A week ago my wife says she didn’t love me the way I deserve. She ways I’m a great guy, I treat her better than anyone has ever treated her, I’m her best friend, she loves being around me, and that I make her happy. She says that there’s just some emotional spark missing. She tells me she has felt that way since a few days after I had proposed to her. We are almost now almost two years married.
She has come from a broken home, has an alcoholic father, has a sister that has never been married to a man she loves, and most of the people in her family are in loveless relationships. Yet, she says her upbringing has nothing to do with anything.
She gave me the it’s not you it’s me speech. We have started counseling but I’m nearly convinced she’s not trying. I asked her if there is someone else and she says there isn’t. I’m inclined to believe her because there isn’t any time for that. Nor is there for me either. We wake up together, go to work and, until very recently, met each other at the gym before heading home.
I asked her if she really wasn’t in love with me then why did she marry me. She said she thought it was cold feet at first, then she realized she wasn’t in love with me but then didn’t want to hurt me. She said she saw her father hurt her mother over and over again and she didn’t want to become her father.
Also during our first year of marriage my father fought a battle with cancer and died. The whole time my wife was there by my side. She was there the day my brother was shipped to Iraq. She tells me that’s what she’s "supposed" to do if you’re someone’s wife. To which I say, "If you didn’t love me and didn’t want to be there, you wouldn’t have been there." If she was so not in love with me as she says she is, we wouldn’t be here now.
I don’t think I smother her. I tell her she’s beautiful every day, she hangs out with her friend and I hang out with mine. More often than not we hang out with them together. We do a lot together. We travel, hike, work out. We do things that couples do.
I don’t understand how she says for all this time that she didn’t love me. Why put yourself through that? Why torture yourself that way? Though she said it was never torture because she loves being around me. It’s like she’s sending mixed signals. If you don’t love me, then why are you there. Why did you go through all of hurt, pain, joys, and laughter if you weren’t in love? Can someone, anyone, please explain this to me and tell me what to do?
Tags: alcoholic father, amp, best friend, brother, cancer, cold feet, counseling, few days, first year of marriage, heading home, iraq, love, loveless, marriage, relationships, upbringing, whole time
