Falling out of love at different times

I know when I fell out of love.  My love withered slowly, and I tried everything I could think of to revive it - watering it with counseling, fertilizing it with sex, shining sunshine on it with a marriage class, pruning it with biting my tongue - but no matter what I did, I watched the flowers turn brown and the leaves drop.  One day, I looked at it again, and saw that it was dead and dry, and there was no hope, and that no amount of care in the world could revive it, and I was done.  Almost immediately afterwards, I asked for a divorce.

But I wonder all the time how it was for my ex to fall out of love with me. 

I'm pretty sure he loved me, as best he could, in the early days.  His marriage proposal was sweet, thoughtful, and romantic, and I thought that the proposal itself spoke of the greatness that would follow in our marriage.  I was sure that any man who proposed like that understood love and romance; I did not understand that it was the last great romantic gesture he would ever give me in our relationship.  I did not understand that it was the end of his making an effort to connect with me, for that matter.

As I was the one to point out that our marriage was dead ("See?  There are no leaves left, even in the summer...."), he knew clearly when I fell out of love, because I told him, using the words, "I'm sorry, but it's over, and I would like a divorce."  When I realized that I was the only one watering, tending, caring (he'd given up on making any effort, following any counselor's suggestions, by then), I made a conscious decision to stop loving, because trying to love him hurt me far too much.

But when did he fall out of love?

I think that maybe he fell out of love with me a decade ago. 

Typing that makes me wince a bit, because the truth hurts, and a decade ago I was singing his praises to anyone who would listen, overriding that little voice inside me that said, "this isn't right....why isn't he responding any more?"  It was more than a decade ago that he showed me the temper that he'd hidden until we were married.  His libido, once matching mine, fell as soon as we were engaged.  He became more distant with each passing year, and my questions of "Hey, do you want to talk about anything?" and "Are you okay?" and "Is there anything I can do to help?" only angered and annoyed him; he'd respond "I'm fine! Leave me alone!"  He was clearly not fine.  And he clearly did want to be left alone.  He didn't want to go out on dates with me.  He didn't want to sit next ot me on the sofa watching a movie together.  I had to drag him out to family excursions.  And he became less and less helpful, more and more resentful of any request I made of him to help with childcare or household tasks or any of his time.  And dreaming for a future?  Forget about it.  We had a hard time making plans for the weekend, let alone for mutual long term goals.

Three different years with three different counselors did not impact things at home.  He made it clear that the counseling itself annoyed him, and he found me disloyal for dragging him to counseling.  He yelled, he argued, he stonewalled, he lied, he avoided, he slept in the guest room.

But here's the thing....

He was hurt when I asked him for a divorce.

I don't think he even KNOWS that he fell out of love with me long before I fell out of love with him; I think he's in deep denial, even now.  I think that his personal truth is that I left him because I'm uncaring and disloyal and selfish - why else would a wife and mother leave her husband?  It's hard for me to sit with that one, because it stings.  I want to protest, knowing that protesting does me no good, so I remain silent.



Can someone fall out of love without noticing?  If he did notice, then what prevented him from taking action on that information?  Why would anyone stick around if they were as miserable as he clearly was in our marriage, and unwilling to work on it?

And why do people fall out of love like that?  I fell out of love because he became unkind to me, and because he clearly didn't want to be with me.  What causes someone to stop loving someone else who loves them?

When did you know that you had fallen out of love?


I'm pretty sure that there are no answers to many of those questions, but I'm asking them anyway.  Readers, I'd love to hear your experiences, even if the answers to my own situation are an eternal mystery, even if there is no certainty.   I look forward to hearing from you.

Why it's better to be older

This morning I woke up reflecting on my coffee date, and feeling pretty darn smug about it.

I mean, sure, the date itself was a dud, and there is no potential relationship there at all; but still, it was a wild success.

It was a wild success because I didn't leave my dignity there in the coffee shop.  It was a wild success because I enjoyed myself, even while having coffee with a stranger.  It was a wild success because I walked away thinking, "Hey, I can do this!" and not "OhmyGodnobodywilleverloveme!"

When I was twenty(ish), every possible first date could be The One.  Every word was fraught with meaning, and those meanings indicated my own worth.  When I was twenty(ish), a date like yesterday's would invoke fears like, "Is this all I will ever get in life?" and "Will anybody ever really like me?" and "Is this what I need to settle for?" and "What's wrong with me that even a guy I don't like doesn't seem to be into me?"

It's a totally different story now.

At forty(ish), what someone else says is a reflection of who they are, and not who I am.  A bad date is not an indication of my entire future, only of the present moment.  I don't have to lose myself in someone else's view of me, and whether one stranger likes me or doesn't is totally irrelevant, especially when I've already identified that we don't have a lot in common at a deeper level.  I can interpret his words differently - when he talks about "being middle aged" he's feeling bad about his own life, and I don't really care what he thinks about mine....I feel young and vibrant, and I'm sorry that he doesn't feel that way about himself, but it's not about me.

At twenty(ish), everything was about me.  At forty(ish), very little is about me.  I am more aware that people are wrapped up in their own heads, their own small dramas, their own perceptions about the world, and that usually their good and bad days don't have one thing to do with me.  At forty(ish), I take a lot more responsibility for how I feel, and for how I respond.

Here's what I hope that the man across the table saw yesterday:
I love my life.  I am kind and polite.  I'm opinionated but not bossy (there is room for someone else to have an opinion, but I don't feel a need to be silent when I disagree).  I smile a lot.

Whether he thought I was hot or not, whether he thought I was successful or not, well, sure, I'd like him to think I'm all that.  But in the end, I know who I am, and my opinion of myself doesn't rest on his opinion of me.  And that's good, because he was a nice enough person, but I don't want his opinion of himself to rest on mine of him (which could be summed up in a yawn - ouch!).

Ahhh, I've come a long way.  And it feels good.  So, thank you to Mr. CoffeeDate, for reminding me of all that.