Dear Roe,
I’m in a relationship that is caring, fulfilling and exciting in many ways. I’m very much in love with my partner and would really like this relationship to work out in the long term. However my partner has said recently that while he cares about me and I make him happy, he doesn’t love me. He says that his marriage, which ended in a divorce, was based on the premise of love and he was very hurt. He says he doesn’t think he could love anyone else. I’m very conflicted as to whether I should continue with the relationship or not. I’m romantic by nature and to hear the words “I love you” is important to me. What would your advice be?
This one may hurt to read and I’m sorry for that in advance. I promise I’m telling you what I would tell my best friend in this scenario.
You frame your question as if the problem is that your partner doesn’t say the words “I love you” enough. But the problem is not that your partner isn’t articulating his feelings. He is articulating his feelings, very clearly. He doesn’t love you. And whether that is because he is still healing from his divorce, or because he has turned deeply cynical about the nature of love, or it’s a phase that he’s moving through, or whether it’s simply that you’re not the person for him and down the line he will fall for someone else – the reasons don’t actually matter. He has told you that he doesn’t love you and that right now, he doesn’t even think himself capable of love. You have asked for these feelings, he has given you his answer, and I am sorry that it wasn’t what you wanted.
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The question that remains now is why both of you are staying in this relationship? And I wonder if part of it in some way is that you’re both hiding in each other.
Humans are social, relational creatures. We don’t heal or learn to love in isolation – we do it with and around each other
You don’t say how long you two have been together, or what conversations you have had about the future. But for him to say that he doesn’t love you and can’t see himself ever being able to love is a neon sign telling you that he’s not willing or able to give anything more to this relationship. I’m sure he enjoys a lot about you and your relationship, but he is putting up a wall. By staying, he is choosing to coast and hide with you. I genuinely don’t say this to judge him – the idea that we have to be completely healed from all of our baggage before getting into a relationship is a lie. Humans are social, relational creatures. We don’t heal or learn to love in isolation – we do it with and around each other. We learn lessons in relationships, we heal parts of ourselves, challenge others, we grow and falter and push past our limits and learn new ones and that’s okay. I’m sure this relationship has, in so many ways, been important to your partner; has shown him that he can be loved again, that he can be treated with kindness and respect and that he can forge a connection with someone. But, for whatever reason, that seems to be all this relationship can be for him right now. For him this relationship has a hard limit, and that is that he will never be in love with you.
So now you have to decide what your limit is. Because while he should ideally have ended this relationship when he realised that you loved him in a way that he could never love you, he is obviously content to hide in this relationship, to keep enjoying the benefits of being with you and never having to leave his comfort zone. But why are you still in this relationship? What are you hiding from? What are you hiding from when you reframe a man telling you that he doesn’t love you into a problem of you enjoying hearing the words “I love you”? Because of course it’s important to hear those words – but the feeling is more important, the genuine emotion and openness and connection of love; that flicker of glorious, mad, wide-hearted hope that says “Yes, this, us, let’s try.” And he’s not offering you that. He’s offering you a limited, controlled interaction with an expiration date ticking in the background. Why are you contemplating staying? What are you hiding from?
A lot of people who view themselves as romantic, who see themselves as people who throw themselves fully into relationships, who think they are fully ready for love, often aren’t as ready for love as they think. A lot of people who think they are looking for that full-blown kind of love find themselves repeatedly getting with people who are emotionally unavailable, or who fear commitment, or who have emotional issues that they haven’t chosen to work on. And many self-professed romantics will stay with these people, trying to fix or change them. Or they become determined to wait around for their emotionally unavailable partner to finally love them back.
Leave behind the part that feels safer loving someone who isn’t ready to love you back. Leave behind the fear and the doubt and the emotional unavailability
They view this as real love – the waiting, the longing, the belief that it will all work out. And sure, sometimes it does. But more often, committing to these kinds of relationships is in itself a form of hiding. Deliberately, knowingly choosing to stay with someone who is emotionally unavailable is a form of emotional unavailability. It’s hiding in a limited relationship with someone who cannot love us because the truth is that we are not ready to be loved ourselves. This is a stealthy form of self-sabotage – telling ourselves that we are committed to love but only committing to people who will never force us to experience love or to experience being loved fully.
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This man told you that he does not love you and you have, so far, chosen to stay. Why? What would it mean for you to tell both him and yourself that you want more and are going to find it? What would it mean to commit to the risky, wild, courageous hope that you could be fully loved by someone who is ready for that, ready for you? What would it mean to commit to a relationship where you didn’t have to fix anyone or change anyone, where you don’t have to fight or wait around for years or compromise your needs to prove that you are worthy of being loved?
I hope your partner does the work of healing and starts to believe in love again and that he finds it at some stage. But I hope you do the work of healing – of examining what it is in you that made you hear a man tell you that he doesn’t love you, and have some part of you think “Well, maybe that’s okay, maybe I can cope with that, maybe I can stay and make it work.” Leave this man. Not because he’s a bad person, but because he can’t give you what you want and deserve. But as you leave him, also try to leave behind the part of you that tried to convince you to stay. Leave behind the part that feels safer loving someone who isn’t ready to love you back. Leave behind the fear and the doubt and the emotional unavailability. Find someone who is willing and ready to love you, and learn to run towards them, and love itself.