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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3315 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for March 29, 2023

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My wife has fallen out of love with me. Nothing that she says makes any sense to me. I present you her latest email with private information elided (she is away on a business trip),

Sky,

One thing I really didn't like about falling in love was the constant yearning. Whenever I wasn't with you, it felt like I was tethered to you with a super stretchy cord and couldn't fully enjoy anything on my own. After some soul searching, I realized what I call the 'Cinderella syndrome' - the romantic ideal most women have about finding the perfect, chivalrous man. We're not just looking for someone to take care of us when we're down, but also someone who can give our lives direction, purpose, and identity, whether it's as a father to our kids, a source of social status, or a steady rock to lean on. Based on this dream, you're supposed to be the answer to the question I didn't want to face: "What do I really want to do with my life?"

I remember a Monday evening after a weekend together, and I had been pining the whole day. I had not enjoyed work as I found myself struggling to get out of this exhausting dependency. Here I was, 44 years old and as silly as a teenager!

After work I took a long walk across rolling hills into a spectacular sunset, trying to work out what I wanted to do with my life. In the end, I had to admit that, whatever it was, it had not the slightest thing to do with anything you could do for me.

I wanted to be perfect and I had to do it myself. I still had to clean myself up. Just having found a probable good mate had nothing to do with the fact that I wasn’t the best I could be; that I wasn’t free. I decided there and then to face the challenge, to abandon the love-dream and go for the actual experience – meeting another human being as intimately as possible instead of looking up to him and waiting for him to be the ‘hero of my dreams’.

That very evening the situation changed. My pining stopped. The fog in the head cleared. My expectations disappeared. I could again stand on my own feet and equally enjoy the time when I was by myself. I had recovered my autonomy – my autonomy in the sense that I am the only one in my life who is responsible for my happiness.

Detecting and debunking the romantic dream placed the first big dent into the wobbling monster of love. Now it was much easier to look at what it was in my ‘self’ that cried out for this love. It has been quite scary at times, to rid myself of the very identity I had as a woman. What would be left of me when I didn’t feel love? How could I relate both to you and other people, if not with emotion or intuition? What would I have to offer in friendships or conversations, if not sympathy and consolation? My whole edifice of ‘who’ I was, who I believed myself to be, began to crumble in a heap as I questioned and demolished the attributes of love and emotion. Now naked of all those characteristics and beliefs as well as their resultant emotions and behaviour, which have kept man and woman apart for millennia, I am experiencing for the first time in my life genuine intimacy with a man. Now there are no dreams, no expectations, no emotions or any other restrictions that could cloud the thrill of meeting another human being. Now instead of random moments of ‘sweet love’ I am able to give you my full attention and bare awareness each time we communicate.

She has certainly become a happier person. But, I miss the cozy feelings we used to share. Does anyone have advice for me to change her mind? I think she is probably in denial, but I cannot confront her like that.

I agree with others here that she's describing the end of the euphoric/limerence phase of the relationship.

But I also see it as her coming to the realisation that her life happiness is not completely reliant on her partner. I see this as a good thing. Many immature women put the responsibility for their happiness on their partner (external locus of control) and this creates stress in the relationship. Shifting that responsibility to herself creates less pressure on the relationship. This may also involve less dependence on her partner and less emotional need to be close to the partner as her sole source of her happiness. In layman's terms she would be less clingy, which I can see in certain circumstances would be a downside depending on your definition of closeness in a relationship.

I'm not really reading anything bad to what she is saying. I think she's growing her maturity and this is a good thing for a stable long term relationship.

[...] I am experiencing for the first time in my life genuine intimacy with a man.

Is this her way of saying she's seeing someone else?

Not enough context, I think. How old were you when you met? How long have you been together?

It is pretty well-documented that the giddy-in-love feelings that have historically inspired longing poetry and outrageous demonstrations of devotion tend to last months, maybe all of two years. It is also pretty well-documented that the cessation of those feelings tends to be a real come-down moment for a lot of people (this is a major contributor to marriages ending after less than 5 years). If you Google "stages of love" there are many further breakdowns you can find, with varying degrees of empirical backing, but--

Not everyone parses stage changes the same way, and your wife may be essentially coming to terms with the fact that she's past the euphoric stage, but it's quite a natural thing. (The evo-psych gloss is that it's a feeling that exists to produce children, since in the giddy-in-love phase, all most people want to do is canoodle--but the natural result of such behavior is offspring, which give you a different and more important reason to continue working together in the "companionate love" phase.)

The risk for people who don't understand this natural progression (or who spit in Mother Nature's face regarding the natural step of creating offspring) is that they think "real" love is limited to the euphoric stage, and they just want to get that same experiential hit over and over again. Whether this manifests in genuine cheating, requests for an "open" marriage, the pursuit of polyamory, etc. will depend a lot on a person's sophistication, self control, commitment to other priorities (i.e. children, long term financial plans), and so forth.

Women do have a greater tendency than men to seek to verbalize all of these feelings and want to "work through" them, which can sometimes result in men feeling like there is a crisis when actually it's just women doing socializing things. The proliferation of "self help" books is "Exhibit A" for that argument, I think. Your wife seems pretty loquacious, poetic even, but not especially sophisticated, at least in her grasp of her own feelings. Almost everyone goes hunting for "meaning" or their "true self" at some point, but those aren't things you find; they're things you choose, one way or another.

If you've been together for more than, say, 5 or 10 years, though, most of what I've written here will be of limited application.

Not enough context, I think. How old were you when you met?

40, she about the same. To give you some more context, she was big time into meditation.

How long have you been together?

2 years.

continue working together in the "companionate love" phase

She has become disillusioned with "companionate love" as well. We call it unconditional love which she claims does not exist. This is what she told me:

The longer I observe how I am in relation to other people, the more I find that whenever another person evokes a feeling reaction in me then there is some kind of invisible thread or emotional hook also present on my side. I remember a visit from a close relative and how at first I felt guilty for not returning the love, affection and excitement that was offered to me. It was as if a web of invisible, yet sticky vibes was cast out to catch me into feeling loyal to and connected with her. These bonding strings might well be presented as a generous offer of love or friendship, yet – often unbeknownst to the person himself or herself – this offer always contains a request for returned feelings, a demand for support and an obligation for further loyalty. In other words, love is never unconditional, it is always given with conditions and it is only received subject to conditions.

In the situation with my relative I was able after a while to understand the nature and source of my guilt by observation and investigation and then, by being free of my feelings of guilt I was able to give her my full attention and care. While we spent time together we were able to talk as fellow human beings, swap stories about how each experiences life and what each had found out so far about the business of being a human being.

As for a one-to-one man-woman relationship, there is an inevitable expectation of returned favours and feelings. Love by its very nature cannot stand by itself. Love always needs a giver and a receiver, someone who loves and someone who is eager to be loved. In my ‘past-life’ love-relationships, my dreams of how I wanted to live life were automatically intertwined with the man I loved – as a woman I gave him the responsibility for my happiness and I expected him to do the same. (Then I am also jealously guarding that he is not happy without me!)

Soon after I met you I found it vital to investigate this dream because it caused me to be miserable whenever we were apart and made my life difficult whenever we were together. When I looked into the love-dream that I had cherished all my life, I was faced with a rather shocking choice – either keep my dream and my identity as a woman and a lover and remain struggling, frustrated and unhappy, or drop all my high-flying ideas and ideals, grow up and take responsibility for my own life. This also meant that I had to put my becoming unconditionally happy and cheerful as number one on my laundry list – above my relationship. That very choice made me not only autonomous for the first time in my life, it also released you from the burden of ‘my’ unfulfillable expectations and emotional needs. Nobody else is responsible for my becoming happy and nobody is standing in the way of my becoming happy.

One thing is true though, I definitely feel freed from a sense of responsibility (that a typical man suffers from) when being around her. We are enjoying each other's company but I miss the heady feelings of the old days.

Why did you get married?

Marriage's purpose is to raise children, clearly that's out of the window.

In your 40s you're supposed to either welcome your first grand-children or get ready to welcome your first grand-children.

She could be brushing up on her cooking, baking, knitting skills, or helping a teenager / young adult form or get ready to form a family, but here she is...?

Get her a dog. Please, no pitbull.

If she's bored, she can volunteer at the homeless shelter or something.

How long have you been together?

2 years.

So yeah, sounds like she's dealing with the end of the "euphoric" stage. This is more concerning, though:

She has become disillusioned with "companionate love" as well. We call it unconditional love which she claims does not exist.

These are very different things. The standard reductive view on "altruism" is that there's no such thing, because every example you can give, someone else can explain a way as not really selfless. Even the paradigmatic "parent throws themself in front of a bus to save a child" can be explained as "pro-social behavior geared toward benefitting one's own bloodline through the development of a personal legacy" or somesuch. I think it was the philosopher David Hume who suggested that this kind of reductive analysis is unhelpful--our analysis must stop somewhere. But of course these ideas are certainly out there.

But companionate love can still be "conditional" in these ways. The entanglements of responsibilities toward others are often burdensome but they are also widely regarded as essential to a flourishing life. Having children is a lot of work, and yet it is (in my experience) rewarding work. Having good familial relationships often requires a high degree of tolerance, compromise, and forgiveness, and yet familial relationships are usually the most reliable and lasting--and beneficial--of all. Chris Gowans writes a bit about this in his book "Innocence Lost," if I remember correctly--basically he notes that even though there are times when we feel absolutely burdened by even our very good relationships, it is morally important for us to experience and bear such burdens, but also to be aware of when, and to what extent, it's okay for us to put them down anyway. The movie "A Monster Calls" is an exploration of this very idea through the eyes of a child losing a parent to illness.

Now, this bit does sound suspiciously like a woman who is either already cheating, or is exploring the possibility:

As for a one-to-one man-woman relationship, there is an inevitable expectation of returned favours and feelings. Love by its very nature cannot stand by itself. Love always needs a giver and a receiver, someone who loves and someone who is eager to be loved. In my ‘past-life’ love-relationships, my dreams of how I wanted to live life were automatically intertwined with the man I loved – as a woman I gave him the responsibility for my happiness and I expected him to do the same.

Many people describe companionate love as each partner being the other's highest priority. Certainly relationships come with expectations! But the idea that this is a bad thing seems like a red flag to me. It just might instead be a particularly clumsy way of characterizing the end of the "euphoric" stage, which would be less to worry about.

Nobody else is responsible for my becoming happy and nobody is standing in the way of my becoming happy.

I think this is just wrong. Here is one of my most highly upvoted comments on reddit ever:

Humans are social animals. Isolation, as a rule, is bad for our mental health.

To the extent that this is saying, "you don't always have to be in a romantic relationship to have a fulfilling life," it's a good reminder. But with very few exceptions, most people are incapable of being happy while living their lives truly alone. Our brains, for the most part, aren't wired that way. And telling someone that they need to learn to be happy alone before they can be happy together will often only worsen their depression, because they start to take their inability to be happy alone as a sign that they will never be happy at all--

When in fact they would be truly happy if they weren't so alone.

Put a little differently--it may not be your responsibility to make her happy, per se, but if she sees no reason to at least occasionally make personal sacrifices for your happiness, and you see no reason to make similar sacrifices for hers, then you don't really have a relationship anymore--you're just two people sharing a house. Even friends regard themselves as at least minimally responsible, in context-bound ways, for one another's happiness and well-being; otherwise, how are they friends?

We are enjoying each other's company but I miss the heady feelings of the old days.

This is normal; this is how the euphoria stage ends. It can be recaptured at times, with effort. If this is your only real complaint, then you just have to work through it (hopefully with each other's loving help--that seems like a reasonable responsibility to think you have toward one another!). But I have certainly seen relationships where the end of the euphoria stage was accompanied by a drastic reduction in sexual congress, which is totally unnecessary and frequently kills marriages. Communication is important, but don't mistake words for communication. What you've shared so far from your wife is a lot of words that don't say much of practical value. So far I am about half convinced that she still loves you but doesn't know what love is, or doesn't understand how important interpersonal relationships actually are to her because she has internalized a radically individualist mindset that is complete empirical bullshit.

It sounds like she's experiencing a mode of self doubt. She needs to be reassured that you're strong and capable of providing the things she wants from a man and that she's doing what she should be doing by staying with you. If you want to keep the relationship together you need to show strength and reassurance that she's making the right decision to be with you, and not play into her self doubt.

Also I don't know your wife and maybe the email would make sense in the context of her personality but I had to read it multiple times before I understood what she was trying to say. It sounds like she may be a bit codependent with you and needs to find a sense of self worth outside of her relationship with you. She was probably seeking a relationship with someone to help her feel better about herself but she went into it feeling badly about herself and it hasn't gone away even though she could distract herself with the relationship for a while. Maybe give her some space to figure out what she dislikes about herself so she can improve, and support her as you can but be realistic that she will mostly have to work through these things on her own.

I'm sorry this happened to you.

Either she's fallen down an over-thinking self-help rabbit-hole, or she just wants to leave you but doesn't have a "good" reason to do so and is laying the groundwork for making it your fault. You didn't support her becoming a whole-er person or something, the marriage failed because you weren't okay with her not loving you, rather than because she stopped loving you.

I don't know, man. This comes off as overwrought gibberish to me.

I must confess to more skepticism than I feel even when reading typical Dear Prudence or /r/relationship_advice fare. If that really is a letter written by your wife, well, I think she should find her calling as a writer of female self-actualization books and chicklit novels.

This is basically a very wordy "I love you but I'm not in love with you." What exactly do you think she is "in denial" about?

Yeah. Whatever she's going on through emotionally is par for the course, but that prose is grounds for divorce.

Ha, she is indeed planning to write a self-actualization book.

What exactly do you think she is "in denial" about?

That she is repressing her need for love in contrast to her claim that she is becoming freed from the need for both romantic and unconditional love. I gave further details in my response to naraburns above.

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