What can you do if You Are Living In A Loveless Marriage? Learn important questions you should be asking if Your Marriage Is Loveless. Love can come back.
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We receive many questions from married couples who are struggling to find happiness together. Often many of them have begun to wonder if the reason they’re unhappy is because they married the wrong person.
The ideal marriage is one that creates a partnership for life. However, facing the rest of your life together when you believe you’ve married the wrong person can be disheartening and depressing.
Below is a question we received from Andrew, a man in just this situation. He’s concerned that he may have made a mistake when he married his wife and unsure of what to do about it. My answer follows.
Reader Question:
I married the wrong person. I've been married for 12 years. And I now realize that I settled for my wife. She wasn't really what I wanted. It was convenient to marry her, and to be honest, convenient to stay with her. However, as I've grown over the years, I find myself truly unhappy in our marriage and have come to the conclusion that I married the wrong woman. I have really nothing in common with my wife: conversation interests, political, religious, hobbies, nothing. No matter how much I try, I cannot get interested in her conversation. We now have a 7 and 6 year old, to complicate this further. Recently, we have had to separate due to my work, and I was bored one evening, and spent some time with another woman, who I am now having an affair with. I never thought I would be cheating on my wife, but I don't regret this, and find myself trying to figure out how to handle being married to the wrong person. Does this make me a horrible man?" -Andrew
Andrew is in a bad spot. Not only is his marriage suffering, but he’s also now compounded the problems by having an affair. It’s not surprising he’s questioning his marriage, but it’s good that he is.
My Answer:
I hear, “I married the wrong person” regularly, from both men and women. When people are unhappy in their marriage they look for reasons to explain why, the easiest target is the other person.
Rather than see things they don't like about their partner as things that could change, most people feel they just need to change partners. With that line of thinking it's then very easy to develop the belief that you must have married the wrong person in the first place.
Part of the problem with Andrew’s belief that he "married the wrong woman" is that it feeds the misconception that there’s the "right" person or “perfect” partner out there somewhere and that, when you've found your true love, you’ll be happy forever.
As romantic a notion as this is, it’s simply not true.
Songs, books, and movies would all have us believe in the happily ever after. And there is a version of that for many people – but it takes WORK to keep it going. They leave that part out.
Relationships take work – all of them.
Relationships also change over time because people and life change over time.
In all relationships we're either growing together or growing apart. If we don't regularly feed a relationship, invest in it, and make it grow, we can become unhappy, no matter how perfect the other person seemed at the beginning.
No, Andrew, you're not a horrible man. But you are a man cheating on your wife and that needs to stop.
Nothing you’re facing with your wife will be made better by introducing a third person into the mix and betraying your vows.
You may be right when you say, "I settled for my wife."
However, even if that was true then, it doesn't have to mean your marriage cannot become happy and successful now. You’ve built a life together and in 12 years have likely found reasons to love each other.
Talk to a couple’s counselor, by yourself to start, and learn the ways you can change your marriage and find the happiness you’re seeking in it, rather than outside of it. Here are some of the benefits of couples counseling.
There are many reasons why it can feel like the person you married was the wrong one. Most of the time that feeling arises when you realize that you no longer feel the way you did at the time you exchanged vows. Or perhaps you feel like you never really loved your partner in the first place.
What people often fail to recognize is that feelings within a marriage do change over time and that’s completely normal.
That original new-love feeling doesn’t last forever, and it’s not supposed to.
In a healthy relationship those feelings deepen into an even stronger, but different, love that’s the necessary foundation for a family and life together. That doesn’t happen without work though.
If you’ve begun to feel like you married the wrong person, it could be because you’ve grown apart and no longer feel the closeness and intimacy a strong relationship needs.
This is generally a result of,
And each of these (and others) can be fixed.
Every successful relationship requires attention in the form of time, effort, and communication.
Unfortunately, it’s far easier to recognize the need for those things than it is to make them a reality.
If you’re worried you’re with the wrong person it’s quite possible you’ll feel differently once you and your partner start working together on making changes to your marriage.
Before your give up, spend some time thinking about the following:
So, next time you’re thinking, “This is too hard, I think I married the wrong person,” take a step back and look a little closer.
Is it the person or the amount of effort that’s really the problem?
Do you believe you married the wrong person? Share why you believe that in the comment section below.
Editor's Note: This post was originally published on June 30, 2012, updated on October 16, 2018, and then again with new information for accuracy and comprehensiveness.
What can you do if You Are Living In A Loveless Marriage? Learn important questions you should be asking if Your Marriage Is Loveless. Love can come back.
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I have never posted anything online its scary... heres my story:
Im 31,married for 6 years now, know my wife for 7, have 2 kids, 5 and 6 months. I love my wife, i always have, never cheated but lately flirting around in the cyberspace, imagining myself cheating i think as a means of arousing myself... my wife isnt sexual and hasnt been ever since we got married, we do have sex but it is not passionate and doesnt happen often. She is sort of a control freak, wants to spend every second of the day with me which i love but hate af the same time coz i need my space and she doesnt understand this... weve had so many fights about this. I feel unhappy, i feel i need to be away from her, i dont feel happy anymore, i dont enjoy spending time with her at all, it feels like a chore instead of something i should enjoy... i feel i should be happier, life should be easier, we fight a lot about money, she overspends so much and i just try mybest to keep her happy but she doesnt work so it gets on my nerves... (we have a cleaning lady, a cook comes like twice a week, and she doesnt work) i told her many times to find a job not only for the money (even if it would help) but for herself, not to become depressed or feel empty... dont know what else to say... ive contemplated many times divorce but i dont know im sure it would be devesrating to her and the kids... help?
My husband and I have been married for 32 years, 5 years ago we split up because of his addiction to xanax. 3 days later he moved a girl in our home. It didn't take long before she got pregnant at 44 to try to keep him. We are now together, and I'm helping him raise the baby girl. We've only been back together a few short months, but I found porn on his phone. I am 55, and my body looks great. At least, men tell me I'm very sexy and beautiful at work. Why does my husband need that. I try to keep sex exciting for us but now I just feel ugly and betrayed. I don't want him touching me if he has a pic in his mind of other women. Help!!! I hate feeling this way.
Sandra, Porn addiction is a tricky thing to deal with. Most men don't even know they are addicted, and have to learn it from a professional. Like any addiction, he will have to recognize he has a problem. Read the articles in the Porn Addiction section of the blog for more information about this and suggestions of what help is available. -Kurt
Sandra, If you see another man with a fine body, Don't you think about it?
Why do women think a good man think only about his wife. Way before our time is was very normal for men to have more than one woman in his life. Hell, read the bible. It's all over the old testament. It NORMAL.
I could believe that if he wasn't so jealous of men looking at me. I've decided to just play the game. Leave my phone on the porn for women app. Sometimes a man needs to know that if he can dish it out, he needs to make sure he's ready to take it.
Seeing someone with a "fine" body is much different than seeking it out. Your response is typical of generations raised in modern American culture. I just recently read some C.S. Lewis books and it's interesting to hear him address this issue from Europe in 1945. He talked about how the perfect "images" of the human body being marketed in newspaper ads and movies is damaging relationships because of how it's creating unrealistic expectations in a man's mind of what a woman's body is or should be. That was in 1945!!!! He said that women's bodies were being marketed as "boyish". What would his thoughts be if he could see where we are today!!! The other thing you leave out when trying to compare seeing a nice physique on the street and looking at porn is that seeing a person walking is much different than having someone pose sexually in order to seduce you. Americans have been so numbed by sexualizes images very few even recognize the damage of it anymore and how it has damaged human relationships.
According to the Bible looking at a woman (or man for that matter) with lust in one's heart is adultery too. Matthew 5:28. The speaker is JESUS.
Very wealthy and powerful men got to have multiple wives. It wasn't the norm. If a man died, then his widow might get 'married off' to a brother or cousin for her own benefit, but she'd likely be in older age by then and not the young 20 year old harem nymphete that you are fantasising about. And even among the wives/mistresses of the powerful guys there was serious jealousy and issues between them (read up on Hagar getting booted out, even after the wife initially agreed to the arrangement). It wasn't an ideal situation.
What is it with women and porn? Do you really think that you're so special that a man isn't allowed to find another female attractive?! If you're so insecure and self conscious that a woman, whom your husband has little or no possibility of meeting, much less having relations with, can derail your marriage, then you don't deserve to be anyone's wife. How about some consideration or empathy. Have a look at a mirror and ask yourself if you'd want to look at that for eternity. My wife's no super model, but she takes care of herself and isn't stupid enough to believe that she's the only pretty woman on the planet. And to all you that are foolish enough to believe your husbands don't imagine other women during sex, or watch porn when you're not monitoring his every move, I take great pleasure when you lament and posture on all indignant like. If I could offer advice: take care of yourselves and stop demanding to be the sole source of sexual attention. The world is big and life is short.
Not all women have an issue with porn. When I'm single, I watch porn all the time, so it doesn't really bother me if men do (or I'd be a massive hypocrite). It doesn't mean I want to run off with those guys. They are just random good-looking bodies. There's no emotional connection. I think maybe you need to date women with a higher sex drive and/or ones who are less hypocritical!
Ethan, most women can and do acknowledge that their partner is attracted to other women. This is basic human nature. However, if a man feels a need to seek out other women for sexual pleasure and disrespect the woman he has committed to (sexually and emotionally), maybe he doesn't deserve to be anyone's husband.
To all those concerned about your marriage. Follow your heart. If you question your love for your spouse 99.9% your right. That's just the way it is. The problem is that we fear letting go due to the process of separation. We are all entitled in this short life span to live as we please. It's important to note that: your dead longer than your alive. Enjoy your journey!!!
I married my best friend and we've been married for 4 months. After being together 3 years i dont think things were ever really romantic. I'm starying to feel bored, like our relationship is 20 or 30 years further than it dhould be. She was a safe option, and shortly after getting married i reached out to an old friend who I never really had a chance to be with. It feels like id have the passion and intensity im looking for from this other woman, and I want to be with her (i have wanted to be with her for over 10 years) but the move is super risky since weve never been really together in a relationship and I really dont want to hurt my wife because shes a great person and my best friend. I just dont think i feel that romantic spark. Im not really sure i ever did. It may have just been a best friends with benefits situation...but my best friend is a picky eater with crazy allergies
Help?!
Rashard, You are married, so I can't condone reaching out to, or having any relationships with, another woman. Adjusting to married life can be a challenge as it's a big lifestyle adjustment. Professional marriage counseling can help you figure out what's really going on. -Kurt