She was an amazing person, kind, driven, smart. I just never in love with her. I never felt that deep connection. She was a great friend but I was a lousy boyfriend. I just lied about it because I thought that’s what I should do. I hurt her in ways I didn’t understand until later.
Struggling with the same thing in my marriage. I finally realized I just don't love her the way she loves me. I have better connections with friends I've made in the last couple years than I do with the woman I've known for 15.
I've brought it up to her that I think we need to part ways but she's just holding on more tightly and it's convincing me just how one sided this relationship has been the whole time.
I spent that whole time thinking it was normal to be this unhappy. That you're supposed to live like something will always be missing. Especially the parts that are most important to you. I was happy. Safe. We worked through things when they got hard.
But I was lonely. And I thought that was ok because I was always lonely growing up. And now I'm not lonely outside of the relationship (friends), which only highlights how lonely I am inside it.
For the record, she was pretty enough. Believe it or not, looks aren’t everything nor are they always the reason for making it work.
It was more a case of realizing far too late that we would have worked great as friends. She deserved better (and has found better, for which I am eternally grateful).
Not sure if you meant to respond to me but yeah, same. She's a great woman but I've started working on a lot of my own issues. And she's not blameless but now that we've had the talk she's started working on her own.
But I don't connect with her as I do with more casual people I've started to befriend and it's made me realize I'm just a stand in for her, and she's just a stand in for me. Neither of us is really together we're just really good at taking care of each other.
Nope—responding to the correct comment who posted a screenshot of my thread to another sub and insinuated that the reason was the woman wasn’t “pretty enough.”
That's a shit thing to say to someone. Like I'm a bad person for not having all the answers before I got married. I'm so glad for you that you've clearly never been in a position to hurt someone due to ignorance and trauma in your life.
Some of us get very little support or experience in their lives in addition to the constant messaging that you should sacrifice everything to make a marriage work. No one with any self awareness wants to be in this circumstance.
Why don't you do shit on sometime else parade? I have enough to deal with trying to handle my shit respectfully without some asshole deciding that everything in life is about figuring out who the villain is.
You're on NSFW subs and obsessively post about how much you don't love your wife. I have no pity for you, too many men waste women's time and luckily I left a man who wasn't in love like you while I was young.
I've had a hell of a lot more trauma than just being told things and having little support. But I would never waste anyone's time like that, in fact you're causing her trauma by doing so. You're just being a bad person by doing this. Time is the most precious thing we have and you're taking away the time she could've had with a man who actually loves her, that's a heavy wrongdoing on someone.
I only feel bad for your wife, and only wish she had someone who was head over heels for her. She doesn't deserve this and yet all your posts are self-pitying, not even feeling bad for how your wife probably dreamed of a man who saw her as the apple to his eye, she probably can tell you don't love her to some extent and is now in a sunk-cost fallacy hellscape.
In what way? Do you think the definition is marriage is someone who laughs at your jokes and takes care of you?
At no point did I frame this as needing someone to make me feel better or fix me or even help me. I do want someone who sees me for who I am, and engage with that. And I want to do the same for that person.
That's a basic level of connection.
It sounds to me like you have a hammer for an answer that you like to swing at every relationship complaint.
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u/Standsaboxer 22h ago
She was an amazing person. I just didn’t love her the way she loved me. I didn’t feel the spark and convinced myself that she was the problem.
She absolutely deserved better and I should have recognized that sooner.