SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Thank you sisoon for the post. Very interesting, I looked up limerence, as I had never heard of it. Thank you for the information.

I love my husband.
I don’t have that fluttering feeling anymore of excitement, I don’t feel special anymore , and I don’t respect him like I used to.

I don’t know how to explain it but I know he is a flawed human like all of us but he hurt me deeper than I think anyone else can. He made me feel like nothing , lower than low and that isn’t love. When I was giving my all to him he kept taking and then giving to someone else.

I don’t know if I’ll ever be "in love" with him again, right now I’m striving to respect him and like him again and we will see what follows, maybe I’ll end up being ok with just that or maybe we will fall back in love again, I try to take it day by day.

He loves me more and I love him less now. Funny how that works.

I’ve been wanting to comment on this particular thread since you posted, but was trying to think of how I wanted to phrase my response. Here is my take on it.

I would say my entire life I had being "in love" as the highest calibre of love - there is no love more powerful right? However, infidelity has changed my perspectives (on so many things)… to me (now) being "in love" is to obsess over that initial affection and attention and how that makes you feel "in the moment." I think you can only truly love someone when these "butterfly feelings" are gone and you can appreciate who the person is standing in front of you, knowing they (like you) are a flawed human.

Loving someone isn’t necessarily a feeling to me, but an act of choosing to stay with someone regardless of having "lost" certain feelings. Even before my H’s A, I knew I wasn’t "in love" with him the way I used to be and I thought the towel might as well be thrown as I no longer possessed those butterfly feels. The love we had/have? for each other transitioned over the years to something more deeper and personal then "in love." My decision to stay and work on my M with my H is because (deep down somewhere) I know there is that deep love waiting to be rediscovered.

Thank you Groot1988, I agree with your statement, " I don’t have that fluttering feeling anymore of excitement, I don’t feel special anymore , and I don’t respect him like I used to."

I feel the same and it sucks! I actually feel the same with your whole post. He definitely loves me more than I love him. I sometimes wonder if it is fair to either of us to live like this, but the alternative is worse, I believe.

Your second paragraph was well said, Heartbrokenwife23. Thank you. I appreciate your thoughts. I am struggling because we are lopsided. He definitely, at least now, loves me more than I love him. I hope this love I have for him is enough to sustain the rest of our lives together. We are both 53. I hate that I don’t respect the man I married anymore. Thank you!

I feel the same and it sucks! I actually feel the same with your whole post. He definitely loves me more than I love him. I sometimes wonder if it is fair to either of us to live like this, but the alternative is worse, I believe.

This perfectly describes what I often find myself thinking

I didn't get the ILYBINILWY. What I got was "I don't love you. And maybe I never have". After 13 years of marriage and two amazing daughters. He then left his children and I for his new girlfriend, who he had know for around 4 weeks. I thought I was going to die of a broken heart.

I think it was the sudden abandonment of us, and seeing my girls utterly confused and devastated, that is what I cannot recover from. I'll never know because he hasn't done the work. My eldest (then aged 10), a normally very happy, innocent, immature-for-her-age, girl sobbed and said "I wish I was dead", when we told her he was leaving. Every part of my soul crushed.

We have been trying to R for over two years now, but he continues to make me hate him more and more, with his selfishness, his victim mentality, and his entitlement - that he never sees at the time and always has an apology at the ready after. I don't love him. I care about his wellbeing as the father of my children and someone I have known for a very long time. But he has brick by brick dismantled our home, our marriage and any feelings I had for him. All gone. And now he's really sad, and desperate for us to work. Well done, asshole 😞

I used to worship him and had him on a pedestal for years. I feel I gave him every part of my heart. In all of our years, I never thought about another man, sent a dodgy message or anything in the slightest. He was the apple of my eye, and no one in my mind could compete with the most wonderful man on earth. I felt so lucky and had such devotion for him. It's a shame he repaid me with years of lies, seeking validation from other women, an emotional affair whilst I was pregnant with our youngest and eventually abandoning his loving family for a near perfect stranger.

Im not sure what the difference is between being in love or just loving someone. But I do think so long as you still have any kind of love for your WS, you can reconcile and love can grow. It can certainly be enough. Take it from someone who doesn't have that 😘

[This message edited by WhiskeyBlues at 8:07 PM, Wednesday, November 13th]