I Love You, But I'm Not In Love With You

G Marshall Andrew

Description

If your relationship with your significant other is defined more by companionship than passion... if you love each other deeply but are not deeply in love... if you feel that something's missing or is no longer there... then you could be experiencing ILYB (I Love You, But...).In 'I Love You, but I'm Not in Love with You' couple's counsellor Andrew G. Marshall draws on twenty years of experience to help couples who have 'fallen out of love' or want to rekindle the love that once was to learn how to use Marshall's program with impressive results.

Informations

• Publié par: Marshall Method Publishing
• Date de parution: 20 octobre 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9781783018178
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

I love you, but I m not IN LOVE with you
ANDREW G. MARSHALL
Seven Steps to Putting the Passion Back into Your Relationship
Published by
Marshall Method Publishing
London Florida
www.marshallmethodpublishing.com
2015 Andrew G. Marshall
The right of Andrew G. Marshall to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Marshall, Andrew G.
I love you, but I m not in love with you: seven steps to saving your relationship /Andrew G. Marshall
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-9929718-7-8
1. Man-woman relationships. 2. Interpersonal relations. 3. Love.
4. Interpersonal communications. 1. Title.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the author
Cover design: Andrew Brown
Typesetting: www.typesetter.org
To Polly Vernon and Ed Jaspers: Thank you for helping get this book off the ground.
Contents
Introduction
Part One: The Seven Steps to Saving Your Relationship
Understand
1 What Is Love, Anyway?
2 The Six Stages of a Relationship
Argue
3 Why Arguing is Good For Your Relationship
4 How to Have the Right Type of Arguments
Target
5 Do You Both Speak the Same Language of Love?
Play
6 How to Boost Real Intimacy
Take Responsibility
7 Identity-Does Loving You Stop Me from Being Myself?
8 Is It the Relationship or Something Else?
Giving
9 The Theory of Tipping Points
Learning
10 The Six Special Skills of Successful Couples
Part Two: If Your Relationship Has Reached Crisis Point
11 Having the I Love You, but Conversation/ Hearing the I Love You, but Conversation
12 Coping Day to Day
13 Dealing with Guilt
Part Three: After the Crisis
14 How to Truly Bond Again
15 If Worse Comes to Worst: Making Sense of Endings
16 How to Fly High Again
Conclusion
Index
Introduction
Five years ago, the occasional couple would present themselves at my therapy office after one partner had confessed, I love you, but I m not in love with you. To start off, I was surprised. The phrase seemed to belong to a character in a smart New York TV sitcom. Yet real people were using it to describe something profound that was happening to their relationship. But how could someone love but not be in love?
These couples would describe each other as best friends or that their relationship was more like a brother and sister, except most were still having sex. In essence, the partnership had become defined by companionship rather than passion-and that was no longer enough. Over time, more and more couples complained of the same problem- until the number was something approaching one in four. Not everyone spontaneously used the phrase, I love you, but I m not in love with you, but all recognized the sentiments. For these couples, the dilemma was especially painful: The ones who had fallen out of love still cared deeply about their partners and certainly did not want to hurt them, but they wanted to end the relationship.
A typical couple would be Nick, a forty-two-year-old sales manager, and Anna, a thirty-nine-year-old teacher. They had been married for fifteen years and despite some difficult patches, like Nick s layoff, their relationship had flourished. So when Nick dropped the, I love you, but bombshell, Anna was devastated: I thought we had a happy relationship, I really did. Not perfect, of course, but then who can claim that? I ve tried to get him to explain why he doesn t love me anymore, but he keeps saying he doesn t know. The best he has managed is that I don t listen. Except, he s never told me before he was unhappy. Nick explained that the feeling had been building for several years and that he needed to tell their two teenage children and have a trial separation. He has no honor, no loyalty, Anna complained. He is completely selfish. I feel he s leaving me for someone he hasn t even met yet.
Faced with couples like Nick and Anna, I turned to the professional literature but found it dominated by couples who dislike, or even hate, each other-whereas I needed to know about couples who did not love enough. Worse still, I could find no research into how prevalent the problem had become, no theories about why it should be happening now, or any suggested treatment program. There was only one solution; I would have to fill the gap myself.
I initiated a research project in which all couples seeking help were asked to fill out a questionnaire after their first session. They were given a list of common problems that could have brought them into counseling. The results were startling:
47 percent complained that the passion had gone.
43 percent said, I love my partner but I m no longer in love (or my partner no longer loves me).
Many of the traditional reasons for seeking help polled much lower:
Money issues: 24 percent
An affair: 21 percent
Differing opinions on how to bring up children: 19 percent
Fights out of control: 15 percent
When couples were asked to choose the problem causing the most distress, I love my partner but I m no longer in love (or my partner no longer loves me) came third at 24 percent, narrowly behind difficulty understanding each other s viewpoint at 26 percent, and argue too much at 25 percent.
The research also backed up something that I had observed in my therapy, office. People who checked the I love you, but option were also less likely to also check we argue too much and more likely to pick the neutral, we find it difficult to understand each others viewpoints.
Anna certainly did not like arguments: My parents would scream at each other the whole day long, and I swore I d never put my kids through the same thing. If worst came to worst, she would simply walk away. Meanwhile, Nick was so considerate and good at seeing her side that he talked himself out of any disagreement: I wish Anna didn t go up to bed so early. I don t get in til late, and I m left tiptoeing around the house alone, but it s not her fault, really, because after 10:00, she can hardly stay awake. In fact, they were both so thoughtful that the only open source of friction was that both enjoyed and, therefore wanted to do, the ironing! This might sound like heaven, but when someone cannot truly voice his or her feelings-even if only about minor issues- the relationship cools. Slowly, over the years, degree by degree, all the emotions are dulled. Ultimately, it is as harmful to argue only occasionally, just as it is to argue all the time.
My second observation from my I love you, but (ILYB) clients was that this lack of arguments exacerbates the tendency for two partners, over time, to grow more like each other. The modern trend to be friends as well as lovers is another pressure-as we normally choose friends who are like us. Once again, this might seem wonderful, but relationships need friction, too. It is the grit in the oyster that makes the pearl and the difference that provides the love interest. More important, when there is so much pressure to be everything to each other-to share friends, and even tastes-there is little room to be an individual as well as one half of a couple. I started to feel that I couldn t be myself, explained Nick. I was trapped by what people expected of me.
The third key observation was that most partners who had fallen out of love had recently had a life-changing experience. In Nick s case, it was the death of his father: I remember standing at the foot; of his bed and thinking, Shouldn t I be doing something with my life? Worse still, I could see how little time I had. While Nick was struggling with abstract questions about the meaning of life, Anna retreated into herself, too: I was close to Nick s dad. He d almost been a second father, but I thought I d be most helpful by offering support. So I held back my tears and didn t burden him with my grief, too. While she thought she was being strong for Nick, he read her response to his father s death as unfeeling, and he felt very alone. Instead of sharing their different reactions, neither said anything for fear of upsetting the other. It was not until later in counseling that all Nick s resentment came tumbling out. Other events, like a milestone birthday, the birth of a child, or a parent s divorce, can also trigger a crisis of self-examination, which, in turn, tips over into questioning the relationship.
Over an initial twelve-month period, I tried some tentative treatment programs with these early ILYB clients and started to read a wider cross section of literature. I researched business experts, philosophers, social biologists, marketing gurus, and also looked into alternative relationships and found a small amount of research into successful couples. Some of these ideas could be taken directly into my counseling room, while others had to be adapted. Slowly, I found something that not only saved relationships, but also helped ILYB couples achieve a much deeper intimacy and a truly satisfying bond.
I decided to write this book for three reasons. First, I wanted to share a program that works both with people in crisis and with other therapists. Second, a lot of the information that can significantly improve a relationship is difficult to pass on in a therapy session. Counseling is about listening to people s problems-not about teaching. With this book, couples and individuals can digest the ideas at their own rate. Third, and most important, I wanted to spread the message that falling out of love does not mean the end of a relationship.
Canadian relationships are particularly prone to the problems of ILYB. The history, political landscape and cultural inheritance have all seeped into the national outlook and the way couples deal with conflict. Canada s Fathers of the Confederation dedicated the country to peac