SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I know it's a rollercoaster of love and hate, but lately I've been thinking.

I love him as a person, but I find I don't care about him all that much anymore. I noticed I'm detaching myself emotionally. I keep telling myself I don't need him...For 3 years of my life, I was already alone, emotionally, physically, sexually, and financially.

Tough day, I guess.

In some odd way, I actually feel like I have more love for him now than I ever have. I have great compassion for him. Detaching has helped me lose a lot of the anger. In hindsight, I can see how my anger clouded my love for him. It's the only way I'd have been able to lash out in anger and say some of the mean things I said. However, today, there is no anger, just love, just compassion, but also we barely speak, have no physical contact, and no idea if we'll make it. I care about him more than ever, but I don't feel responsible for him anymore. I love him enough today to allow him to make his own choices, even if those choices end up being that he stays stuck in the same brokenness forever. I'll accept that. I've gained enough autonomy to decide that I will not remain in the brokenness. Love isn't about sacrificing health (emotional, physical, or sexual). So, yes, I love him, but no, I won't sacrifice my health for him.

hmmmm, different for me.

I care about FWW, but I do not feel love anymore.

Early after dday I felt I loved her, and IC (and SI members) got me to questioning why I professed to love someone who had betrayed me and, at the time, was not owning her A behaviors. I detached while she was workign through her stuff. During this period I always cared about her, but the feelings of love and pride in my M have not come back.

ETA: of course a lot of that love and pride in my M was based on my projections onto the M and FWW. At least what we have now is more authentic, at least from my side.

[This message edited by atsenaotie at 11:05 AM, June 6th (Thursday)]

I'm the opposite... I care about him and always will as the father of my children. But I don't love him like a spouse!

I don't want anything bad to happen to him. I do care about him and we'vecalled a truce which has relieved some of the pressure. We can work around the house, go out to lunch, watch a movie, all in peace buti no longer have the love that you have for a spouse..

@liberty...I too was flying solo for a few years before now...I was very lonely..a sexless emotionless marriage. I have detached and its not so bad right now, there is peace but its not.a permanent thing.

For me, the 'care' is, I guess, an aspect of co-dependence, and the A helped me break that bond pretty completely (I hope). There are things I used to worry about that I now leave to her. It's better for both of us. Does that resonate for you?

[This message edited by sisoon at 4:03 PM, June 6th (Thursday)]

I care, but I do not love him. I've basically detached in all aspects of M. There is no emotional intimacy, no sex, I can't stand for him to hug or kiss me. I can't even stand talking to the man. He's just a jerk (he was that way before the A). Won't try to fix himself. He's back to the way he was preA. He's extremely PA.

So, instead of sitting around "settling", I'm being proactive and getting the ducks in a row, then I'm moving on. Now, if I can just find a house to rent in this darn town I'd be happy.

Nope

..yes....and yes!

..will i stay with her?

..that is up for debate at this point

smy

hmmmm, different for me.

I care about FWW, but I do not feel love anymore.

I feel exactly the same way, I care about her(we have two great kids), but the love has vanished. Last week she told me that she hoped I can learn to love her again(she was listening to some Pink song).

I dunno how, though.

I still love and care about WH, but I love and care about myself more

@ crazyblindsighted...Brilliant...you are right where I'm trying to get..well said!!!!

I've asked myself this question many many times. I think I still love her but the disappointment, hurt and the fact that she stopped loving me just don't allow me to fully love her. I think I care about her. Don't want anything bad to happen. Also, the attachment of 22yrs doesn't go away over night. But eventually I think I could let her go. I'm so afraid that if I do and if I see her with someone new, the DDAY feelings would come back?

Anyway, I have to fall in love with her again cause the old love got trampled.

I care about WH. I am glad he is now sober and staying on his mood stabilizing medication. I am glad for him that he can now, for the first time, appreciate his children (per his own admission... two oldest are adults).

But I have no romantic love feelings for him whatsoever. I have stayed because I hoped they might return. He pretty much squelched them during the 7 years leading up to his A. I fear the A has made it impossible to rekindle those emotions.

At 3.5 months out I still love and care for my WW. Having said that, when I'm away from her, I feel the pain she caused me is too great and I feel detached.

When I look at her, the positive feelings come back.

I don't need to point out that at 3.5 months after d-day everything is still a mess in my head

I do not love him.

I do not care for him.

If he dropped dead I might not be able to stop myself from laughing out loud. As it is he had a very serious health scare recently and it was all I could do to even sound somewhat concerned. I don't wish him dead, but I can't say I'd be sorry if he did croak.

I loved her. Not any more.

I cared about her with all my heart at one time. She has shown me how to love/care for her by the way she treats me. We used to hug and fall into each others arms and just hold each other. I used to like that. Its only been a month since she has left. we can't ever have that back with her being gone.

I love him as a person, but I find I don't care about him all that much anymore. I noticed I'm detaching myself emotionally. I keep telling myself I don't need him...

I felt that way when I was in R most of the time. Sometimes I voiced it outloud to her. She listened and now she is gone. Gone the same way as the time before in not so many ways but the same. I'd like to forget her, but i can't. She is and allways will be a part of me to some degree. I was a fool for love, I am a fool to cry. We all fell in love sometime. It won't be the last time. Holly shit she just walked in the door. ttul.

I don't love him. I care about him, in that he's the father of my kids, and I don't want them hurt. But because he's not nearly as concerned with their well-being as I, even the for-the-kids level of care is dissipating.

Over the two months that I was fighting for my marriage, I feel like I experienced a huge range of different things that I called love.

The primary emotion I felt were negative. Anger, pain, desperation. But at times, through all of that shone genuine love and affection, genuine longing. Even after I learned of her affair, and the negative emotions became stronger than ever, there were still glimpses.

At the same time, love was, as I have put it before, a torturous exertion of willpower, a determination to push through the pain and sacrifice myself for her, to try to reach her and meet her needs even when I didn't feel like it, even when I was so bitter and angry at her for what she was doing. Love, I had always believed, was a choice. And in addition to believing that it was the right thing to do, I wanted to show this to her. I wanted to demonstrate it because it seemed that she didn't believe it. Her love for me, she thought, was something that had just gone away, or perhaps it had been killed inside of her. I wanted to show her what it looked like to love through all the pain, to actively revive it in your heart even when everything in you just wanted to go numb and stop the hurt.

Now that I am no longer fighting and we are heading for divorce, I'm not sure what happened to the love. I don't get those moments of longing and affection anymore. Nor do I experience love as an exertion of will, because I have given up. I was choosing to love her, and now, in a sense, I have chosen not to. I suppose this means that I do not love her anymore.

But the other night, I had an odd moment of serenity. I felt for a moment like I really could love her, and maybe I could do so better than I could have before. Because I had given up on saving the marriage, she and I would both know that any kindness I showed her would not be done in an effort to win her back. If I could show her "charity," a kind of love in these last few weeks of living together, maybe just in small ways, then it would be pure, not done with any thought of reward, but just out of the goodness of my heart. What good would this do? Maybe none at all, except perhaps to replace the bitterness in my own heart with something good.

The moment of serenity didn't last long. I'm still bitter, and I don't feel like being particularly kind to her, but it was encouraging. It is a seed that maybe can grow. It's a different kind of love, but I think that it is love.