When love is still there and yet...

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

She looked at me and said,

“He is a good man.”

Then she started telling me all the reasons why.

“He takes care of everything. He is a good father. He has never really done anything wrong to me. I know I am lucky.”

She paused. “But I don’t feel loved.”

And almost immediately she corrected herself.

“I mean, I know he loves me.”

That was where the real conversation began.

Because she wasn’t sitting in front of me because her husband was a terrible man.

There was no affair. No abuse. No dramatic betrayal.

There was a home.

Children.

Years together.

A lot that he did for her.

A lot that she could point to and say, “See, he does love me.”

And still, she was lonely.

She couldn’t remember the last time they had sat together and talked about something that wasn’t the children, money, work, parents, dinner or tomorrow’s schedule.

She couldn’t remember the last time he had looked at her and really wanted to know what was happening inside her.

They had stopped touching much.

Not because they had decided they didn’t want each other.

It had just become easier not to.

They were tired.

There was always something to do.

And when there was finally some time, both of them would be on their phones.

She had also stopped telling him when something hurt.

Not because it didn’t hurt.

Because she already knew where the conversation would go.

He would explain.

She would defend.

He would say she was overreacting.

She would say he never understood.

Then both would get tired.

And eventually someone would say,

“Leave it. I don’t want to fight.”

So they left it.

And then they left the next thing.

And the next.

Until there were so many things that had never really been talked about that even starting a conversation felt exhausting.

When she told me all this, I didn’t want to tell her what she should do with her marriage.

That isn’t where the work begins for me.

The work begins with slowing everything down enough to actually see what is happening.

Can she say, “I am lonely,” without immediately needing to prove that he is a bad husband?

Can she admit what she needs without feeling guilty for needing it?

Can she look at the ways she has also withdrawn?

Can she feel her anger without turning that anger into a final judgement about him?

Can she separate what is actually missing in this relationship from what an old wound may be asking the relationship to give her?

And sometimes the hardest thing is accepting that two things can be true at the same time.

He can love her.

And she can still not feel loved.

He can be a good man.

And she can still be unhappy in the relationship.

There can be a beautiful family.

And something between the two adults can still be starving.

I think this is where we often get confused about relationships.

We think that if love is there, everything else should somehow take care of itself.

But love needs somewhere to land.

It needs attention.

It needs curiosity.

It needs affection.

It needs respect.

It needs conversations that are sometimes uncomfortable.

It needs the courage to say, “You hurt me,” and the ability to hear that without immediately defending ourselves.

It needs repair.

It needs appreciation.

It needs time.

It needs two people who are still interested in knowing each other, because neither person stays exactly the same.

And look at how easily we stop doing these things.

We get busy.

We get tired.

We start assuming.

“We have been together for so long. Of course he knows.”

“She knows I love her.”

“He knows I am under pressure.”

“We will have time later.”

We stop asking.

We stop telling.

We stop touching.

We stop noticing.

We stop talking about sex because it feels awkward.

We stop talking about the things that hurt because we don’t want another fight.

We stop apologising because we are keeping score.

We stop reaching because we are tired of being the one who reaches first.

And the strange thing is, life around the relationship can still look completely fine.

The bills are paid.

The children are taken care of.

The house is running.

Birthdays happen.

Family holidays happen.

The car gets serviced.

The children get their dental appointments.

The leaking tap gets fixed.

Everything is being maintained.

Except the relationship.

And then we wonder why it doesn’t feel alive anymore.

Ignoring the maintenance of a relationship and expecting it to keep running forever is not very different from doing the same with a car.

You can keep driving for a while.

You can ignore the strange sound.

You can tell yourself it is nothing.

You can say, “I’ll get it checked next week.”

And then one day it stops.

Usually, the relationship doesn’t break on the day it finally becomes unbearable.

It has been giving little signals for a long time.

The silence.

The irritation.

The lack of touch.

The constant criticism.

The loneliness.

The feeling of being unseen.

The same fight happening again and again.

The growing distance.

We just keep calling them phases.

“We are both busy.”

“Things will get better.”

“This is what happens after children.”

“This is just marriage.”

Maybe.

Or maybe something has been asking for our attention for a very long time.

And we have been too busy maintaining everything else to listen.

This is also why, when people come to me with relationship struggles, I don’t want to rush them towards staying or leaving.

I want them to become honest enough to see what is actually happening.

What are you longing for?

What have you stopped asking for?

What have you been tolerating?

Where have you stopped showing up?

What are you blaming the other person for that you also need to look at in yourself?

What belongs to this relationship?

What belongs to an older wound?

And then sometimes comes the question that is much harder to sit with.

If nothing changed from here... if this was exactly how the relationship looked for the next five years... would you still choose it?

Not because the relationship is terrible.

Not because the other person is a villain.

Not because there is no love.

But because sometimes the hardest relationships to look at are the ones where there is still so much that is good.

So much that works.

So much that we are grateful for.

And still, somewhere inside us, there is a quiet voice saying,

“I don’t know how much longer I can live like this.”

Maybe the question isn’t whether you love each other.

Maybe it is whether the way you are living this love is allowing either of you to actually feel it.

And if the answer has been no for a long time, how much longer can we keep calling it a phase?