Throwaway because I don’t want this on my main…
I’m realizing that I am just really apathetic about my marriage. We’ve been married 10 years and for about the first 4-5, I was completely head over hills in love with him.
He made a career change that has had negative impacts on our life, including loss of income and many, many moves. Things started to go downhill when I was pregnant with my second and felt like the weight of our family was on me.
We fought, and tried, and went to counseling, and fought some more. We ignored each other. Things got better, and worse, and better, and worse again.
About a year and a half ago I asked for a divorce. He acted like this was completely unexpected. He didn’t want a divorce, asked me to give him more time, he’d work on things.
Since then things have gotten better and we’ve had some highs and some lows, but they aren’t as intense and don’t last as long.
I was talking to my therapist today and realized that I’m really just apathetic about my marriage. Some couples talk about how they couldn’t live without each other. That’s so not true. I do love him, but I’d be fine without him. If we didn’t have small children I probably wouldn’t have stuck it out this long. It’s not horrible but it’s not wonderful. I don’t really want another marriage, but I’m not attached to this one.
What do I do from here? I’m not getting divorced any time soon, so those suggestions aren’t going to help. How do I feel less apathetic about this marriage?
5 comments
Boy, that’s tough. The opposite of love isn’t hate. No, the opposite of love is indifference. Which sounds kinda like where you are.
And love doesn’t magically just hit us. Love is a choice, a decision we make over and over again.
Maybe this might help, but it needs to be both of you. One person cannot save any marriage on their own. There are two key concepts to help on that which I’d like to pass along, and [I put them in this comment](https://old.reddit.com/r/Marriage/comments/usd52a/people_in_happy_marriages_give_me_your_top_tip_to/i931q2u/) not too long ago.
Beyond that, there are many communication and relationship skills out there that none of us are taught in school. Check out this sub’s wiki for many good resources broken down by topic:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Marriage/wiki/index
Are your parents like this as well in their marriage?
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If you’re staying with this man, then start fucking him well and good.
It sounds like I’m diminishing the situation, but I’m not. You need to get laid, and he’s your partner, so go get it like when you were “head over hills.”
It doesn’t matter if you need him to wear a joker mask, or do it from behind so you can pretend it’s someone else; just don’t waste your precious youth not getting fucked like you deserve.
You’ve stopped investing in your relationship. No different than the stock market. Early on, you put a lot in and were getting a lot in return. That’s easy. You get to a point where you were investing and the returns were smaller and smaller. Naturally, you slowed, and slowed and stopped.
If you want to save you need to go all in. It won’t happen overnight and it sure is a leap of faith. There’s no middle ground or safe bet here. It’s all or nothing.
I can say this. If you do go all in, and it does not work out, you’ll have no regrets. Worse scenario is you end up divorced, and regret years later that you didn’t try harder.