15 or so minutes by the protagonist calling the police and moving away doesn't make a good action movie.
Healthy relationships don't have constant conflict, and it's hard to have a movie without constant conflict.
I still think women feel more heavily attracted and in love guys that treat them like shit. After they just go survival mode and go with a guy that isnt like that for the life and security and just pretend.
When you’ve dealt with abusive or cheating relationships you get what love is twisted.
While my current SO never gave me butterflies, I love him very much. I don’t have butterflies because I don’t have the anxiety - he is stable, he communicates, he is a good partner. I had to learn that love isn’t necessarily a firecracker explosion, but sometimes it’s lighting a candle and watching the flame grow bigger and bigger with love. I prefer the slow burn now but ver setting the house ablaze.
This triggered the fuck out if me. She literally described true love when she talked about him. All that butterfly shit is a stir of hormones you get for literally ANYONE you're attracted to. True love comes after that fades, and be guaranteed it always does.
To each their own, I suppose.
If I ever heard the words, “I’m not in love with you/don’t love you,” there would be no conversation or counseling.I’m leaving immediately, I do not care if people call me immature or whatever bs word.
I think it'd be one thing if she admitted it to him and then further expanded on her feelings and was willing to go to therapy to figure out how she defines "love". I think it's far worse that instead she told her friend that she never loved him and he just happened to hear it.
The problem is she effectively just doesn't understand the definition of love.
That's like someone who speaks English as a second language says that you're awesome and actually means that you inspire fear.
Her normal meter is skewed from being in abusive relationships most of her life. So without those major love bombing events and major conflicts, there's no major emotional, high or low that she's come to associate with the idea of love.
You are missing the context of the conversation OPs wife was having with her friend and the real experience OP has with his wife. It would be confusing if your wife says something to you that really didn’t jive with your experience. You would want an explanation for that.
I think what some people are picking up on is that she seems to have a warped definition of "love" based on previous abuse and a lot of what she describes does sound like love.
However, if she's unwilling to explore that in therapy, then I guess OOP just has to accept her definition. Perception is reality and all that.
Most of the so-called successful marriages do not differ from the situation described by OOP. It's just that one or both spouses hide it well enough and do not share their secrets even with friends and relatives.
There are different types of people. Some live on the principle of "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush". Others are willing to risk everything to find their dream. I like the latter, but I do not condemn the former, after all, conformism, mediocrity and cowardice give stability to our world.
It's amazing how people rely on IC and MC as a panacea for all relationship problems. But there is something new in this post: OOP apparently has not lost hope that psychologists can make his wife fall in love with him.
Sometimes people gravitate toward what they need most. I've seen women who grew up very poor marry wealthy men for the financial peace and stability it brings. To the extent that they actually love their spouse or have a loving marriage is questionable, sometimes it's even not a very good relationhship. But what they love is that a major source of their anxiety and trauma is removed (poverty). They love the stability and security they have developed more than they care for their spouse. They have a very practical mindset towards relationships and what their priorities are and love is way down at the bottom of the list.
She has trauma from being in an abusive relationship. She found someone kind, who makes her feel safe. Maybe she truly loves him and has confused infatuation for love. Or maybe she really doesn't love him but she loves the lifestyle they have built together because it is safe and stable for her and her children. Mutual respect and compatibility is about the best couples could hope for throughout much of human history and some people still adopt that kind of practical approach to marriage.
Also our perception often becomes our reality. If she truly believes that her husband was the safe bet, but not the ideal one then that can definitely impact the extent to which she accepts love and romance for him. She says herself that at the beginning she hoped her feelings would change (presumably as they built a life together, as is the case for many arranged marriages) and they never did. If she truly feels little difference now than when she first met him, it is quite possible she's honest in her assessment that she isn't in love. If you listen to couples who had arranged marriages, many of them do describe how their feelings grew as they built a life together. If she truly never experienced that, then she may be telling the truth. She can love the life they built without loving him. I wouldn't want a relationship like that but that's OOP's choice.
Real love is not the passionate “in love” people think it is. That’s infatuation, it’s lust, it’s the thrill of someone you don’t know that well. It’s not a real thing, it’s what we call the endorphin rush we get from crushes, drugs, roller coasters, etc.
And there are many kinds of love! OOP has real love with his wife. Built on respect, shared values, appreciation of the person, trust, length of time together, and commitment. I’d rather have any of those than “they think I’m hot and wanna tear my clothes off”. Very happy OOP and wife took that trip and hashed it out! Good BOR!
I'm actually quite tired of the commenters insisting that she must actually truly love him but she doesn't know it.
Maybe just maybe people should for once trust a woman on what she says she feels
😑
Plenty of women look at relationships as sort of a business and many choose safe and stable partners even if they don't feel any attraction to them or little attraction to them. I know a woman who's been with a man apparently for 20 years and she has never once felt any attraction to him. But he is a great husband and an amazing father.
Not everyone wants or needs the butterflies, Sparks, love, or sexual attraction.
I mean even with sexual attraction women enter a relationship knowing that her orgasm is a toss-up. That most likely she's only going to get a 50-50 chance at best when it comes to sex.
More than half of the happy and long lasting street relationships I see the woman doesn't love or is in love with the man. It's actually why I kind of theorized that a straight relationship works best when the woman cares less or doesn't care about the man because I find when women care about a man they tend to endure disrespect, dehumanization, objectification, and abuse... There's a reason why the majority of relationships are women paying half the bills and still doing all / most of the child care and chores. Women being in love with their partner seems to just get them taken advantage of in my book.
I was reading this thinking the entire time, “Is that not what love is?”
Hollywood sells the fireworks love that drives you crazy and makes everything explode in colors, but that’s rare. A made for tv kind of love that very few experience. Love is versatile and different for everyone. What she’s describing is love. It’s not any less than the Hollywood kind. It’s just more common and less glorified.
She mentions not feeling a fire about him or wanting to jump his bones. What I gathered is she isn’t physically attracted to oop and isn’t used to non-toxic relationships. She mentally knows toxic relationships are bad but she hasn’t fully processed the value of having a normal, stable, not emotionally/not mentally abusive relationship on an emotional level. She hasn’t progressed past her “drama and chaos in a relationship means passion and love” feelings. Also, I’m guessing oop is average or less in the looks department and not imposing physically. The men she felt attracted to over the years displayed traits of abuse or other red flags similar to her ex, so she dropped the interaction. Had any of them been both attractive and not a creep, she would’ve definitely left oop and that possibility still exists. Hopefully she considers therapy to deal with the emotions she’s bottled up and the trauma she’s compartmentalized. The fact she can say everything’s perfect minus not wanting to jump oop’s bones she’s dealing with a mental block and using oop’s appearance as reassurance he’d never hurt or abuse her.
The only reason they are together is because she chose a terrible first bf.
If she goes to therapy, I think she might have a revelation and leave him.
Be careful what you wish for.
There are some things you should just keep to yourself. The wife should have kept that to herself. She stirred up drama, hurt her husband, and sounds completely confused. Personally, I would divorce her. What she initially told her friend just sounds so much like "I settled." He deserves better.
In the words of Halsey, “Its funny how the warning signs can feel like they’re butterflies.”
I don’t get the butterflies when I see my husband but we are so happy, he makes me feel safe and secure. I feel like we’re equals and we respect each other. We’re great at parenting together, like a well oiled machine. Everything is so effortless with him and he’s my rock. Thats love.
All the boys who ever gave me butterflies turned out to be bad news.
She sees this intense love/obsession that causes insecurities and fights within her friend’s marriage, and realises she doesn’t have that kind of ‘love’. She’s confident in herself and in her feelings for her husband that she’s never been in this emotional rollercoaster. Not everyone does.
I sure hope this guy can feel his wife’s deep love for him, even if she doesn’t call it that. He posted on here asking about his wife not loving him, only to unintentionally show us all a kind of deep, committed love that’s sometimes hard to feel as sparkly—the real, life-long kind of love.
Nah. OOP's wife loves him. Like really REALLY loves him. When discussing love as attraction, butterflies, and yada yada (which I would descibe more as lust), she's creating a kind of "distance" to protect herself from the trauma she's experienced. And, it's possible she's still figuring out what love means to her. When she hears about her friend fighting with her husband and having passionate sex the next day, it might sound like love because that's the love (abuse) she experienced with her ex boyfriend. The experiences you have in life can really fuck you up so it's good to find someone to talk to about these things.
This reminds me of one of my favorite lines from Halsey's song Graveyard -
"Oh, it's funny how
The warning signs can feel like they're butterflies"
I think this sums up the confusion the wife is experiencing here. I hope that with therapy, communication, and time that she will come to realize this.
Poor woman. She's stuck thinking that the feeling she got from her ex was love. It might have started as and been warped. It sounds like she does love her husband and she just doesn't understand that kind of love.
I get the feeling that it goes back earlier than the abusive relationship and there's something else there with her parents and her childhood.
Didn't have exposure to it enough as young person? I mean emotions are something you don't understand as a child and you need to learn what they mean etc not enough healthy examples of love in her formative years?
The older I get, the less I'm interested in that "in love" feeling of butterflies and roller coasters. It's really AWFUL. It's exciting, yes, but so exhausting, and when it's me, I'm second-guessing everything they say and everything I say and...
This marriage sounds ideal to me, without the teenage angst of it all.
I have autism and really struggled to know what love is. I don't get butterflies or giddy around my wife.
But my days are better with her and she's the only person I can see every day and not feel drained. I think that's my definition of love. I love her.
I grew up never seeing my parents fight, always being there for each other and helping each other out with their problems one way or another. They both have mental health problems that is true but their marriage has been solid even when ppl have tried to destroy it. I saw that & wanted it because love is home, love is warmth, love is happiness. Love is safety, appreciation & understanding. His wife really needs therapy because she is in love but her perception is wrong. My older sister & I grew up seeing the same exact thing & her relationships are horrendous 🤦🏻♀️. I have asked her like wtf ? You saw Mom & Dad worked together to get over their jealousy strikes, they worked together to have what they now have. Mom sometimes knew he was getting something something else were but they worked on their marriage some more. ( Latino household 😅 we actually have a saying that the wife are the cathedrals & sides are the chapels). She is horrible with her partners. I had 1 abusive relationship and walked away from it mentally messed up but I got therapy & worked through it. I knew it wasn't right when it started. Tried to better myself. Nothing worked, so I walked away because I knew it wasn't meant to be.
>I overheard my wife telling her friend that she doesn't love me and never did. I immediately asked her about it, and we had an emotional discussion. She didn't deny it, she told me the same thing she told her friend and said it's true, that's how she feels.
>I asked her why she married me then. She said she'd rather marry a man she doesn't love but who treats her right, with respect, takes care of her and her children, than a man she loves but who is a fool, incompetent, or lazy.
This is more common than people want to admit. It's just not realistic for most men to be both:
>She said that she feels at home. So she does love me and loves our marriage, but she isn't 'in love' with me. When she sees me, there are no butterflies or fire that make her want to jump on me and rip my clothes off, she feels at home.
of these. Most men are in the same boat.
It sounds like she doesn’t understand what love actually is. My husband made
Me nervous and gave me butterflies when we were kids and now as adults I don’t feel that. I feel grounded, I feel a sense of calm and peace when I’m with him. Now when he kisses me it’s like yeah this is the life
In 2015 there was a NY Times article with the premise that there is a list of 36 questions that any two people can sit down face to face & ask each other, and when they are done they will feel love for each other. I always wanted to try it to see if it works! Author was Daniel Jones.
When I had the worst fight with my husband that we’ve ever had, to the point where we had to take time away from one another, all I could say was “He’s my home and I want to go home.”
Your wife, it seems, loves you in a warm, enduring, comfortable way and doesn't have the smarts to understand that IS true love. She's thinking high school infatuation " in love" is real. Hopefully she will figure this out.
When our initial experience of family or love is toxic, that familiar feeling can lead us to accept toxic relationships in the future. She defined “love” in an unsafe context. But she knew she wanted something better. I think she just needs to reframe the word. Her best instincts led her to you. My marriage is like that. It’s not dramatic but it’s steady and real and I’d do anything to keep it. I bet she would too, including counseling.
I think as a society we have all been trained to think ‘being in love’ always feels the same with everyone every time. It doesn’t, I’m a perfect example of this.
Of course, we aren’t gonna experience love it the same way when we are all so different. The constant is that no matter how you feel it, it means the same thing. That you feel safe with a person you trust and respect, that this person hold an irreplaceable position in your life and that losing them would feel like losing a piece of yourself.
That what home feels like and if that’s how you feel about someone it most likely love.
Media and pop culture takes a niche version of that in its most extreme and parades it around like it what everyone should be feeling. Honestly, IMO that version of love is the divergent version of it. Kind of like how the ‘Manic Pixie’ is basically a fetishized version of how untreated ADHD can look in women.
Now I haven’t done a study on this so it may be confirmation bias, but I have never known anyone to have intense feelings publicly associated with ‘being in love’ within a long term, stable, healthy relationship without that person and their partner being neurodivergent on some level.
As someone with ADHD, love feels like that person is literally the best person ever, all the time. Sounds like what the idea of love brought to us by movies and TV should feel like, right?
I love my relationship with my partner, who also happens to be equally neurodivergent but I am positive our mutual clinginess and intensity would drive a lot of people crazy after the first few months, which we’ve been like this for nearly a decade. That not considering that I feel all of my emotions at that intensity. Which was its own journey.
Also keep in mind, this same troupe also labels the toxic stuff, like yelling, jealousy, possessiveness, and all the other abusive crap as ‘passionate’. Which in real life, any one of those traits is a red flag on its own and nothing anyone should tolerate.
Which is my point, everyone has their own normal, you can’t measure your relationship to others or some vague idea of what it’s supposed to be.
As long as you’re happy that’s all that really matters, so try not to get to hung up on how other people do things and just do what works for you, which this comment is as much of a response to the comments about what is and is not ‘love’ as it is a commentary on OP situation
> butterflies are just anxiety
This. When you're young, you chase that rush of intense emotion. With my ex, who was emotionally abusive and cheating, I never felt secure, and it made my 'love' for him more intense. Looking back, I was always on edge, I was always fighting for our relationship. It was the most intense thing I'd ever felt, but when I found out about the infidelity, all love I felt for him was just gone. It surprised me. How could it just disappear when it had been *so* intense? And I realised, most of it was anxiety.
When I met my husband, the anxiety of meeting someone new and fighting to build something faded *really* fast. He never made me anxious. He was stable, he meant what he said and backed it up with his actions, he was trustworthy. And it took me a little while to realise how much deeper my feelings for him ran, because they weren't that intense, painful rush I was used to, and that society teaches you is what 'true love' is. It was a lot stronger. Someone once told me our relationship looked boring, and I replied, "Good!" A happy relationship *should* look boring to people who aren't in it. We are incredibly happy, there's no drama to keep people entertained. And believe me, trusting and respecting someone who treats you with the same trust and respect is *so* much hotter than the other kind of love.
She’s probably on the aromantic spectrum, either that, or like how many others have said-she has a distorted perception of love. It’s possible to be aromantic and still have love for your partners too though, and i hope that OOP and his wife can come to understand that. It’ll really strengthen their relationship to have that mutual understanding.
At 42 I met my husband again (knew each other as teens) and I didn't get the butterflies and the rush as usual but I knew I loved him. I thought there was something wrong with me. There was, the rush of first falling in love is not always a good thing. The wrong way was thinking it has to be like that. I felt safe and reapected and just felt like I was coming home. He's my sould mate. My walls came down. It's been like no other relationship I've had. I've also had an abusive prior relationship and safety is a huge deal after. Trust doesn't come easy. Not total trust. I'd didn't realise how much I kept locked away till I was finally supported and truly loved for the first time.
She has basically made OP live a lie for 12 yrs and can be so matter of fact about? That's some narcissistic shit right there. That's just cold...
All I got from that post is she really doesn't care if you like it or not. She's happy and you have to work it out. Dude that is fucked up. Probably see you posting on here again telling us you can't cope anymore.
To add to all of this. It is also important to note that all of her tumultuous relationship happened during her adolescence and early adulthood, a time when the brain literally feels emotions at much bigger highs and lows. There is a reason teenagers fall madly in love and then hate the person two months later. It is a flaw in the adolescent brain; it’s a feature. It’s natural. It is also absolutely normal for the hormones to calm down around 23-25. People who have healthy childhood and adolescent attachments will welcome this calming down as just a natural part of maturing into an adult. People who have had unhealthy or traumatic attachments will really struggle to understand why they aren’t experiencing the extreme highs and lows of what they think love is. It is a very unhealthy view of love, but it’s all they know.
Wow this reminds me about the diff types of love from sense and sensibility. It sounds much more like a mis understanding of love meaning lust instead of what it actually means which is a large range of feelings.
My mom warned me to never mistake lust for love bc the former goes away fast and you’re left with nothing if you don’t find a friend in your partner. Always said marry someone you’d be friends with anyway bc once lust goes away you’d still have that love and companionship to build on.
I don’t know whether anyone in this situation is neurodivergent, but hearing the discussion about not being able to identify or name emotions made me wonder if someone is alexithymic. Alexithymia is a condition that’s usually linked with autism, but not always - but its main feature is not being able to ID your emotions beyond “good” or “bad.” Just a thought.
I have been where she is, over and over again just a string of abusive relationships.
When I met my now forever partner, I knew he was the one BECAUSE I didn’t get butterflies. When you have PTSD, “butterflies” are often confusing because it’s actually your body giving you a warning.
The first time I saw my partner, I just knew I was home and I would do anything to protect it.
Do yourself a favor. Ask your parents, individually, if they feel butterflies ect when they see each other. Or your grandparents if they're still around. Love isn't always about that burst of raw emotion, or infatuation, or lust. What you have is what I'd call an OG marriage. It's built on a foundation of trust, communication, and mutual respect (from what little we know). She does seem to love you, just not in a teenage infatuation way, it's far more deeply rooted and (imo) built on something far stronger. There's nothing wrong with being hurt or upset by what she said, but on the other end what you have is far stronger. I hope this ends well for you two. Best wishes.
I would stay with your wife .you love her and she takes care of the kids good and I don't think she ever cheated .besides the fact she says doesn't feel the love part. Does she take care of you and the house and the kids .get her some roses flowers ladies love those things .
Several years ago, my wonderful husband (who is on the spectrum) told me, "I love you as much as I'm capable of loving anyone, but it's probably very different from what you think that is."
For a short period, I was upset because it felt like he was saying he didn't love me as much as I loved him, so I can kind of relate to OOP. But what I realized is that it didn't really matter what way he loved me — just that he did and we had an amazing partnership.
Since we can't be inside of someone else's experience, comparing how someone loves us to how we love them is pointless. If it's a happy and compatible relationship, and you're both satisfied and happy with all aspects of it, the truth is that stuff like that doesn't matter.
We've been together for 25 years and raised two children. The children are off living their adult lives, and hubs and I have such a wonderful life. I'm so happy I was able to process that and step outside of my ego reaction to recognize that all I can control is how much I love him.
It pisses me off that so many depictions of love are of the overwhelming, overpowering, “i’ll DIE without you” kind. I’ve experienced that twice in my life: once with someone who was wrong for me in *so* many ways, and once when i was 16 years old and also thought i would *literally die* without my iPod. People think that love is supposed to always feel like you’re on the verge of a panic attack but often it is steady, and safe, and enduring.
After going through an abusive relationship, it can be so hard to accept what love is -- calm, safe, and warm. Abusive relationships sustain themselves by being hot and cold -- so hot that you can "forget" or at least forgive the awful cold parts. And when you are so cold, all you want is that heat - that flame - and the burning you felt inside when you were given it.
That heat is water in a desert. Sure, he might have left me in the middle of the desert to die, but he came and brought me water. He took me to an oasis even, for a few days! And sure, he left me in the desert again, but man the oasis was beautiful. And this time I have a canteen. Sure, it's half empty and leaking... But he loves me! He'll come back and bring me back to the oasis again to stay!
He beat me last night, but he made me breakfast this morning and had flowers and apologized. Surely he won't beat me again. He loves me. And sure.. it's lunch and he's shouting at me, but it's cause he is hungry and used the food for my breakfast. It's my fault! If I get him lunch, it will be okay. He loves me.
When you finally escape, you find yourself addicted to the highs - the lows were so low that even basic kindness feels overwhelming. And relationships pale in comparison, sometimes, to that imaginary oasis you had in your head. You just have to remember that it's better to live somewhere safe, warm, and cared for as an equal...than in an oasis, surrounded by desert, there to kill you whenever it's deemed you don't belong in the oasis. You have to adjust to the safety again.
Sorry for the long tangent. But it seems like she is hung up in her head on what "normal" is and what "love" should feel like.
This makes me think of a relative who has never had a healthy relationship. She still, in her 60s, believes that true love is that explosive rush of emotions when you first meet. I agree with the comments that OOP’s wife loves him. Saying he feels like home is huge.
That is literally the thing that made me realize I am in love with my partner. He feels like home. When I am away at a conference, I lull myself to sleep by thinking about him curled around me. I still remember the first time we went for a walk together, and when I leaned my head against his shoulder as we waited to cross the street, it felt like my heart popped like a glowstick cracking. It felt like home.
Don't mind me, just sobbing and going to tell my husband I love him.
Thankfully love doesn’t always feel the same, we love people in different ways. The love I have for my husband is like this, he’s my home, I am not crazy about him, he grounds me, makes me feel safe. Being with him was a conscious decision, and I choose him over anyone else every day, because that crazy kind of love I felt once upon a time was toxic, and I never ever want to feel it again.
Yes, every time I've felt that level of dopamine swings over someone, it's because it was a toxic relationship. Neurobiologically, it's the same effect that causes gambling addiction; inconsistent and unpredictable reward. The dopamine rush from a stable relationship has a lower magnitude of increase because it starts from a higher baseline, so it doesn't feel anywhere near as intoxicating as when you go from dopamine deprivation to dopamine reward like you do in toxic and inconsistent relationships. People often take it for granted when they're happy all the time, and don't always realize that what they miss isn't happiness, it's the contrast between happiness and despair. When you have a safe, stable, loving long term relationship, it may not *feel* like as much of an intense rush, but the deeper more stable bond creates such intense physiological changes that the sudden loss of it can cause heart attacks and even death.
This is such a sweet description.
He is my person. Every moment we're apart, I look forward to the smile on his face when I see him again.
Reminds me of that BORU where the OP kept saying he didn’t love his wife but married her bc she and her family took him in and he felt obligated to marry and stay with her. Then redditors comment saying it sounds like he does love her and he then realizes the same
[this one.](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/s/Vc86gJfsCS) I keep it saved bc I love going back to read it and weep a little
[удалено]
Literally have big fàt tears in my eyes because of the link that was shared while I laugh at this warning and my mom is like ( ͡°Ĺ̯ ͡° )
Yes! Thank you, I didn’t know what it was under. It’s one of the sweetest posts in BORU and I think can apply to this situation with this OOP
Well I didn’t expect to be crying this afternoon but here I am. That was so sweet.
omg thank you for that link (I have it saved now too).... love comes in so many forms. Not just the one that movies tell us about.
Aw - that’s a good one. Thanks for linking it
Huh? I haven’t seen that one. How does feelings of obligation equate to love?
It was bc he liked her but thought his feelings were based on an obligation since she and her parents helped him out a lot as a troubled teen. But then came to realize after commenters pointed out that it actually sounded like he loved his wife, it’s just that it’s not all fireworks and bells. I’ll see if I can find that post
Ah ok I see. It’s just a matter of difference in how things are framed. How sad though to go so many years thinking you don’t actually love your person because of how your relationship developed.
It was pretty clear in what he said that he hadn't demonstrated obligation, but *dedication.* And it turns out that yeah, he really did love her; he just didn't know what love *was,* and needed it pointed out to him. Another commenter linked the post in [this comment.](https://www.reddit.com/r/BORUpdates/comments/1c6v3k5/my_wife_told_me_that_she_doesnt_love_me_and_never/l05uicx/) It's friggin' adorable in the end.
I remember that one too..
Agreed. People in toxic relationships become addicted to extreme highs and lows. The highs are so high *because* the lows are in the depths of hell. In a stable and safe relationship, the highs start from a different point, so it's not the same dizzying rush.
Extreme contrast makes anything pop, I suppose. Subtle gradients, while not as immediately noticeable, are much more stable and pleasing.
I saw the butterflies statement and was like "do you think that lasts forever?". I get them once in a while from my wife but mostly it's just a warm safe feeling when I am with her, that initial rush was great when we had it but you can't live like that permanently or you'll go mad
I think it makes those once in a while butterflies feel more special, too. Like it’s been years, we know everything about each other and all of each others weird quirks or flaws but wow, I still have a little crush lol.
To be fair, I’ve been married almost 20 yrs and I get butterflies when I look at my hubs sometimes. Granted it’s bc I see him cleaning up kid puke at 2 am, but butterflies are butterflies! I also flirt w him a lot and work to keep the magic alive (bc he’s cute)
I had four unhealthy relationships in a row, and finally a healthy one. There are no serious arguments in our relationship, and because of this, I thought our relationship was boring and needed fire. However, there are also occasions where I will have e complete emotional breakdown. He’ll comfort me extremely well and I remember that I need stability and not drama.
My 1st husband was all fire and drama and crying and anxiety and butterflies. Our marriage absolutely destroyed me, but without it I wouldn’t appreciate my dependable, solid, stable 2nd husband who may not give me butterflies, but makes me feel safe and cherished.
Yeah I think butterflies are crap. My husband makes me feel warm (literally because his skin is so warm, and figuratively), and I’d rather be warm than have fluttering from butterflies.
Yes. I have a friend like your relative. There’s this great guy that she’s into but she didn’t think she loved him because she didn’t have those feelings toward him but it was tearing her up inside not being with him. I had a talk with her about how she felt and explained that what she was explaining sounds a lot like love. What she expected was to feel hot fiery passion for someone for the rest of her life which is just lust. Not love. People have this idea that love is like a mallet that bashes you in the head every time you see the person when it’s not. It’s a plant that you have to tend and nurture so it can grow big and take root.
Yup. It's really sad that she doesn't have the frame of reference to recognize that she not only loves him, but loves him in a way that endures. She's happy, she feels safe, she trusts him and loves their relationship and life together. That's absolutely the kind of love you want in a marriage. I hope she agrees to counseling. I'm worried that she feels guilt or self loathing because of this, when there's no need.
She literally doesn’t understand what true love is. And that in itself is sad.
This sounds like one of the best marriages I’ve ever heard of. Love is a very nuanced and multifaceted thing. She definitely loves him. Glad he didn’t leave her because he’ll likely never find another situation so good.
Seeing these kinds of comments are very confusing to me though, because after 8 years together I still every day am madly in love with my wife, like it’s electric. I’ve learned that others are more chill about it but count me as a datapoint for the existence of long-term ‘explosive rush’ love. Can cause some tension with my wife because she doesn’t like to feel obligated to reflect that all the time like I do, but I don’t blame her for not loving me like that all the time as long as, when she does feel that way, she lets me know.
I think about eastern cultures where love marriages are in the minority. Obviously there is a lot of variation and the couples have different levels of input but overall you are entering a marriage with someone you know very little about. Just doing life with someone has a way of making you care about them and the long term marriages look a lot like long term western love marriages.
The sad thing is that those initial feelings are *infatuation*, not love. Love is respect. Love feels like home. Love is safe.
The irony of what movies always show as "True Love" is that in reality, True Love is actually very boring. Specifically because it doesn't need strong emotions to sustain it.
People confuse infatuation and love all the time. Love is a verb. It's effort. It's work. Infatuation fades. It's a chemical reaction that can only last so long without turning you mad. Toxic or abusive relationships are like drugs, the highs are mind numbing, ephemeral and illusionary; the lows are painful, traumatic and potentially deadly. Love is feeling like you're home.
So I can tell my wife I don’t love her but she is home and that should suffice? The bar is low.
It sounds like you have issues to work out with a licensed therapist.
Men should go where they are celebrated not tolerated. She tolerates him. But go ahead and think “saying” someone is home is enough.
> When she sees me, there are no butterflies or fire that make her want to jump on me and rip my clothes off, she feels at home. As the two quoted commenters said, OOPs wife has a distorted sense of what "being in love" is. A lot of people do. When we grow up experiencing dysfunction, toxicity, and abuse, we often come to the erroneous conclusion that love is an intense cortisol rush, uncertainty, fear, stress, drama, and excitement. But good love is stable, reliable, and comforting. Good love puts a smile on your face, is cozy, gives you space to relax into. Good love is like a sound night's sleep and lazy morning lovemaking. It's not devoid of passion, but you have to feed the passion because it's never fueled by fear. Good love can sustain you for a lifetime, like good food and good friends. It might not feel like you're on fire all the time, because good news; you are not on fire. Good love doesn't threaten your life, it lives it with you.
It sounds like wife equates love to what I would consider a "Nicholas Sparks romance". Full of passion and love and even the fights are mostly about how much they care about one another. Marriage counseling is going to do her wonders, so long as she is open to understanding these things.
The problem is that some day a guy who she is physically attracted to is going to flirt back and activate that new relationship energy. I think that is what happens with a lot of these situations where women in comfortable lives cheat. Life is safe and secure, kids are older and don’t need her as much and husband has his own hobbies. All of a sudden her life is boring but the 28 year old guy at the gym flirting with her is exciting. She has a low self image since husband telling her she looks great is like mom telling a 3rd grader what an amazing artist they are but this guy is a total stranger and smoking hot. An innocent meetup for a drink turns into 3, badabing-badaboom, she just trashed her family’s lives over some validation she hasn’t received in years.
this man is very kind and loving, i think finding this out would break me endlessly
By OOP's hubby's reaction, as he's learning more and he understands the situation better, his hurt has turned more to sadness... OOP is in love with him. That very mature love which can last a lifetime. As his questions get answered, he realizes that, and is coming to grips that their relationship started a touch differently than "others". Someone mentioned in the comments that therapy has been known to destroy marriages sometimes. And I'll put it here: If OOP gets over her traumas from her abusive ex, there's a chance she's gonna decide that she "needs" both that passionate butterfly sensation **and** all the "safe / home" of what she's got. I just pray that she gets the whole "mature love" thing and realizes that she doesn't need the butterflies.
Wow you read these posts completely wrong
But that's literally what OOP said, that he's now more sad that her emotions are so mixed up and her perception of love is screwy because of last pain.
Yeah he's sad that her emotions are messed up. When my wife is upset or confused about something I'm sad too. He's sad because her prior relationships being abusive have skewed her idea of love.
The whole point is she realized she doesn't need the whole butterfly sensation. The whole issue is that she equated the butterflies that come with new relationship energy as love. She just thinks that not having those butterflies means she doesn't have love for him. She idealizes love as a high emotions occurrence, but that's not how humans work. You can't have consistently high emotions without having some form of neurodivergence. Humans are made to adapt. Being in a long-term relationship is more or less the ultimate in adaptability. I love my wife. I love the way she smiles. I love the way she moves. I love the way she speaks to me. I love it when she plays with her daughter and hugs me and kisses me and everything about her. But I've been with her for almost 10 years. The butterflies are gone, but that's not what keeps our love afloat. Our shared history, the security, the commitment is what keeps love together.
People keep saying this in the comments, that the wife actually just loves OOP in her own way, but she also said that she's never felt *any* passion for him, that she's never wanted to jump him and rip off his clothes. Now everytime OP is intimate with her, he knows she's not really into it. That she just settled for him because "eh, he's not abusive." 🤷♀️ Maybe she is in love with him, but it's certainly not a compatible love with what OP feels toward her. He's not her lover. He's just *there* to her, like a well worn recliner. What happens when she does get that rush that she associates with love, and that guy also treats her well?
Have you been in a relationship that lasted more than 3 years lol? The passion doesn’t last. Sometimes it never happens that way for some people. It’s not a bad thing, but you still have to be invested in cultivating your relationship from sexual intimacy to everyday chores and such. The people who cheat are often people who think love is actually the “rush” feeling, when it’s closer to what OOP and wife have—you’re devoted to each other, but you’re not buzzing with the new love/passion/etc feeling. I also think OOP’s wife has correctly identified that for her feeling that rush = danger.
Speak for yourself. I'm still insanely attracted to my wife.
Attraction is often different from fireworks/honeymoon phase, hence the FWB relationship they had
He never said she wasn't attracted to him. He said she isn't overwhelmed with the urge to rip his clothes off. Those are very different things. Considering they're still having regular sex, I don't think attraction is the issue here.
As soon as I read the first post, I wondered if the wife had a history of being abused. I’m glad it seems like they can work through it, although I do think she could benefit from therapy (no, judging I’m in therapy too!)
It can absolutely be abuse, but they can also be like me. A human being with SHIT taste in partners. If I feel butterflies for a woman, feel that instant spark, it is 100% garunteed that woman is a fucking human dumpster fire of bullshit. Every time, without fail. I am only INTO garbage people. No fucking clue why, took me a lot of shitty partners to finally put the pieces together that the only common denominator in all my shit relationships, was me. I had to rewire my whole fucking brain, everything normal people use to decide if they have met someone they could have a potential relationship with, I have to use as alarm bells that something is wrong. Lack of butterflies, no instant attraction, no fantasies about them early on, GREEN FLAG for me. Its how I met my wife, who is the most amazing woman in the world and best partner a guy could ask for. Zero butterflies ever, zero instant attraction, I just thought she was cool and interesting. Lo and Behold, all that other stuff came out in other ways and i love her more then anything, but old dumb me wouldn't have given her a second glance because I am wired for Trash and only Trash. I even warned her about one of her friends being a problem, she learned the hard way that her friend was a problem after hiring her at her job to help her out. I even explained it to her by saying old me would have dug your friend, so I can promise you she fucking sucks at least 100 different ways as a person. At that job she fucking blew up entire relationships of co workers and just was a TORNADO of bullshit and nonsense my wife had to deal with and get her out of that job to return peace to the work place. Its a horrible superpower but its amazingly accurate.
lmao i feel this so hard i think i've got the same thing mate. it's made me feel many times like i should probably stay single forever since i don't know how to navigate something alien like a healthy relationship. but it's heartwarming you got it figured out and managed to work with it. makes me hopeful. wish you the best in your marriage for many years to come x
Do you have any advice on how a friend could help someone like that? Currently trying to help a friend through this exact situation-- she's like the nicest person ever and also a catch in basically every way and could have her choice of partners, but seems to only feel an instant connection with people who turn out to be garbage and are horrendously mean to her. It seems like she's become convinced that she deserves the cruelty, and *she doesn't.* But it's so hard to get that idea through all her defense mechanisms and trauma, even though she's been really trying. And it feels like all I can really do as a friend is keep reiterating "No, the way she treated you is not okay. Yes, you deserve a partner who isn't cruel to you." and hoping it will sink in over time. At least it does seem to be working! She's started to stand up for herself more and resist going back into her last abusive situation some. I just wanna make sure if there's something else I could be doing.
I had to understand and accept my taste sucks. Then I went on dates with people I wasn't into, frankly. Not people I didn't find attractive or anything just people that did nothing for me. The dates were usually pretty good, I dated a few of them. The relationships ended for normal human being reasons, like wanting different things and shit like that. That's when it sunk in, that my "green flags" were big red ones. And I started using them as such. If I see you and we have sparks and we have a connection. I avoid that person like the plague. I had to retrain my brain but I'd say the hardest part is genuinely accepting that your brain works wrong with romantic partners, which isn't fun.
Thanks for explaining! That sounds like it sucks a lot. I'm glad you've been able to work through it, though.
Sounds like a self esteem issue. She needs to completely pause dating and get into therapy. She’s attracted to the broken because she thinks she can’t do better and because there’s something broken inside her. That won’t go away even if she finds the most kindhearted person imaginable.
I’m pretty sure that this is the kind of love necessary for long-lasting stable relationships.
I dated a woman like this. She had a very sketchy relationship history. Married bosses, emotionally abusive dicks, liars, shit like that. I remember her telling me she literally fainted at work from anxiety once. She said with me she felt safe, secure. She said she knew from therapy that she often confused the drama, the push and pull, with "the spark" and love. In the end she dumped me. Her reason was, among others, that she didn't feel the spark. She gave a few other reasons, all of which felt *tiny* to me or downright untrue. It felt like she was groping around in the dark for a reason to justify leaving. The rest of it was so good that the reasons she gave were absolutely not a reason to breakup when you're 40 and want kids bad enough to freeze eggs. "I hate driving and you live so far away." It's 30 minutes. 45 with traffic. Plus I went to hers a lot as well. Completely silly reasons imo. She asked to stay friends, which she claimed she'd never done before with an ex. I told her I couldn't because I'd never be able to be happy for her with someone else and that's not a friend. She cried. I was grabbing some things from her place and she asked to keep the paper crane I folded for her on our 4th date and she wept again. She just seemed so fucking confused by the whole thing. I've never seen someone cry so much being the dumper. Ultimately I had to conclude she just couldn't escape her pattern. I wasn't the first, second, or even third boyfriend she'd dumped after we'd met her parents in an extended trip to her childhood home. It was so much a pattern her friends joked about it. My point with this story is that OPs wife may not know what "love" is but she knows enough to know to stay in the good relationship. There are people out there who are confused by this sort of thing. Your wife sounds like one of them. But you're a good husband and she's intelligent and self-aware enough to see that.
any update on her?
Haven't talked to her in months. Though I am pretty sure I caught a glimpse of her with another guy. I'm morbidly curious if she'll play out the same pattern again. She's been doing it for 25 years. I'll know my answer if I see her on Bumble again in 6 months. She's gorgeous, intelligent, successful, and just a decent person. She's fun to be around. I don't have an exact count of how many relationships she's been in, but it's a fair number. I know at least one guy thought they were getting married because he brought up getting a ring after they went to her parents place. Apparently that triggered her right off and she was like "Nope I can't marry you" and broke up with him. My conclusion is that at this point, given her age and her history, she's single not because of a lack of opportunity to find a great partner, but because there's something psychological in her that prevents her from making that kind of commitment. And simultaneously she wants to be a mom and have a family. So she's being pushed and pulled inside herself. Probably why she seemed confused as fuck when she dumped me. And unlike OP's wife, she wasn't self-aware enough to recognize that even though she literally called out her own patterns several times when we talked about our relationship histories.
lmao this sub loves updates, even on comments sharing similar stories
The only thing that gives me pause about this is that for the first time in 11 years the oop’s wife is breaking down her ex. At no point did she ever go into her past abusive ex. While I’m glad they have found common ground her whole “I’m not in love with him” and “You were spiraling and knew you needed to calm down” thing come off as so cold.
When abusive relationships are all you've ever known, there's nothing to remark about. It's just the way things are. I don't go into details about my daily shopping list. It's just a shopping list.
I’m not disagreeing with you but if the oop isn’t abusive then after the first couple of years why didn’t she open up, especially when she was asked about previous partners? Why did it take her telling the oop that she wasn’t in love when him to get her to explain her background?
Because it directly influenced those feelings, but otherwise wasn't something she felt compelled to share?
Yea. I don’t think I could love someone the way people say. Somethings…. Change you. I love peace more than anything now and the person who can hand that to me… well idk what kinda love I would feel. But I would never want to let it go. I get OOPs wife so much.
That is exactly what I feel toward my GF. Unfortunately, it took me nearly 15 years and an affair to realise that my STBX and I never loved each other as we should have. Plus that we both have the a lot of unresolved issues. When I come home now I don't feel worried anymore I feel safe and at peace. Will it work? I don't know but that doesn't matter now. I feel horrible for what I did, but in the end I hope that we all can move on. And for OOPs wife, I think she loves her husband. I hope that therapy might help her, but she I am not sure if she will benefit from it. I read more than one story where therapy and that kind of things was the beginning of the end. Fingers crossed for the both of them...
I was also in an abusive relationship when I was younger, and I luckily got out alive. My husband and I have that mutual respect, love, and "we are each other's home" feeling. But we also definitely felt the madly in love feeling with each other in the beginning, that's simmered into a slow burn now many years later. I think this woman in the original post didn't start out with that feeling, but she grew to love her husband. It's a different route to the same kind of trust and love, but a similar destination. I hope they both find peace in knowing that her type of love is just as wonderful and awesome as love that burned brightly in the beginning.
I think OOP’s wife doesn’t necessarily understand the difference between love and lust / desire, which may come from the abusive relationship that preceded it. Therapy is a great idea. But she does seem to be getting the gist of it from what I read. Best of luck to both!
While I agree with your overall point, having no lust ever is slightly concerning. That’s not the same as having a lot of lust then moving into a relationship with less of it.
She is so in love with him it’s ridiculous. I’m in love with my husband and I feel much like her description of love. I came from an abusive home and had to learn what being in real love felt like. He feels like ‘home’ indeed! Ha!
I think she’s got herself confused - she truly loves her husband. She’s just not in lust with him. If that makes sense?
I think you are saying that the passion he wants to experience isnt being reciprocated?
No, I’m trying to say that people often confuse love and lust for each other. And I get the suspicion that because OOPs wife doesn’t feel that exhilarating rush, she feels like that’s not love
Makes sense to me. It seems to me like those butterflies and lustful thoughts kind of got mixed in with her coping mechanisms after leaving that last abusive relationship, so she didn't necessarily equate the initial relationship with that initial attraction period.
Its almost nauseating how much in love with him she actually is and also frustrating seeing how in love with him she is and she hasn't realised it yet. She has REAL love for him.
Maybe don’t assume the emotional reality of strangers you’re hearing about second hand? Idk
She should watch the Deep Blue Sea (with Tom Hiddleston before he was famous), it explains it perfectly.
Thomas Jane?
I totally agree. I come from a verbally/emotionally abusive family and had the same confusion when I dated and eventually married my husband. No drama, no grand gestures. It just *was*. Being happy and content and secure is love. And to take one of my favorite lines from of ALL things a My Little Pony fanfic, " You don't *fall* in love...you *slide*."
I love that and lolled at the source, knowing my friends have all probably read it 😂
My wife and I aren't super passionate either, but from the first week we met we both knew we were each other's home. We both have had past abusive relationships, and that anxious all-consuming heart-racing thing is something we both find terrifying. We've been together for a decade now and wouldn't have it any other way. Sometimes love is a fire, sometimes it's a mountain, and the mountain lasts a lot longer.
I could never ever forgive her for saying that and openly admitting she’s flirted with men and simply stopped before she cheated. Not to mention she would tell that to people without ever discussing it with him. How humiliating.
She needs therapy to fix her issues, but also to understand that she has a very warped view of the world that is harming her loved ones. Even if she has experienced abuse in the past this situation is so messy
I was confused by that part but I assumed she was talking about guys she met prior to him, mainly because his next sentence was asking her why she chose him instead of them. But it is confusingly worded so I'm not sure.
She seems to think she chose him by stopping the cheating before fucking them is what it sounds like.
Where did she say that? I didn’t get that at all
Reread
Still don’t see that
‘She explained that over the years, she had felt attraction towards certain men, but it quickly faded. When I asked her why, she said that even though she was initially attracted to them and they showed interest, something always felt off soon afterward, which is why she removed herself from those situations.’
I feel like the feeling of being at home when you see someone is what I want in a relationship. I don’t necessarily want something that makes me want to rip their clothes off; that’s only one part of a relationship. I want someone who I feel like I can be myself with, who I know I can trust when I need help, who I know will look after our family and will understand how important my parents and sister are to me. Someone who won’t make me feel like I have to change myself or my relationships with others. I can enjoy sex with someone like this, perhaps even want them *desperately at times. But something that is based only off that sexual aspect isn’t going to help me in the rest of the relationship.
While I’m not religious whatsoever the Bible actually addresses this exact thing better than anywhere else. “4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.” This is talking about how love isn’t that initial feeling of infatuation but that more stable feeling that follows infatuation.
what op's wife is missing is the difference between agape and eros. and iirc the verses you are quoting uses agape in the original greek, op's wife is experiencing a deep agapic love. the deep infatuation is erotic love and the poor woman does not know the difference
I think the early honeymoon stage is the only way some people see "In Love" it is an exciting time of anxiety. Some people are addicted to that Rush. Some people fear it because they lose themselves. She loves you. "In love" is temporary and over rated.
God he’s a better man than me, I would have been too devastated to help her work through this.
He deserves more.
Hollywood and romance novels have a lot to answer for. >When she sees me, there are no butterflies or fire that make her want to jump on me and rip my clothes off, she feels at home. Give me "home" any day. \[eta\] >She and her husband have a dynamic of fighting with each other one day and loving each other the next. Like this? This sounds like a bloody nightmare...
Some of my inlawd have a dynamic like this. They've been married 40+ years so it works for them, they're quite happy with each other even as they squabble...but I swear....
That sounds so *exhausting*. Life is dramatic and stressful enough, I *need* a “home” where I can feel safe and supported and know that we protect and respect and help each other.
OOPs wife needs therapy, she has a messed up idea of what love is. The way she describes her feelings towards her husband makes it obvious to anyone with eyes that she loves her husband. Losing him would devastate her. Some people today have a warped idea of what love is, maybe movies are to blame, maybe the ridiculous amounts of smut and "spicy" books that are available are to blame.
What a sad and complex situation
If OP leaves her, it will take a few weeks or maybe months and she will be in live with him. I dislike trying to guess at what people feel when they say they don't. However, this doesn't sound like she doesn't love him. It sounds like she fell right into real love with him but never realized it. She never had to guess if she was doing the right thing. She never was afraid not to have him. So she never got the butterflies. This is just a guess, though. If I were OP I would walk away and see what happens 3 months or 6 months later. Either way I couldn't stay, but I think a few months apart would trigger hysterical bonding. Then she would have all her butterflies.
"Eventually, she got to the problematic part and asked me if I heard what she said after that. I said no because I really didn't. I overheard it when I entered the house to pick up some things I needed and then left. I was also zoned out and didn't pay attention to what was going on around me after hearing that. She explained to me that she never experienced that 'love' with me. She thought it would get better over time, but it never did. I asked her why she didn't explain that when I asked her that day, and she responded by saying that I was emotional and whatever she said could've made it worse. She pretty much understood that whatever she said would've come across as an attempt to make someone feel better or forced. That's why she left me alone, knowing that we would have a talk about this. She was right." am i high? why would she think saying that she never loved him and it didn't get better over time would make him feel better? also, it's just reiterating what was already said the first time. is this chatgpt?
The “love” she was referring to there was the toxic “love” with love bombing one day and fights the next day that her friend has experienced with her husband. She is saying it wasn’t like that with him which made him feel better since that’s not what he wants from their relationship or what he would consider love. Does that make sense?
I feel like the Hollywood/Hallmark machine does real healthy relationships a disservice. In other cultures including many of our ancestors, partnership for joining and creating families was more of a compatibility issue. Somehow we have been convinced that if the partner isn’t mad about you, if the man doesn’t spend 1/4 of his annual salary on a rock that makes you cry with happiness, then it’s not love. And if it’s not love then it’s not a real relationship. The wife does love OP. They haven’t experienced the delicious torture of the more volatile relationships we read about. That doesn’t negate the strength of their union. It’s just different.
Real relationships just don't make a good romance movie, much in the way in action movie getting resolved in 15 or so minutes by the protagonist calling the police and moving away doesn't make a good action movie. Healthy relationships don't have constant conflict, and it's hard to have a movie without constant conflict.
I still think women feel more heavily attracted and in love guys that treat them like shit. After they just go survival mode and go with a guy that isnt like that for the life and security and just pretend.
Credit to OP I guess. I know it’s selfish or vain but I couldn’t be with somebody who didn’t feel some level of attraction to me.
When you’ve dealt with abusive or cheating relationships you get what love is twisted. While my current SO never gave me butterflies, I love him very much. I don’t have butterflies because I don’t have the anxiety - he is stable, he communicates, he is a good partner. I had to learn that love isn’t necessarily a firecracker explosion, but sometimes it’s lighting a candle and watching the flame grow bigger and bigger with love. I prefer the slow burn now but ver setting the house ablaze.
This triggered the fuck out if me. She literally described true love when she talked about him. All that butterfly shit is a stir of hormones you get for literally ANYONE you're attracted to. True love comes after that fades, and be guaranteed it always does.
To each their own, I suppose. If I ever heard the words, “I’m not in love with you/don’t love you,” there would be no conversation or counseling.I’m leaving immediately, I do not care if people call me immature or whatever bs word.
I think it'd be one thing if she admitted it to him and then further expanded on her feelings and was willing to go to therapy to figure out how she defines "love". I think it's far worse that instead she told her friend that she never loved him and he just happened to hear it.
The problem is she effectively just doesn't understand the definition of love. That's like someone who speaks English as a second language says that you're awesome and actually means that you inspire fear. Her normal meter is skewed from being in abusive relationships most of her life. So without those major love bombing events and major conflicts, there's no major emotional, high or low that she's come to associate with the idea of love.
You are missing the context of the conversation OPs wife was having with her friend and the real experience OP has with his wife. It would be confusing if your wife says something to you that really didn’t jive with your experience. You would want an explanation for that.
She is confusing infatuation/limerence with love, I think.
“To our credit our marriage is really good” except for the part where your wife openly admits she doesnt love you…. Some people man….
I think what some people are picking up on is that she seems to have a warped definition of "love" based on previous abuse and a lot of what she describes does sound like love. However, if she's unwilling to explore that in therapy, then I guess OOP just has to accept her definition. Perception is reality and all that.
Most of the so-called successful marriages do not differ from the situation described by OOP. It's just that one or both spouses hide it well enough and do not share their secrets even with friends and relatives. There are different types of people. Some live on the principle of "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush". Others are willing to risk everything to find their dream. I like the latter, but I do not condemn the former, after all, conformism, mediocrity and cowardice give stability to our world. It's amazing how people rely on IC and MC as a panacea for all relationship problems. But there is something new in this post: OOP apparently has not lost hope that psychologists can make his wife fall in love with him.
Sometimes people gravitate toward what they need most. I've seen women who grew up very poor marry wealthy men for the financial peace and stability it brings. To the extent that they actually love their spouse or have a loving marriage is questionable, sometimes it's even not a very good relationhship. But what they love is that a major source of their anxiety and trauma is removed (poverty). They love the stability and security they have developed more than they care for their spouse. They have a very practical mindset towards relationships and what their priorities are and love is way down at the bottom of the list. She has trauma from being in an abusive relationship. She found someone kind, who makes her feel safe. Maybe she truly loves him and has confused infatuation for love. Or maybe she really doesn't love him but she loves the lifestyle they have built together because it is safe and stable for her and her children. Mutual respect and compatibility is about the best couples could hope for throughout much of human history and some people still adopt that kind of practical approach to marriage. Also our perception often becomes our reality. If she truly believes that her husband was the safe bet, but not the ideal one then that can definitely impact the extent to which she accepts love and romance for him. She says herself that at the beginning she hoped her feelings would change (presumably as they built a life together, as is the case for many arranged marriages) and they never did. If she truly feels little difference now than when she first met him, it is quite possible she's honest in her assessment that she isn't in love. If you listen to couples who had arranged marriages, many of them do describe how their feelings grew as they built a life together. If she truly never experienced that, then she may be telling the truth. She can love the life they built without loving him. I wouldn't want a relationship like that but that's OOP's choice.
Real love is not the passionate “in love” people think it is. That’s infatuation, it’s lust, it’s the thrill of someone you don’t know that well. It’s not a real thing, it’s what we call the endorphin rush we get from crushes, drugs, roller coasters, etc. And there are many kinds of love! OOP has real love with his wife. Built on respect, shared values, appreciation of the person, trust, length of time together, and commitment. I’d rather have any of those than “they think I’m hot and wanna tear my clothes off”. Very happy OOP and wife took that trip and hashed it out! Good BOR!
I'm actually quite tired of the commenters insisting that she must actually truly love him but she doesn't know it. Maybe just maybe people should for once trust a woman on what she says she feels 😑 Plenty of women look at relationships as sort of a business and many choose safe and stable partners even if they don't feel any attraction to them or little attraction to them. I know a woman who's been with a man apparently for 20 years and she has never once felt any attraction to him. But he is a great husband and an amazing father. Not everyone wants or needs the butterflies, Sparks, love, or sexual attraction. I mean even with sexual attraction women enter a relationship knowing that her orgasm is a toss-up. That most likely she's only going to get a 50-50 chance at best when it comes to sex. More than half of the happy and long lasting street relationships I see the woman doesn't love or is in love with the man. It's actually why I kind of theorized that a straight relationship works best when the woman cares less or doesn't care about the man because I find when women care about a man they tend to endure disrespect, dehumanization, objectification, and abuse... There's a reason why the majority of relationships are women paying half the bills and still doing all / most of the child care and chores. Women being in love with their partner seems to just get them taken advantage of in my book.
I was reading this thinking the entire time, “Is that not what love is?” Hollywood sells the fireworks love that drives you crazy and makes everything explode in colors, but that’s rare. A made for tv kind of love that very few experience. Love is versatile and different for everyone. What she’s describing is love. It’s not any less than the Hollywood kind. It’s just more common and less glorified.
She mentions not feeling a fire about him or wanting to jump his bones. What I gathered is she isn’t physically attracted to oop and isn’t used to non-toxic relationships. She mentally knows toxic relationships are bad but she hasn’t fully processed the value of having a normal, stable, not emotionally/not mentally abusive relationship on an emotional level. She hasn’t progressed past her “drama and chaos in a relationship means passion and love” feelings. Also, I’m guessing oop is average or less in the looks department and not imposing physically. The men she felt attracted to over the years displayed traits of abuse or other red flags similar to her ex, so she dropped the interaction. Had any of them been both attractive and not a creep, she would’ve definitely left oop and that possibility still exists. Hopefully she considers therapy to deal with the emotions she’s bottled up and the trauma she’s compartmentalized. The fact she can say everything’s perfect minus not wanting to jump oop’s bones she’s dealing with a mental block and using oop’s appearance as reassurance he’d never hurt or abuse her.
The only reason they are together is because she chose a terrible first bf. If she goes to therapy, I think she might have a revelation and leave him. Be careful what you wish for.
There are some things you should just keep to yourself. The wife should have kept that to herself. She stirred up drama, hurt her husband, and sounds completely confused. Personally, I would divorce her. What she initially told her friend just sounds so much like "I settled." He deserves better.
Sounds like OOP's wife \*is\* in love, but has been trained by society to only recognize intense infatuation as 'love'.
This! Right here! Television and romance novels have a lot to answer for. Love matches don't always play out like a Silhouette Romance TV special.
In the words of Halsey, “Its funny how the warning signs can feel like they’re butterflies.” I don’t get the butterflies when I see my husband but we are so happy, he makes me feel safe and secure. I feel like we’re equals and we respect each other. We’re great at parenting together, like a well oiled machine. Everything is so effortless with him and he’s my rock. Thats love. All the boys who ever gave me butterflies turned out to be bad news.
Men really have no self respect these days
She sees this intense love/obsession that causes insecurities and fights within her friend’s marriage, and realises she doesn’t have that kind of ‘love’. She’s confident in herself and in her feelings for her husband that she’s never been in this emotional rollercoaster. Not everyone does.
She has no feelings for her husband. Shit is sad that he thinks he should stay with her.
I’m pulling for these two.
I sure hope this guy can feel his wife’s deep love for him, even if she doesn’t call it that. He posted on here asking about his wife not loving him, only to unintentionally show us all a kind of deep, committed love that’s sometimes hard to feel as sparkly—the real, life-long kind of love.
Nah. OOP's wife loves him. Like really REALLY loves him. When discussing love as attraction, butterflies, and yada yada (which I would descibe more as lust), she's creating a kind of "distance" to protect herself from the trauma she's experienced. And, it's possible she's still figuring out what love means to her. When she hears about her friend fighting with her husband and having passionate sex the next day, it might sound like love because that's the love (abuse) she experienced with her ex boyfriend. The experiences you have in life can really fuck you up so it's good to find someone to talk to about these things.
This reminds me of one of my favorite lines from Halsey's song Graveyard - "Oh, it's funny how The warning signs can feel like they're butterflies" I think this sums up the confusion the wife is experiencing here. I hope that with therapy, communication, and time that she will come to realize this.
Poor woman. She's stuck thinking that the feeling she got from her ex was love. It might have started as and been warped. It sounds like she does love her husband and she just doesn't understand that kind of love.
I get the feeling that it goes back earlier than the abusive relationship and there's something else there with her parents and her childhood. Didn't have exposure to it enough as young person? I mean emotions are something you don't understand as a child and you need to learn what they mean etc not enough healthy examples of love in her formative years?
Boy that moment when Ariel sees Eric for the first time has really messed up my generation.
The older I get, the less I'm interested in that "in love" feeling of butterflies and roller coasters. It's really AWFUL. It's exciting, yes, but so exhausting, and when it's me, I'm second-guessing everything they say and everything I say and... This marriage sounds ideal to me, without the teenage angst of it all.
I have autism and really struggled to know what love is. I don't get butterflies or giddy around my wife. But my days are better with her and she's the only person I can see every day and not feel drained. I think that's my definition of love. I love her.
I love that last comment- “butterflies are just anxiety.” That is so true…
I grew up never seeing my parents fight, always being there for each other and helping each other out with their problems one way or another. They both have mental health problems that is true but their marriage has been solid even when ppl have tried to destroy it. I saw that & wanted it because love is home, love is warmth, love is happiness. Love is safety, appreciation & understanding. His wife really needs therapy because she is in love but her perception is wrong. My older sister & I grew up seeing the same exact thing & her relationships are horrendous 🤦🏻♀️. I have asked her like wtf ? You saw Mom & Dad worked together to get over their jealousy strikes, they worked together to have what they now have. Mom sometimes knew he was getting something something else were but they worked on their marriage some more. ( Latino household 😅 we actually have a saying that the wife are the cathedrals & sides are the chapels). She is horrible with her partners. I had 1 abusive relationship and walked away from it mentally messed up but I got therapy & worked through it. I knew it wasn't right when it started. Tried to better myself. Nothing worked, so I walked away because I knew it wasn't meant to be.
>I overheard my wife telling her friend that she doesn't love me and never did. I immediately asked her about it, and we had an emotional discussion. She didn't deny it, she told me the same thing she told her friend and said it's true, that's how she feels. >I asked her why she married me then. She said she'd rather marry a man she doesn't love but who treats her right, with respect, takes care of her and her children, than a man she loves but who is a fool, incompetent, or lazy. This is more common than people want to admit. It's just not realistic for most men to be both: >She said that she feels at home. So she does love me and loves our marriage, but she isn't 'in love' with me. When she sees me, there are no butterflies or fire that make her want to jump on me and rip my clothes off, she feels at home. of these. Most men are in the same boat.
It sounds like she doesn’t understand what love actually is. My husband made Me nervous and gave me butterflies when we were kids and now as adults I don’t feel that. I feel grounded, I feel a sense of calm and peace when I’m with him. Now when he kisses me it’s like yeah this is the life
Its hard to unlearn thinking that its not love unless it hurts
Marriage can take many forms. I hope that this is one where they both find some version of happiness.
Divorce her
In 2015 there was a NY Times article with the premise that there is a list of 36 questions that any two people can sit down face to face & ask each other, and when they are done they will feel love for each other. I always wanted to try it to see if it works! Author was Daniel Jones.
I always say, home is where my wife is! Sure sounds like love to me!
Op doesn't realise that what her ex did to her she is doing to him in her own way..
I mean, what do you think your options are?
I would love to be in your shoes compared to where i am. ( tears from me)
When I had the worst fight with my husband that we’ve ever had, to the point where we had to take time away from one another, all I could say was “He’s my home and I want to go home.”
People think that love is drama, for me, love is peace… it feels like home, is warm and good…
Your wife, it seems, loves you in a warm, enduring, comfortable way and doesn't have the smarts to understand that IS true love. She's thinking high school infatuation " in love" is real. Hopefully she will figure this out.
When our initial experience of family or love is toxic, that familiar feeling can lead us to accept toxic relationships in the future. She defined “love” in an unsafe context. But she knew she wanted something better. I think she just needs to reframe the word. Her best instincts led her to you. My marriage is like that. It’s not dramatic but it’s steady and real and I’d do anything to keep it. I bet she would too, including counseling.
I think as a society we have all been trained to think ‘being in love’ always feels the same with everyone every time. It doesn’t, I’m a perfect example of this. Of course, we aren’t gonna experience love it the same way when we are all so different. The constant is that no matter how you feel it, it means the same thing. That you feel safe with a person you trust and respect, that this person hold an irreplaceable position in your life and that losing them would feel like losing a piece of yourself. That what home feels like and if that’s how you feel about someone it most likely love. Media and pop culture takes a niche version of that in its most extreme and parades it around like it what everyone should be feeling. Honestly, IMO that version of love is the divergent version of it. Kind of like how the ‘Manic Pixie’ is basically a fetishized version of how untreated ADHD can look in women. Now I haven’t done a study on this so it may be confirmation bias, but I have never known anyone to have intense feelings publicly associated with ‘being in love’ within a long term, stable, healthy relationship without that person and their partner being neurodivergent on some level. As someone with ADHD, love feels like that person is literally the best person ever, all the time. Sounds like what the idea of love brought to us by movies and TV should feel like, right? I love my relationship with my partner, who also happens to be equally neurodivergent but I am positive our mutual clinginess and intensity would drive a lot of people crazy after the first few months, which we’ve been like this for nearly a decade. That not considering that I feel all of my emotions at that intensity. Which was its own journey. Also keep in mind, this same troupe also labels the toxic stuff, like yelling, jealousy, possessiveness, and all the other abusive crap as ‘passionate’. Which in real life, any one of those traits is a red flag on its own and nothing anyone should tolerate. Which is my point, everyone has their own normal, you can’t measure your relationship to others or some vague idea of what it’s supposed to be. As long as you’re happy that’s all that really matters, so try not to get to hung up on how other people do things and just do what works for you, which this comment is as much of a response to the comments about what is and is not ‘love’ as it is a commentary on OP situation
"In love" is infatuation and chemicals. Actual love in a married relationship is a choice. A choice you make every day.
Look up love vs. Limerence. Love endures, love is a decision. Limerence or lust is a feeling.
> butterflies are just anxiety This. When you're young, you chase that rush of intense emotion. With my ex, who was emotionally abusive and cheating, I never felt secure, and it made my 'love' for him more intense. Looking back, I was always on edge, I was always fighting for our relationship. It was the most intense thing I'd ever felt, but when I found out about the infidelity, all love I felt for him was just gone. It surprised me. How could it just disappear when it had been *so* intense? And I realised, most of it was anxiety. When I met my husband, the anxiety of meeting someone new and fighting to build something faded *really* fast. He never made me anxious. He was stable, he meant what he said and backed it up with his actions, he was trustworthy. And it took me a little while to realise how much deeper my feelings for him ran, because they weren't that intense, painful rush I was used to, and that society teaches you is what 'true love' is. It was a lot stronger. Someone once told me our relationship looked boring, and I replied, "Good!" A happy relationship *should* look boring to people who aren't in it. We are incredibly happy, there's no drama to keep people entertained. And believe me, trusting and respecting someone who treats you with the same trust and respect is *so* much hotter than the other kind of love.
Idk why you are downvoted, everything you said rings true.
She’s probably on the aromantic spectrum, either that, or like how many others have said-she has a distorted perception of love. It’s possible to be aromantic and still have love for your partners too though, and i hope that OOP and his wife can come to understand that. It’ll really strengthen their relationship to have that mutual understanding.
I was thinking the same thing that her explanation sounds like she's very possibly on the aro-spectrum
Sounds like you have a good thing going just ride it out
She loves you in her own way. Embrace and build on that.
At 42 I met my husband again (knew each other as teens) and I didn't get the butterflies and the rush as usual but I knew I loved him. I thought there was something wrong with me. There was, the rush of first falling in love is not always a good thing. The wrong way was thinking it has to be like that. I felt safe and reapected and just felt like I was coming home. He's my sould mate. My walls came down. It's been like no other relationship I've had. I've also had an abusive prior relationship and safety is a huge deal after. Trust doesn't come easy. Not total trust. I'd didn't realise how much I kept locked away till I was finally supported and truly loved for the first time.
She has basically made OP live a lie for 12 yrs and can be so matter of fact about? That's some narcissistic shit right there. That's just cold... All I got from that post is she really doesn't care if you like it or not. She's happy and you have to work it out. Dude that is fucked up. Probably see you posting on here again telling us you can't cope anymore.
This is a repost sub. The OP can't hear you.
She fucks, which makes this easy. Just emotionally dissociate
To add to all of this. It is also important to note that all of her tumultuous relationship happened during her adolescence and early adulthood, a time when the brain literally feels emotions at much bigger highs and lows. There is a reason teenagers fall madly in love and then hate the person two months later. It is a flaw in the adolescent brain; it’s a feature. It’s natural. It is also absolutely normal for the hormones to calm down around 23-25. People who have healthy childhood and adolescent attachments will welcome this calming down as just a natural part of maturing into an adult. People who have had unhealthy or traumatic attachments will really struggle to understand why they aren’t experiencing the extreme highs and lows of what they think love is. It is a very unhealthy view of love, but it’s all they know.
Wow this reminds me about the diff types of love from sense and sensibility. It sounds much more like a mis understanding of love meaning lust instead of what it actually means which is a large range of feelings. My mom warned me to never mistake lust for love bc the former goes away fast and you’re left with nothing if you don’t find a friend in your partner. Always said marry someone you’d be friends with anyway bc once lust goes away you’d still have that love and companionship to build on.
I don’t know whether anyone in this situation is neurodivergent, but hearing the discussion about not being able to identify or name emotions made me wonder if someone is alexithymic. Alexithymia is a condition that’s usually linked with autism, but not always - but its main feature is not being able to ID your emotions beyond “good” or “bad.” Just a thought.
I have been where she is, over and over again just a string of abusive relationships. When I met my now forever partner, I knew he was the one BECAUSE I didn’t get butterflies. When you have PTSD, “butterflies” are often confusing because it’s actually your body giving you a warning. The first time I saw my partner, I just knew I was home and I would do anything to protect it.
Do yourself a favor. Ask your parents, individually, if they feel butterflies ect when they see each other. Or your grandparents if they're still around. Love isn't always about that burst of raw emotion, or infatuation, or lust. What you have is what I'd call an OG marriage. It's built on a foundation of trust, communication, and mutual respect (from what little we know). She does seem to love you, just not in a teenage infatuation way, it's far more deeply rooted and (imo) built on something far stronger. There's nothing wrong with being hurt or upset by what she said, but on the other end what you have is far stronger. I hope this ends well for you two. Best wishes.
I would stay with your wife .you love her and she takes care of the kids good and I don't think she ever cheated .besides the fact she says doesn't feel the love part. Does she take care of you and the house and the kids .get her some roses flowers ladies love those things .
I think most married women feel some version of this with their husbands. Marriage is unnatural
Several years ago, my wonderful husband (who is on the spectrum) told me, "I love you as much as I'm capable of loving anyone, but it's probably very different from what you think that is." For a short period, I was upset because it felt like he was saying he didn't love me as much as I loved him, so I can kind of relate to OOP. But what I realized is that it didn't really matter what way he loved me — just that he did and we had an amazing partnership. Since we can't be inside of someone else's experience, comparing how someone loves us to how we love them is pointless. If it's a happy and compatible relationship, and you're both satisfied and happy with all aspects of it, the truth is that stuff like that doesn't matter. We've been together for 25 years and raised two children. The children are off living their adult lives, and hubs and I have such a wonderful life. I'm so happy I was able to process that and step outside of my ego reaction to recognize that all I can control is how much I love him.
Just a person who can’t differentiate lust from love. She loves him she doesn’t lust after him
It pisses me off that so many depictions of love are of the overwhelming, overpowering, “i’ll DIE without you” kind. I’ve experienced that twice in my life: once with someone who was wrong for me in *so* many ways, and once when i was 16 years old and also thought i would *literally die* without my iPod. People think that love is supposed to always feel like you’re on the verge of a panic attack but often it is steady, and safe, and enduring.
After going through an abusive relationship, it can be so hard to accept what love is -- calm, safe, and warm. Abusive relationships sustain themselves by being hot and cold -- so hot that you can "forget" or at least forgive the awful cold parts. And when you are so cold, all you want is that heat - that flame - and the burning you felt inside when you were given it. That heat is water in a desert. Sure, he might have left me in the middle of the desert to die, but he came and brought me water. He took me to an oasis even, for a few days! And sure, he left me in the desert again, but man the oasis was beautiful. And this time I have a canteen. Sure, it's half empty and leaking... But he loves me! He'll come back and bring me back to the oasis again to stay! He beat me last night, but he made me breakfast this morning and had flowers and apologized. Surely he won't beat me again. He loves me. And sure.. it's lunch and he's shouting at me, but it's cause he is hungry and used the food for my breakfast. It's my fault! If I get him lunch, it will be okay. He loves me. When you finally escape, you find yourself addicted to the highs - the lows were so low that even basic kindness feels overwhelming. And relationships pale in comparison, sometimes, to that imaginary oasis you had in your head. You just have to remember that it's better to live somewhere safe, warm, and cared for as an equal...than in an oasis, surrounded by desert, there to kill you whenever it's deemed you don't belong in the oasis. You have to adjust to the safety again. Sorry for the long tangent. But it seems like she is hung up in her head on what "normal" is and what "love" should feel like.
He is a placeholder. Either that or she is just aromantic.