JLNobody wrote:The title of this thread is "I am unhappy and my husband does not seem to care." It just occured to me that your husband also seems very unhappy, indeed, depressed. Is it relevant for me to ask you if you care?
I would have to say that yes I do care and that was the reason I wanted the time and space and possibly to seek counseling, which at the time he was not interested in. I do love my husband but I am not in love with him anymore because of all of the issues we have had in the past, it has just gotten very old and hurts alot.
I do not think that most successfully married people characterize their feelings as "being IN love", at least not in the same sense as the infatuation they felt when courting. They are fortunate to love each other and to feel IN love occassionally. It seems to me that the expectation of being perpetually IN love is one of the many causes of our society's high divorce rate. Agprice, I'm directing this to the general reader, not just to you.
I do recognize the constructive motivations you showed in trying to get your husband to go to counselling, and it does seem that his refusal suggests a defensiveness reflecting his feelings of culpability.
This may be for a separate thread, but I do think that--perhaps by definition--one always LOVES another DEEPLY and one always feels IN love SUPERFICIALLY. This may explain why we love for a long time but feel in love (infatuated) for a relatively brief time. This comparative principle is also seen in the fact that we put up with shortcomings in those we love but more easily drop those we feel in love with when we begin to see their shortcomings. Love is realistic; infatuation is idealistic.
