Some People Come Into Therapy With A Secret — 'I've Never Been In Love With My Spouse'
Creativity and communication can help these marital problems.
SHOTPRIME | Canva Some people come into therapy with a secret. Sometimes they bring it up themselves, and sometimes it comes out later in therapy. The secret is that they have never felt truly “in love” with their spouse. In our culture, romantic love is given a high priority and is generally considered the primary reason for marriage.
For many couples, when their marriage experiences lows, empathic ruptures, or phases of boredom or “monotogamy — AKA monotonous monogamy,” they can look back at the initial honeymoon phase of feeling in love with their partner, and reassure themselves that they made the right choice. Feeling in love with your partner makes many people feel like they finally understand a basic human experience, and gives them happy memories even if their marriage doesn’t work out. For people who never felt this, life can seem unjust and unfulfilling.
Some people don’t mind or even prefer, having a spouse that they've never been in love with.
The people who generally don’t mind not having ever been head over heels enamored with their spouse are sometimes people who don’t feel much in the way of romantic passion in general. They may also be older people or people who remember prioritizing romantic love at an early phase of life, but no longer feel that it is quite as important, or important at all.
For example, a woman may have been in love with her first husband, but when he passes away unexpectedly and she is left with three young kids to raise, she may transform into a person who is much more pragmatic. When she remarries in a few years, she may “settle” very happily for a man whom she respects and loves, but to whom she doesn’t feel that same romantic passion.
Before you feel too badly for her second husband, let me assure you that in my experience, a couple’s sexual or even “romantic” behavior (e.g., dates) is not directly linked to whether the partners feel romantically connected.
This hypothetical woman and her second husband may have great intimacy, even better than the intimacy she had with her first husband, and lots of date nights. At this stage of her life, she may feel that she greatly desires a happy marriage, and also good intimacy, and dinners out with her husband, but she may doubt that she will ever feel (or would ever want to feel) passionately and romantically connected to another man.
If you are a person with a non-romantic, but still deeply caring marital relationship, you may not understand people who would throw away a perfectly good, stable marriage for a reason like lack of passion.
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But for many people, feeling that you’ve never had a deep romantic connection with a spouse is a source of constant distress and regret.
Problems arise in two main situations:
1. At least one of the partners has never experienced reciprocal passionate romantic love with anyone and feels that they missed out on the possibility of experiencing it by “settling” for their spouse.
2. At least one of the partners thought they were a non-romantic type of person when they married their “best friend” spouse, but later in the marriage, they fell in love with someone else outside the marriage.
In both of these situations, someone feels like they are losing their opportunity to be fully alive, and to fully experience the near-universal (or so they think) human experience of being in a passionate romantic relationship. (Some people also feel like this when there has never been chemistry between themselves and their spouse; these are related situations but not completely the same.) The “Divorced In Spirit” couple I discuss in my book Couples You Meet in Counseling: 7 Common Relationship Dynamics That Sabotage Closeness often results from this issue.
In research from the National Bureau of Economic Research on the links between marriage and happiness, there was a positive correlation between marriage and life satisfaction in couples who said their best friend was also their spouse. The researchers found that having a partner with whom you can talk and share life struggles is an integral part of feeling satisfied with your life, even in difficult times.
These feelings can lead to divorce, infidelity, or, in the case of people who are more risk-averse, depression, anger, and the feeling of being trapped. Their anger may be directed at their spouse (for not being more passionate, romantic, or whatever else), or at themselves for “settling” instead of holding out for someone they felt more passionate about.
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If you are not in love with your spouse, and this causes you anger and regret, or makes you want to cheat, then sometimes, therapy can help you.
Individual therapy can help you figure out if you want to leave your partner, or why your feelings of resentment are bubbling over right now when you may have been content at an earlier time. Couples counseling can also help you and your spouse build a romantic connection. Often, this can occur when you and your spouse express curiosity about each other and learn about different aspects of one another. (This is the idea behind my 52 emails book, which is for couples rekindling their connection as well as those who want to kindle from scratch.)
Research has consistently shown a negative appraisal of non-monogamy. In a series of studies, participants indicated relational benefits but also health and moral benefits. When asked to make judgments about monogamous and consensual non-monogamous relationships, participants reported more negative perceptions about the relational dynamics of consensual non-monogamous relationships and, at the same time, perceived consensual non-monogamous partners more negatively in arbitrary traits.
There are also other options, like ethical non-monogamy, for couples who love one another but cannot meet one another’s needs in certain specific ways, like romantically, but who still deeply care for each other and want to keep their family intact. Don’t be afraid to think outside the box. We all only get one life and deserve to life it in the ways that make our partners and ourselves happiest.
Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten, aka Dr. Psych Mom, is a clinical psychologist in private practice and the founder of DrPsychMom. She works with adults and couples in her group practice Best Life Behavioral Health.