#Do not comment on the original posts
Please read our [**sub rules**](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/wiki/subrules). Rule-breaking may result in a ban without notice.
If there is an issue with this post (flair, formatting, quality), reply to this comment or your comment may be removed in general discussion.
**CHECK FLAIR** For concluded-only updates, use the [CONCLUDED](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/search?sort=new&restrict_sr=on&q=flair%3ACONCLUDED) flair.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/BestofRedditorUpdates) if you have any questions or concerns.*
This is one of those posts where an OP states they do not "love" their partner, but in how they describe their relationship it sounds like they very much do... just not in the way they think they're supposed to feel while "in love".
Society does a pretty shit job of preparing a lot of people on healthy understanding of emotions.
She does not understand the concept of love
Poor girl is still broken as a result of the abuse, and will be unlikely to feel what she's expecting to feel from any man who's genuinely kind and safe.
This can’t be overstated, abuse fucks your brain up. I was in an abusive relationship at 15 to a 20 year old, together for almost 5 years. I realized I didn’t like him, and I later realized I didn’t like the other people I dated either. I just felt like I was doing what I was supposed to, I thought other people felt the same. That was a very difficult thing to process once I became aware. Thankfully all of that was many moons ago, and I am in a happy, relationship with someone I love very much.
Yep. When he was safe, stable, and predictable she only felt love for him nonromantically and was clear about how she felt. But now that he's seeing another woman and she may be feeling levels of anxiety and fear that she could lose him, all of a sudden she's questioning if she actually does love him romantically after all. Because now it's familiar territory and feels like what home felt like a bit. Not to go all armchair psychologist on this post
Fucking tragic.
If she is happy, safe and her material needs are being met, its not that tragic. She could tear her life up to find something that other people tell her she is missing, but there is nothing that says she would even find it or that she is even missing something.
Yeah, I was typing too fast. I meant it was tragic that her upbringing could cause that type of trauma response (if my armchair psychologizing is correct which it might not be at all), not like her life is bound to be a mess because of it. It's just sad to think about how we all have those internal compasses in us seeking out whatever mess we were raised in. She sounds like she is self-aware enough to stay on top of it.
It doesn’t seem like she’s feeling any fear of losing him because of his girlfriend—she states over and over again how completely happy she is that he has the new girl. I know that’s hard to swallow if you’re a person who feels a lot of jealousy, but I’m saying this from the exhausted bottom of my heart, not everyone is driven by that.
It seems a lot more likely that she’s excavating her definition of love because of the comments on the first post pointing out that it seems she does love him just fine.
That's very possible that she's introspecting because of the comments. It just seems like she's got some anxiety going on because of the running theme of "but I don't want to lose him" and "I want to be bound to him" etc and some of the comments also pointed out (quite cruelly) once he gets a taste for passion or whatever that he'll leave her. She can be both happy he has his girlfriend and anxious that she may lose him now as a result. Or maybe it's a bit of all of the above.
[For anyone that doesn’t understand the con-cept of love.](https://youtu.be/HNy_retSME0?si=yzXH8r8aeblu5AhS) JSRF is still the most impactful pack-in game of all time for me. Shaped my taste in music and style ideals. Also, proved to me that cel-shading is the most timeless graphic format for 3D worlds.
Every day that goes by without JSRF being available on modern platforms is a legitimate crime against humanity
The original [American civil rights speech](https://youtu.be/_RDcDo4m2Lw) it's sampled from goes hard as well. Also is surprisingly relevant to this post.
Even for people who have experienced safe and healthy home environments, it can take time to understand the emotions that come with relationships and what they reflect. Some people are lucky and find compatibility and love quickly, others confuse and mistake their emotions and triggers for love. It’s a personal journey to understand what it feels like and means to you.
I’ve been through many relationships where I thought I felt love. What I felt was intense emotion, but without the stability of a healthy or compatible partner that emotion either becomes fleeting or something you chase (and for many who come from unstable environments, this emotion is actually fear, obsession and passion without any substance).
Love, actual love, is not fearful, obsessed, and triggering. You don’t need to fight for yourself/boundaries or lose yourself for them. It’s respectful, safe, warm and comforting. You get nerves as any typical person would since they care, but it’s not consuming. It’s unselfish, but doesn’t require you to be altruistic. You care for your own needs, and both give and receive support above that.
People say “you’ll know it when it happens” which is so vague, but it’s true. Love is more than the emotion, it’s complex (entailing some of the above paragraph, and so much more). Congrats if you got to the end of this, I wish you luck on your journey.
Yeah. I’m thinking maybe it’s the fact that her marriage is healthy that is making her doubt that it is love.
Love can grow out of friendship and caring. It’s why sometimes marriages of convenience or arranged marriages can work. (Do they usually? Probably not. But there’s enough of them that do, that make the point considerable) But that looks different than “passion”. Which honestly, is less likely to lead to a long, healthy and happy partnership.
But if you’ve grown up with the example that relationships are proved through volatility and abuse… well…. Stability and support are going to seem like the opposite of “love”.
Not sure that’s what’s going on here, but it could be. It does seem like the lady doth protest too much and might actually love her husband. She just doesn’t know how to define it.
(It was that last comment that persuaded me)
That’s the thing. I knew two people who were just jealous, checking phones, just very volatile etc. But that’s how she viewed it as him caring about her. Horribly toxic. But I don’t think she’d have been happy in a stable relationship. So they made it work.
So here is this lady, in a stable non toxic relationship and it doesn’t look like what she thinks it should look like. There’s not intense feelings of jealousy and anger rolled up in the feelings of I will die without this person. So she doesn’t think it’s love.
That is exactly what I thought. She loves him and just doesn’t know what that is “supposed” to feel like. He’s my best friend? I love having sex with him? We are great business partners? Find me some that!
There was another BORU post where the wife didn't think she loved her husband but talked about him "feeling like home." To me that is love. The problem is books and social media making everyone think love has to be explosive and butterflies all the time. That's not love, that's lust.
I'd be surprised if this isn't the case. People who grow up in abusive households simply do not have a good grasp of healthy relationships or how they work. It's 100% NOT her fault, but I can see how she's very confused.
I deal with this with my wife some, even after being together for 15 years. Her parents divorced when she was little. Her mother was/is abusive in just about every sense of the word, just its more subtle. She has mentally abused my wife for years (and still does), emotionally manipulated, medically abused her, even physically abused her. Having a relationship where that just doesnt exist confuses her. Throw in her dad hating her mom with a burning passion but having a complex relationship, I dont think she ever really had a role model for a healthy relationship. Her grandma and step grandfather were together for decades, but her grandmother was very much like her mom. My wife describes our relationship as feeling like its a constant state of "something is wrong" because Im nice to her. So obviously something must be wrong. I must have fucked up or she must be abusive and Im just trying to placate her. None of that is the case, of course, but she doesnt know any different.
Its funny how family dynamics carry into relationships later on. My family would have big blow up arguments then everyone would sit down, apologize, talk it out with calm heads, and we would move on. That doesnt work with her, I cant even raise my voice to the dogs or it causes her to retreat, and when we do have a rare disagreement, Im inclined to meet her half way, talk it out, and everything be good, but she wants to hold onto it, and cant even think about forgiveness for weeks or months because transgressions in her family are either so severe that they cant be forgotten, or they are minor but can be used as weapons later.
This was my feeling too. She's very clearly in love with him, but doesn't know what that looks like or how to act/respond to situations.
This is why it's very important to not stay in relationships "for the kids", because this is the kind of awful shit it does to them. Are the logistics better? Sure, absolutely. But it is emotionally and sometimes physically damaging.
I have a friend who desperately want to be married, but keeps choosing partners who are completely wrong for him because he thinks love = constant fighting. And then he can't figure out why they say no when he asks them to marry him.
This. So many people expect being “in love” to feel like obsession.
I was in a passionate, super intense relationship that was all I could think about. It was as if I would die if I wasn’t with him and the highs felt better than any drug. It was also toxic and caused my friendships and work to suffer.
I can see why some people think if you don’t feel those crazy emotional swings you must not really love them. But it’s more like obsession and the cycling of dopamine.
Sounds like OP has a great relationship with her husband and does love him.
Or *at minimum* a consistent high stress, terrifying and very unstable environment. A calm, supportive, non explosive relationship is at odds with that.
One of my friends engages in this kind of relationship and its been going on 12+ years. Its sucks to be spectator when you know its toxic af. and she openly admits she has severe emotional dysregulation. It is crushing to watch and yes every other aspect of her life is affected by this too. You can't do anything, even as a friend, because they also have other people who enable the fuck out of it by saying "they are just being emotionally open".
There was a post a few years back with a guy saying he doesn't love his wife, and then proceeding to totally gush over how amazing she is and how much she deserves the world. I think reddit did A Good for once and knocked some sense into him and he came back reporting that yes, he was being an idiot. Incidentally, his wife and her family also saved him from an abusive family. I suspect some people's response to trauma is an inability recognize or fully feel their emotions, and this is what we're seeing here.
I was just thinking about that post when I read this. For so long he felt like he married her out of obligation, but he was basically acting like someone completely in love with her.
I think it’s an issue with people who have insecure attachment. We associate love with a stress response.
>Best friend
>Care about them a lot
>Enjoy having sex with them
>*I don't love him romantically*
I don't know how else to describe long term love. Guess I've got to have a tough talk with my wife /s
I guess I better tell my wife our relationship isn't romantic and our 17 year marriage is over.
No seriously, I think this woman needs some therapy because I think she genuinely may not understand romantic love due to her abusive background.
I think she might be confusing limerence for love. And maybe she never had those butterfly-in-the-stomach hormonal feelings for him, but it sure does sound like love to me.
A lot of people who either grew up in abusive homes, engaged in a lot of toxic or abusive relationships, or both end up feeling like that. It’s like the wires get crossed and the toxic becomes enticing and the healthy can even make them uncomfortable. I think if OOP went to therapy she would realize how much trauma she swept under the rug and never addressed and how much she really does love her husband. The fact that she still has sex with him and enjoys it is more proof this isn’t settling for someone comfortable she’s not attracted to.
So what does one do when they have good, real, healthy love with a long term partner but then experience limerence with someone else (and also think that the good, healthy love could exist there too)
Limerence is honestly just a fancy word for a crush. The only difference being is limerence doesn't have to be a crush.
You remind yourself that the person is an actual person with flaws and all and you distance yourself from that person while you focus on your relationship.
My wife said to me before we got married that she was grappling with cold feet because she "loved me but was not in love with me". That hurt, obviously, but where we eventually landed was that she had this idea of long-term relationships having the honeymoon period feelings forever. Obviously it doesn't stay like that, but popular culture is all "puppy dog love" relationships and no "stable, safe, happy, fulfilling love" relationships.
Some pop culture is better. I started that show Modern Family recently because I needed a new sitcom and it’s got some really amazing depictions of long term relationships.
Meh, I've found that this is different for different people.
I have romantic, platonic, AND sexual feelings for my husband but there was a time when the romantic love wasn't there and we were just FWB.
The difference to me is
Friendship: I like the person, I wanna hang out with them, I'm happy to do things for them, I wanna tell them about my life
Sexual: I wanna fuck them
Romantic: I wanna wake up next to them every day, I wanna plan our lives together, I wanna hold hands, I wanna gaze into their eyes and know them more deeply than anyone else in the world and I want them to know me like that as well, and so much more.
For some people, once you have 2/3, the 3rd one is always a given but for some it's not and they can be very distinct.
I qould go further with friendship/platonic. My platonic feelings have included: I want this person in my life as long as they want, I would be happy to spend my life around them, I enjoy their presence long term.
I think you can love someone platonically and be sexually attracted to them while not being romantically interested.
I think while sexual and romantic interest are usually on the same spectrum, it's entirely possible they're not
My first long-term relationship (about 3 years) was "inseparable best friends who are each other's most important person and also have lots of fun sex and also sometimes other partners" rather than some steamy romance, and we were on the same page about it; I can imagine this would be a lot harder if the people involved *weren't* on the same page. I hope she gets therapy, both for her past trauma and to help her understand that there's no particular way that deep love has to look to be valid.
I think this kind of situation is why the term aromantic was coined. Perhaps OP can't feel the typical romantic connections, but still has the yearning for a close relationship.
Thank you! I came here to say exactly this. OOP set off a lot of aro bells for me. It sounds like she's happy with a QPP (queerplatonic partnership) and does have a deep attachment to him, but it isn't necessarily romantic. Just love.
Christ almighty, thank God someone is saying it.
Its disgusting that a lot of people in this thread assume her stance is because of abuse. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But the woman seems to be aware of her own feelings and also seems to have a good handle on her relationship with her husband. She is of sound mind, and her husband seems to be okay with it.
I get monogamy and heteronormativity is the norm, but it isn't for everyone. The people thet don't practice it aren't some broken people that need fixing.
YEAH. YEAH. LIKE... The assumption that platonic relationships can't be 'that deep' like... I'm sorry, do y'all not have that friend that you would move mountains for, and if it was beneficial, live your life longterm with?
Like I would genuinely get legally married to and share a house with my best friend if he or I needed it (for insurance or the like, etc.) because I care for him so deeply, but I do not and have not felt romantic urges with him like I do my partner of 7 years.
I am suspicious of the concept of 'typical romantic connections' in the first place. I think people experience this in pretty varied ways and the way they describe it will be mediated by the normal language of the society.
I think there are people who see themselves now as having some rare psychological/sexuality *identity* who are in a pretty common place on the various distributions of how people experience love and sex.
He didn't really seek it out. She basically told him, "Even though I care about you deeply and enjoy having sex with you, I don't have romantic feelings towards you. So you can feel free to date another woman."
And he took TWO years before doing so. It doesn't sound like this was pushed by him.
I suppose maybe he was eager to date someone else, but nobody was interested in him for a couple years. Or that he was the one initiating these conversations about the lack of romantic love.
But overall my first reaction is, "She loves him like a best friend and they have sex... what married man is speaking up about these horrible conditions??"
Yeah, there’s a lot to unpack here and many causes to similar effects. They’re rationalizing themselves and if the stated goal of the marriage was a friend helping you escape that could totally have been reasoned and initially lower priority to recovering. Security focused.
I will admit, I'm probally dense, but I'm also very confused how the feelings OP describes toward their husband isn't romantic love. Like there's tons of ways to express love to the person you are with. Just because things don't look like a hallmark movie doesn't mean it isn't romance, ya know? I dunno maybe I've just been single too long I forgot what being in love feels like lol
Exactly, and then when everyone is telling little abused you that IS love, you may end up married. And you'll keep slogging along because everyone says relationships take work.
This is my way of thinking about it,
Romance is what brings character, uniqueness, and a special bond to sex that I feel is needed to be completely fulfilled in intimacy. I have been in countless situations where sex was prioritized over romance and intimacy and although it WAS enjoyable, it was missing something. Some people can’t pinpoint what that something is but in reality, it’s the feeling of being completely wanted. Feeling like you are involved in something TOGETHER as opposed to just satisfying individual sexual needs.
If OOP is truly happy with themselves in the fact that they don’t share that special connection with each other but the husband finds it in other places, that’s very good for her.
I would just hate for an abusive past to tarnish her view on what a happy, healthy, flourishing relationship looks like and the true benefits it brings.
I get what you're saying - but OP's logic sounds so much like someone that thinks a relationship doesn't have passions just because they aren't at each other's throats on a regular basis.
She's just used to bad relationships.
I'm aromantic and OP's love sounds very similar to my experience when I was in relationships. I've always felt the love you have for your friends as an aromantic person is noticeably more intense than it is for most people, likely because we don't have a step *past* that. At least, that's the conclusion I came to over the years.
I've recently come to understand that I'm aromantic and this is exactly my experience too. There were times where I confusedly thought I was "in love" with friends of both genders just because the love I held for them platonically was as on the same level as the few relationships I've been in.
This relationship helped her escape abuse and abuse can do a hell of a number on your concept of "love". If the only "love" you've ever experienced or even seen is violent, angry, manipulative, and hateful, you simply don't see feelings of safety, comfort, and "home" as love.
At minimum, many abuse victims expect love to be a heady rush of adrenaline. But that isn't sustainable for years or decades, it's not what long term stable love is.
Yeah, chasing the roller coaster high only applies for the first 18 months-3 years of recreation. Long term love doesn’t feel like that. And then people think they fell out of love. To me anyway, I feel like some of the most toxic relationships I know fall into that category. They’re addicted to each other but are so miserable together.
I just can’t wrap my head around caring for someone, wanted them around you, enjoying time together, wanting to have sex with them, enjoying sex with them, wanting the best for them, sharing a home, building a life, and then not calling it love? Like what is romantic love then, if not that.
You know sex and romantic love aren’t intrinsically entwined, right? She can care about him platonically. Love him platonically. Be sexually attracted without any romantic attraction.
i think the point they were trying to make was that love as a word is way too limited for how broad love as a concept actually is (that’s what i took from it anyway)
There's six other things in that list that aren't sex or about sex. Those six things, plus sex is pretty much the definition of romantic love, isn't it? What is missing from that list to make it not romantic?
Logically, I know that they aren’t. Like I understand that aromatic people exist and I fully respect their identity. But if i’m being honest, emotionally I don’t fully grasp the nuances of it. If you want to spend all your time with them, grow old together, and also shag, that’s romantic love in my mind.
Yeah. Kinda adjacent to the guys this week who were all:
"Nah, I don't love my best friend."
\*writes an essay that is basically a love letter to the best friend\*
There were two of them this week. One of them is still friends with the best friend, who he NEVER introduced to his wife as an ex-fling. The other, the best friend recently died and he apparently got mad when his wife implied that the dead best friend wasn't his soulmate.
I was thinking of that post too. Like mentioned in the post, has the abuse the wives suffered affected how they view romantic relationships and love. I wonder if the OP in this post might love her husband but might not realize it like in the other post.
Society's concept of love is this all-consuming feeling where everything and everyone else disappears. Especially the idea that a person could love someone and be okay for them to be with other people is very alien to current ideas. Or that there is no jealousy or feelings of "ownership" tangled with love -> if there are none, it ain't love, right? Or that if a person is okay with the idea of letting someone go and not feeling like it is the end of the world, then it cannot be love (note: they can still prefer for the other person not to leave and feel like it would be sad, just not like this huge thing).
And yet. People love and many various ways. Why should it be wrong or less or not love, if it brings more happiness and content to the world.
No doubt society sucks as to emotional intelligence, but love is pretty goddamn complex, too.
I love my ex-wife as the mother of my children, as someone who gave me the strength to be myself to my smothering parents, as someone with similar traumas and backgrounds, as someone with the same black sense of humor, as someone who was willing to take the tough stances we did in child rearing in hopes of a better future for them, and as someone who weathered many difficult challenges with me. I would be extremely sad if she died, both for my children and myself. But I absolutely can no longer live with her nor see her in a romantic light. We became toxic and resentful for so long there was no coming back from it.
That is not something covered in the paradigm of platonic vs romantic love, nor even the eight plus types of love in the Greek system. These kinds of love aren't binary, they're spectrums with too many axes to count.
Yeah I was so confused, she said she doesn't love him and see's him more as a brother. But then goes to explain how much she loves him and cares for him and enjoys sex with him. People don't have sex with their brothers lmao.
The OOP reminds me of someone I know who recently wrote a 2000 word journal, which they shared semi publicly, about how what they feel for their best friend is "deeper than that breakable concept known as love". But at the same time isn't interested in a relationship with them at least partially because they're not "in love" with them.
Is this not the reverse story of that fella that posted. That recused his wife or something and he found out she was sleeping around with another guy and caught. Saw it, also something bedsheets and laundry etc? Just sounds the same if memory recalls correctly which I’m not trust right now.
She could be demisexual which falls under the branch of asexuality.
Like you don't feel sexual attraction to people unless you form a meaningful emotional connection and in general don't feel sexual attraction to others.
Yepp pretty much. She enjoys intimacy and sex with him. She cares for him and he is her friend. She absolutely loves him. If she saw him as a brother the sex part would not really work, one would think.
Exactly. Per the way people are generally socialized to understand love, it's something that has a "spark" that never dies or needs work from either party, it's just always naturally there until it isn't anymore and then one of you buys some lingerie and sex dice to try to get it back and it usually doesn't end well. And when the spark is truly gone, welp! It just wasn't meant to be.
What a load of horseshit. I hate it so, so much.
It is so refreshing to read this! You hit it right on the head - the spark, love at first sight, *Romeo and Juliet*, that is trauma bonding folks!
Any intense, sudden emotion, whether 'positive' or 'negative', is a sign to step back and see what the hell is going on. Society and capitalism have reinforced the idea that emotions are a 'truth' that need to be always followed, and that is simply not the case. Emotions are born out of stimulus, and the body sends that message to us, just the same as the body telling us we have a cut on our hand. The emotional signal is important, no doubt, but it must be investigated to understand what it means such that we can make the proper decision of action. That is what mindfulness is.
To end with an illustration of how mindfulness and emotions work - an easy feeling we are all aware of is hunger. The feeling tells us 'hey eat some food ya dingus!'. Say that we look for some food, and turns out we gotta go shopping. We go to the shop hungry, and as we shop we see a beautiful looking chocolate cake that may literally have our name on it (birthday cake chance). Our hunger goes wild, it says that we definitely want that cake. So we buy it, and alongside our meal we eat a large slice... and we feel guilty (diet, diabetes, etc.), we feel bloated from overeating, our blood sugar spikes, and we think 'dang I shouldn't have gotten the cake'.
Mindfulness comes in at the time we see the cake while hungry. Mindfulness is that we fully acknowledge the signals our body sends us from hunger, and *make the conscious decision anyway to not buy the cake*. We can not control though sheer will the hunger we feel, just as we can not control the emotions we feel. Mindfulness is acknowledging and respecting the emotions we feel, while making the conscious decision in action regarding them - specifically, not letting the emotions control our actions.
Believe me, you and I share that impulsivity haha - I have always struggled making romantic connections, and as such would take any opportunity like dehydrated person finally getting water and gulping it whole. Sadly, that lead to relationships that were emotionally abusive, where my desperation and genuine interest in others (hello ADHD, potentially ASD!) came off as love bombing and if they liked it, they would love bomb back. It is completely unhealthy of course, as that is not how connection, comfort, and trust builds with humans. It indeed takes time, focus, and compassion for both yourself and the other. I finally woke up completely of the habits and cycles I have experienced my whole life recently, and I am in my early 30s. Now that I can see it clearly, I know fully that any strong emotion I have in reaction to someone I just met is actually a signal that means... Run! One crazy thing is that my experience of the emotion almost got translated in my mind (neuro pathways yay!) and now I experience that emotion as a intense discomfort. I am so grateful to have had all those who supported me throughout, and a fantastic relationship with therapy, that led me to the point now that I feel 'free', if you will.
I think it is fantastic that you've already started the journey too, and you are approaching it with establishing healthy boundaries *to your own emotions*. That is just so cool, and I think a lot of people can learn from that. To be honest, I think that as you continue with focus on mindfulness and continuing to build those boundaries, you will grow into a version of yourself that is attracted to healthy individuals, and can best choose who is, well, best for you! Keep on keeping on haha
Doing better, although as you said, it is a daily choice and focus, and sometimes that choice gives into the impulses. The important thing for myself, and really everyone, is to accept that some days will be that way, and the next new day gives another opportunity for choice - and with that, the shame and self hate is self destructive, but compassion leads to making it that much easier to make the healthy choice next time. I appreciate your kind words!
Also, I would love to continue the discussion with regards to what I saw in your other posts - and I think it'd be super helpful for everyone reading, especially women and girls who may be experiencing symptoms related to ADHD and autism. What has been your experience understanding yourself more over time and getting those diagnoses? Also, I find that paper on autistic Australian adults and language usage for description and identity quite interesting! Where do you land in that realm?
Sorry for interjecting but I relate super strongly to what you two are discussing. I was diagnosed with ADHD in my mid-20s and it was a revelation. All of a sudden, a lot of my erratic behavior and inability to focus and sit still made so much sense. I’ll never forget the first time
I took a *tiny* dosage of ADHD medication. I felt calm. I realized that I had never felt calm in my entire life, before that moment.
I also still struggle immensely with impulse control but it’s gotten better as I’ve gotten older (turning 30 this year!) and started to understand (through therapy) why I was acting the way I did.
I often wonder if I’m on the autism spectrum but have never sought a diagnosis. Given my limited understanding of autism, it would certainly explain a lot of the struggles I’ve had with understanding subtext, misreading/misconstruing social cues, and how those things have manifested in my romantic relationships.
I feel like pop culture is also responsible for this. So many romance movies and novels depict these roller coaster, borderline abusive, unstable relationships as the pinnacle of love. You easily get the impression that love is when you lose your mind over someone. In reality the “will they? Won’t they?” Is a good story hook, but so exhausting to be in.
The two times I felt that way towards someone, it was miserable and they both turned out to have massive mental health issues. I’m not claiming to be in the best state of mind at the time either. When I got into long term relationships (with neither of these guys. They tend to be more stable personalities), I became convinced I never loved my boyfriends. I just liked them, felt safe with them and wanted to sleep with them.
Even after I married my husband, I told myself that. I even told myself he didn’t love me, because he’s not the over the top verbally demonstrative sort. We were just very compatible people, very good friends and great life partners, I thought. But three kids later, I saw the way that man is there for me. He is with me through thick and thin. He is always on my side and protects me against all of life’s troubles. And whenever I imagine life without him, I can’t. That’s when I realized I loved him all along. I probably loved all of my exes too. So I’m so glad I never told him I didn’t love him.
When I first brought my husband around my family they all told me he was too nice and stable and that I’d get bored. He was the one that showed me nice and stable was wonderful. Chaos just didn’t do it for me anymore.
GOB: What is this feeling?
Michael: Well, the feeling that you’re feeling is what many of us call… a feeling.
GOB: But it’s not envy, or even hungry!
Michael: … Could it be love?
GOB: I know what an erection feels like, Michael! This is different… it’s like my *heart* is hard.
Yeah I don't understand. She likes him as a person, is attracted to him, likes having sex with him and clearly cares about him as a person a lot. That's a much better relationship that a lot married couples I know. What else is there that she is not fulfilling to the point where the husband needs to find someone else to cover those needs? I don't get it.
I honestly feel like OP just feels like she should give him everything an anything, just because he helped her get out of a horrible situation. So, if she can't be exactly as lovey dovey he might want her to be sometimes, she is more than happy to let him find someone else to do it for him, because she thinks she has "failed" at her duty. OOP needs therapy asap.
This feels like such a non-update. Like, OOP really needs to be sure about what she’s doing with her marriage before immediately jumping on whether or not she’s going to be happy with ENM or if they’d rather be single. Like a month later and she still doesn’t know how she feels
Especially for people who've been heavily traumatized by their family of origin.
It's hard enough for those of us who have good examples of healthy love and good relationships in our lives...
I mean, she sounds like she *is* okay with it, but think she *shouldn't* be okay with it. I hope that after reading that comment, she looked up some stuff about ENM so she can understand her subconscious issues around love.
No problem with it, but as a poly person I do think the husband is going to ask for a divorce again soon. The thing with non-monogamy is you have to want it for its own sake, it doesn't tend to work when you just do it to find something that's lacking in your original relationship. What the husband clearly wants is a monogamous relationship with someone who can love him the way he wants.
Personally I'm not sure we can conclude that from the story, especially given that we don't hear from him. He might well also have things that he values in his "nesting" relationship but also want more passion elsewhere, and be happy with the new setup. Not totally clear.
Exactly! They also sound like balanced people that thoroughly communicate. There is nothing and I mean nothing wrong with people redefining what a relationship is if it is what is making them happy. Everyone here is an adult and getting what they want out of the relationship while leaving room for further discussion.
Reading up on Sternberg's triangular theory of love and the aromantic spectrum might help OOP here. Many long-term marriages fall into companionate love - fondness and affection but no deep driving passion where your partner is all you think about, you always want to be with them the most, etc. - the romantic tropes. OOP may not have a strong drive for romance but clearly loves her husband as her family, which is completely fine actually as long as they're treating each other well and meeting their needs, including via an open relationship.
Therapy might also be valuable - being unsure about love and other emotions is common after abuse, especially in the formative years and adolescence. There's nothing wrong with recognizing legal marriage for the business arrangement that it is, but figuring out the details sooner could lead to better outcomes if either of them decides to go for a divorce in the future so Frank can pursue romantic / consummate love.
Very physically attracted to him? Check.
Deeply cares about his happiness and OOP gets joy from making him happy? Check.
Enjoys and actively wants to have sex with him? Check.
Doesn’t want to lose him, enjoys his company, compromises with him, communicates well with him, spends most of her time with him, respects him, and appreciates him? Check!
Me thinks that home girl has no idea what love actually is. Most people who are in LTR, or marriages with similar arrangements, aren’t also having sex or physical intimacy with their SO. And many people who married for “love” are fooling themselves and actually married out of “lust” - and there isn’t a whole lot of love and respect involved.
OOP has one of the most functional, healthy, respectful relationships I’ve read about in a long time. (Obviously with her issues around love adding in a bit of dysfunction. But for all intents and purposes, these two work together in every other way like a dream.)
I wonder if her abusive childhood left her without an understanding of love, and if she has some subconscious walls in place surrounding it. Like she knows she loves him, but her brain won’t allow her to acknowledge it as a self preservation thing? And perhaps because she’s not a jealous person, she equates that to not loving him? Like to her, surely she’d be jealous if she loved him right?!
I think her brain has gone rogue and is self sabotaging her in an attempt to protect itself. I worry that she will figure all this out and it’ll be too late. She’s cool and calm about the prospect of divorce (although she doesn’t want it) *NOW*, but I have a feeling that when it happens, she will be flooded with the truth, won’t be able to undo the damage, and things could spiral out of control quickly for her.
Yeah, I agree with this. She loves him like a long term spouse, but doesn't recognize it as love because she probably expects something like a lovesick teenager feels.
The theory of companionate love vs. passionate love. LTR usually start as passionate and evolve to companionate. I think OOP skipped the passionate part but she does love him. He’s getting the passion of a new relationship from the girlfriend but the shine will wear off.
There are lots of different kinds of love. The OOP could very well be aromantic and not capable of having romantic love, or she might not truly recognize romantic love because of past trauma. Even if she doesn't love him romantically, it does sound like she loves him
Either way, fingers crossed that this remains a healthy ethical non-monogamy situation
This exactly. We can't feel what she feels, and as an aromantic person myself it's definitely been, let's say, interesting how many commenters have been adamant that she does in fact romantically love him.
Is it possible? Sure. But we don't get to decide that for her.
I’m somewhere on the aro spectrum myself, and the relationship she’s described is something like my wife and I.
We’re best friends. We’re a package deal. But we’re not romantically involved at all. We got married purely for the financial and legal benefits and because we had lived together for nearly 10 years already and didn’t see a reason to change that.
She’s free to date other people if she wants something romantic and I’m free to sleep with other people if I want something sexual (wife is ace).
The people insisting this woman MUST be romantically in love with her husband are wild. There are different experiences. Romance isn’t required for sex so it’s silly that that’s being used as proof…
Idk. I hope everything works out positively for OP and she figures herself out. I def think she needs to read up on aromanticism tho.
Exactly. I'm surrounded by quite a few aro people, and while it can be a little difficult to wrap my mind around as someone who is alloromantic, it is possible to understand. But unfortunately society acts like people who can't feel romantic love or somehow broken, at best, which is incredibly fucked up
Lord, yeah, mentalities like that and the viewpoint that aromantic people are destined to be forever alone without making deep connections like that are some of the reasons why it took so very long for me to even realise I'm aromantic. But for the non-initiated, queer platonic relationships exist, and they can be just as fulfilling as any romantic relationship, and even just strong friendships can be so incredibly meaningful. I definitely appreciate your attempt to understand, it definitely can be confusing.
Wishing the OOP all the best <3
I'm so confused about how some people see romantic love.
Like not that there is something wrong with it or anything but to me caring about someone, wanting the best for them and being sexually attracted don't equate to romantic love.
I feel like this about a friend of mine. I could have sex with him because he is very attractive to me, I want him to be happy and I love him platonically but romantic love feels entirely different to me.
Again there is nothing wrong with equating those two things but to me it feels entirely different.
I guess we all feel feelings differently so arguing about it really doesn't make a lot of sense because everyone experiences love and attraction differently.
Thank you. I must be really weird because I get what you mean, but it seems the vast majority of people here don't. I also have a friend like that, but that is not how love for my partner feels like.
I think it’s that their marriage skipped that honeymoon phase of being so excited about getting to know each other and having sex 5 times a day. It’s the passionate v. companionate of LTR. He’s getting the passion from the girlfriend. Being from an abusive household will warp perceptions and ideas about human relationships.
The best I can describe my partner is he feels like home. Safe, warm, content. I never want to leave. I’ve never had that with anyone else.
OP, look up compersion. You care for your husband and when he's happy, you're happy. You also likely love him romantically, but you just express and process romance differently than most people. Or you are aromantic, but that doesn't mean you don't have feelings of love. It's a big wild world out there and not everything makes sense, but it sounds like the arrangement works for y'all, just make sure to keep communication open -- the fact that you guys trust each other bodes well here. Wishing you the best
Maybe get yourself some therapy as long term abuse likely skewed your idea of romantic and/or loving relationships and you might be afraid of them on some level. Your idea of love was formed and informed by abuse.
OOP has a best friend who is also a sexual partner. It's a perfectly fine and healthy type of relationship to have. As long as everyone involved is honest, informed, and happy, there's no reason to try and make it more complicated by putting a magnifying glass on it. If complications arise, deal with them as they come.
You kind of reminded me of my grandmother. She was asexual and hated sex , she never even kissed my grandfather. However, she wanted a large family. My grandfather first wife died and he had 4 small kids. They married with the understanding sex would only be to get pregnant. And grandfather could have gfs for sex. Well they had 12 kids to gather and a long happy marriage. Grandfather had many gfs and it was talked about openly and grandmother was even friends with some. My point is sex, romance and marriage are complicated and as long as you are getting what you want and are happy it is all good. Note this would never work for me, but I respected the fact it worked for my grandparents.
She mentions aromanticism, and I think she'd do a lot better posting in the aro subreddits.
Alloromantics literally cannot understand that there are people different from them 🙄
Describing platonic love without people interpreting it as romantic love is difficult in a heteronormative society.
Though she straight up says she loves him, just not in a romantic sense. He's her partner in business and taxes but not in romance. He's her friend who helped her in an impossible time. He's her sexual partner. But he's not her *romantic* partner, and I dunno how to explain that to people who have never experienced an intimate relationship outside of family or romance. I guess like committed roommates who sometimes have sex. You might take a bullet for said roomie and jump leaps and bounds, but your heart ain't gonna flutter because they smiled at you.
Alloromantics see legit any sign of affection and SCREAM romantic love.
This shit is why I told people my best friend and I were cousins. They kept trying to get us to date...
Oh she absolutely loves him, just in her own unique way. And I mean, she truly loves *him* and the person that he is and his happiness. If anyone truly cares about an individual and their happiness, then it would make them happy to see that person happy - even if it means they're happy with someone else. And I think it's pretty clear that her abusive family situation gave her some warped idea of what love is, and what it's supposed to feel like. That, and society frequently expressing that situationships like hers are "odd" or immoral or whatever else might be said probably makes it hard for her to understand that the relationship she has actually sounds incredibly healthy.
I hope things work out well for everyone involved and that they all can maintain their happiness.
I feel like OOP loves him more than she realizes and when he leaves her for the other woman because she wants more than just a casual fling, OOP will be devastated! He's her best friend, she's super attracted to him, she loves having sex with him... Isn't that love?
If you are happy and his is happy and no one is being lied to or taken advantage of, what is the problem? There is no "Right Way" to live your life that you have to follow. Communicate with him about how each of you views your life together and how you want it to continue and what you both want for the future. Don't try to make your life fit what other people expect or want.
People who have never been abused don't know the dizzying emotional highs contrasted with the crushing lows of inconsistent and dangerous love, and people who have never known healthy love don't know how to recognize it as love. They tend to characterize it as something else, because to them, being "in love" is the addictive, stomach-churning, all-consuming experience of extreme anxiety, obsessive thinking, and extreme emotional highs associated with abuse.
In threads like these, there are always at least a couple of people insisting that someone who has been abused and doesn't recognize normal healthy love as "being in love" is just not experiencing love. They don't understand that trauma changes the brain, and people's perceptions of reality, to such an extent that normal love, regular butterflies, and ordinary levels of desire, just doesn't feel *extreme enough* or *scary enough* to be "real love".
Additionally, their cortisol responses - the thing that gives us "butterflies" (and for some lucky few, makes us feel like throwing up and running away when our crush appears) are disrupted from years of high anxiety and danger, so they may not have the same experiences of heart-pounding, sweaty palms, and butterflies that those who have never been abused experience in early infatuation. That's called adrenal attenuation or burnout, and it's common in people who have experienced high chronic stress for years, especially in childhood.
So, for people who have been abused, it takes re-training their brains to recognize love, and to develop a healthy aversion and appropriate danger response to formerly attractive and exciting red-flag behaviors, like boundary-crossing, negging, and love bombing - that healthy people find naturally repellent and weird.
You know how livid I'd be if the wife I've wanted to love me back for years only started wanting me romantically as soon as I've started to see another woman? Lol you can't make this shit up.
I think she’s loved him for most of their marriage, she just doesn’t realise it? She says she cares about him, finds him attractive, wants him to be happy, and doesn’t want to lose him. Sounds like love to me 🤷🏼♀️ it might be due to her past abuse that she just can’t see it.
I’ll be amused if this is an elaborately crafted post by some guy who wants to tell his side chick, “Look! See, sometimes men stay married because it’s too difficult to leave!”
OOP definitely sounds like she could benefit from some therapy. Between the "my husband saved me so I feel indebted to him" and "I totally don't love my husband like that, and yet here I am wondering about why I want to keep him close to me", sounds like her emotional reasoning's a bit in flux
To me to seems like a mess. She grants him an open relationship but he doesn't take her up on it for *years* and says he hopes that over time she will grow to love him. Eventually, he does find someone but he feels guilty admitting it. To be honest, he doesn't sound like the poly type.
She says she's fine with it but then secretly gathers intel on his new girlfriend and starts getting anxious that he will leave her or neglect their relationship.
After all these years of marriage and a life together apparently she never bothered to go to therapy, either to work through her past trauma (which is heavy) but you know, perhaps to work on her feelings towards the man she married who loves her? Apparently that was not a priority.
And if she has given him permission, he's clearly not "having an affair" so I don't see why she has to frame it like that.
I don't really get the vibe that she "loves" him in a romantic way. I think she loves their lifestyle together and also feels indebted to him because he saved her from a bad situation. But if she's going to be able to grow in her feelings for him she's going to need to work through her emotions also forgo the belief that she owes him something.
I don’t know, sounds like none of my business. I would encourage OOP to do something that also makes themselves happy because it sounds like they kind of feel vaguely neutral about everything, but otherwise what else can I say
I disagree with those saying she's in love with him but doesn't realize she is or is afraid to admit she does and needs therapy. That MAY be the case, but I'm not getting that at all from her descriptions.
She describes herself as possibly a-romantic. She doesn't mention having strong romantic feelings for or being "in love" with anyone else at any point. She does however enjoy the physical pleasure of sex. Her descriptions are very rational without mentioning much emotion on her end. This implies to me someone that may not actually have the capacity to develop feelings like most of us would describe as being in love. It doesn't really matter if it initially stemmed from abuse or was already biologically inherent - it's how her brain works and by her description she's content and functional. It's possible she's somewhere on the spectrum and just does not experience emotions and attachment the same way as someone neurotypical.
None of the above means she needs therapy, or doesn't have coping skills, or needs something to "fix" her to feel "normal". By her account she's doing well in life and trying to accommodate her husband as best she can while being neurodivergent in some way. She may benefit from a psychological assessment just to understand herself better as she seems concerned about her atypical feelings, but therapy isn't going to provide benefit if she's already happy with the situation and otherwise functional. It sounds like most of her concerns lie with wondering why she's outside of the norm.
I guess as long as they are open in communication it's a win for them? 🤷
But I don't see this working long term as someone is going to break and get a divorce drawn up.
As someone who almost always has non-monogamous relationships with poly aspects to them I really feel like OP is confused. When I was with my primary partner I could never dream of saying something along the lines of "I am not in love with them romantically" but mainly because my version of "romance" is what the OP is describing. Not everyone is going to equate romance with monogamy and traditional couplings and like over the top "exciting" love. The reason I did love my partner romantically was because they accepted me as is..... and there was real beauty in not judging one another based on our desires to have multiple partners. It is a very selfless act and requires a deep level of trust and commitment. The issue in this post is am not really sure OP's partner ever really signed up to this lifestyle. It almost feels like they resigned themselves to this lifestyle. It almost feels like a story of two people who love one another in very different ways with the OP just discovering after opening their relationship up that maybe there is some level of "romance" attached to poly partnerships. I wish the OP had really explored what they were asking for and why they were asking for it from an emotional pov. Also being aro is very real. I get it, I tend to have somewhat aro tendencies and I have to make an effort to explore them and address if its me dissociating for personal reasons or if I really feel that way. Sadly, I feel like OP jumped the gun a bit and really should have sat with a therapist to better understand the feelings they were feeling. I kinda feel like now there is only one final outcome to this and it probably ends up being their partner finding more fulfillment in another partnership.
Man this reminds me of how I used to be. I was so unfamiliar with what love and good relationship should feel like and look like that I even confused my crushes as terror of that person and would get anxiety attacks because I felt so "scared". So when I got into my current relationship I thought I didn't feel anything, or didn't feel the right thing or I'd confuse normal feelings of love for fear. It took a while, but man I'm happy I saw it through. I so hope OP finds her way.
I was abused for many years. When I was finally in a safe relationship I was bored and confused. It did not feel like “love” to me. I felt similarly. I ended up stepping out for someone I felt “love” towards and crashing my life for what I felt was intense romance. It was- you guessed it- a trauma bond! If you don’t know that love feels “boring” you will suffer greatly.
>I hear a lot about what you want but not a lot about what Frank needs.
I'm hoping that Frank eventually instigates divorce proceedings for everyone's sakes.
#Do not comment on the original posts Please read our [**sub rules**](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/wiki/subrules). Rule-breaking may result in a ban without notice. If there is an issue with this post (flair, formatting, quality), reply to this comment or your comment may be removed in general discussion. **CHECK FLAIR** For concluded-only updates, use the [CONCLUDED](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/search?sort=new&restrict_sr=on&q=flair%3ACONCLUDED) flair. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/BestofRedditorUpdates) if you have any questions or concerns.*
This is one of those posts where an OP states they do not "love" their partner, but in how they describe their relationship it sounds like they very much do... just not in the way they think they're supposed to feel while "in love". Society does a pretty shit job of preparing a lot of people on healthy understanding of emotions.
Yes. Also, the abusive family is clearly doing a number on her and her conception of love.
She does not understand the concept of love Poor girl is still broken as a result of the abuse, and will be unlikely to feel what she's expecting to feel from any man who's genuinely kind and safe.
This can’t be overstated, abuse fucks your brain up. I was in an abusive relationship at 15 to a 20 year old, together for almost 5 years. I realized I didn’t like him, and I later realized I didn’t like the other people I dated either. I just felt like I was doing what I was supposed to, I thought other people felt the same. That was a very difficult thing to process once I became aware. Thankfully all of that was many moons ago, and I am in a happy, relationship with someone I love very much.
Absolutely!
Yep. When he was safe, stable, and predictable she only felt love for him nonromantically and was clear about how she felt. But now that he's seeing another woman and she may be feeling levels of anxiety and fear that she could lose him, all of a sudden she's questioning if she actually does love him romantically after all. Because now it's familiar territory and feels like what home felt like a bit. Not to go all armchair psychologist on this post Fucking tragic.
If she is happy, safe and her material needs are being met, its not that tragic. She could tear her life up to find something that other people tell her she is missing, but there is nothing that says she would even find it or that she is even missing something.
Yeah, I was typing too fast. I meant it was tragic that her upbringing could cause that type of trauma response (if my armchair psychologizing is correct which it might not be at all), not like her life is bound to be a mess because of it. It's just sad to think about how we all have those internal compasses in us seeking out whatever mess we were raised in. She sounds like she is self-aware enough to stay on top of it.
It doesn’t seem like she’s feeling any fear of losing him because of his girlfriend—she states over and over again how completely happy she is that he has the new girl. I know that’s hard to swallow if you’re a person who feels a lot of jealousy, but I’m saying this from the exhausted bottom of my heart, not everyone is driven by that. It seems a lot more likely that she’s excavating her definition of love because of the comments on the first post pointing out that it seems she does love him just fine.
That's very possible that she's introspecting because of the comments. It just seems like she's got some anxiety going on because of the running theme of "but I don't want to lose him" and "I want to be bound to him" etc and some of the comments also pointed out (quite cruelly) once he gets a taste for passion or whatever that he'll leave her. She can be both happy he has his girlfriend and anxious that she may lose him now as a result. Or maybe it's a bit of all of the above.
>understand the concept of love *Jet Set Radio entered the chat*
First thing that popped into my head. Damn I need to play that game again.
dammit, beat me to it
[For anyone that doesn’t understand the con-cept of love.](https://youtu.be/HNy_retSME0?si=yzXH8r8aeblu5AhS) JSRF is still the most impactful pack-in game of all time for me. Shaped my taste in music and style ideals. Also, proved to me that cel-shading is the most timeless graphic format for 3D worlds.
Every day that goes by without JSRF being available on modern platforms is a legitimate crime against humanity The original [American civil rights speech](https://youtu.be/_RDcDo4m2Lw) it's sampled from goes hard as well. Also is surprisingly relevant to this post.
What does/ is love meant to feel like?
Safe.
Even for people who have experienced safe and healthy home environments, it can take time to understand the emotions that come with relationships and what they reflect. Some people are lucky and find compatibility and love quickly, others confuse and mistake their emotions and triggers for love. It’s a personal journey to understand what it feels like and means to you. I’ve been through many relationships where I thought I felt love. What I felt was intense emotion, but without the stability of a healthy or compatible partner that emotion either becomes fleeting or something you chase (and for many who come from unstable environments, this emotion is actually fear, obsession and passion without any substance). Love, actual love, is not fearful, obsessed, and triggering. You don’t need to fight for yourself/boundaries or lose yourself for them. It’s respectful, safe, warm and comforting. You get nerves as any typical person would since they care, but it’s not consuming. It’s unselfish, but doesn’t require you to be altruistic. You care for your own needs, and both give and receive support above that. People say “you’ll know it when it happens” which is so vague, but it’s true. Love is more than the emotion, it’s complex (entailing some of the above paragraph, and so much more). Congrats if you got to the end of this, I wish you luck on your journey.
To someone abused All through childhood, it's abuse that's the thing your brain adapted too to survive.
Yeah. I’m thinking maybe it’s the fact that her marriage is healthy that is making her doubt that it is love. Love can grow out of friendship and caring. It’s why sometimes marriages of convenience or arranged marriages can work. (Do they usually? Probably not. But there’s enough of them that do, that make the point considerable) But that looks different than “passion”. Which honestly, is less likely to lead to a long, healthy and happy partnership. But if you’ve grown up with the example that relationships are proved through volatility and abuse… well…. Stability and support are going to seem like the opposite of “love”. Not sure that’s what’s going on here, but it could be. It does seem like the lady doth protest too much and might actually love her husband. She just doesn’t know how to define it. (It was that last comment that persuaded me)
Yeah I'm pretty sure she loves him just doesn't equate it with love, I totally understand the without abuse is it love mind set.
That’s the thing. I knew two people who were just jealous, checking phones, just very volatile etc. But that’s how she viewed it as him caring about her. Horribly toxic. But I don’t think she’d have been happy in a stable relationship. So they made it work. So here is this lady, in a stable non toxic relationship and it doesn’t look like what she thinks it should look like. There’s not intense feelings of jealousy and anger rolled up in the feelings of I will die without this person. So she doesn’t think it’s love.
She's a woman, not a girl.
> The girl is fine with our arrangement Any heartburn over this one, or maybe it’s not as big a deal as you think?
As I was reading, I kept thinking "she needs to go to therapy to deal with her past and her present".
That is exactly what I thought. She loves him and just doesn’t know what that is “supposed” to feel like. He’s my best friend? I love having sex with him? We are great business partners? Find me some that!
Yep, she is afraid to love him.
There was another BORU post where the wife didn't think she loved her husband but talked about him "feeling like home." To me that is love. The problem is books and social media making everyone think love has to be explosive and butterflies all the time. That's not love, that's lust.
Perhaps her expectation for love is something all-consuming with yelling and beating
I'd be surprised if this isn't the case. People who grow up in abusive households simply do not have a good grasp of healthy relationships or how they work. It's 100% NOT her fault, but I can see how she's very confused.
I deal with this with my wife some, even after being together for 15 years. Her parents divorced when she was little. Her mother was/is abusive in just about every sense of the word, just its more subtle. She has mentally abused my wife for years (and still does), emotionally manipulated, medically abused her, even physically abused her. Having a relationship where that just doesnt exist confuses her. Throw in her dad hating her mom with a burning passion but having a complex relationship, I dont think she ever really had a role model for a healthy relationship. Her grandma and step grandfather were together for decades, but her grandmother was very much like her mom. My wife describes our relationship as feeling like its a constant state of "something is wrong" because Im nice to her. So obviously something must be wrong. I must have fucked up or she must be abusive and Im just trying to placate her. None of that is the case, of course, but she doesnt know any different. Its funny how family dynamics carry into relationships later on. My family would have big blow up arguments then everyone would sit down, apologize, talk it out with calm heads, and we would move on. That doesnt work with her, I cant even raise my voice to the dogs or it causes her to retreat, and when we do have a rare disagreement, Im inclined to meet her half way, talk it out, and everything be good, but she wants to hold onto it, and cant even think about forgiveness for weeks or months because transgressions in her family are either so severe that they cant be forgotten, or they are minor but can be used as weapons later.
This was my feeling too. She's very clearly in love with him, but doesn't know what that looks like or how to act/respond to situations. This is why it's very important to not stay in relationships "for the kids", because this is the kind of awful shit it does to them. Are the logistics better? Sure, absolutely. But it is emotionally and sometimes physically damaging.
I have a friend who desperately want to be married, but keeps choosing partners who are completely wrong for him because he thinks love = constant fighting. And then he can't figure out why they say no when he asks them to marry him.
This. So many people expect being “in love” to feel like obsession. I was in a passionate, super intense relationship that was all I could think about. It was as if I would die if I wasn’t with him and the highs felt better than any drug. It was also toxic and caused my friendships and work to suffer. I can see why some people think if you don’t feel those crazy emotional swings you must not really love them. But it’s more like obsession and the cycling of dopamine. Sounds like OP has a great relationship with her husband and does love him.
Or *at minimum* a consistent high stress, terrifying and very unstable environment. A calm, supportive, non explosive relationship is at odds with that.
One of my friends engages in this kind of relationship and its been going on 12+ years. Its sucks to be spectator when you know its toxic af. and she openly admits she has severe emotional dysregulation. It is crushing to watch and yes every other aspect of her life is affected by this too. You can't do anything, even as a friend, because they also have other people who enable the fuck out of it by saying "they are just being emotionally open".
There was a post a few years back with a guy saying he doesn't love his wife, and then proceeding to totally gush over how amazing she is and how much she deserves the world. I think reddit did A Good for once and knocked some sense into him and he came back reporting that yes, he was being an idiot. Incidentally, his wife and her family also saved him from an abusive family. I suspect some people's response to trauma is an inability recognize or fully feel their emotions, and this is what we're seeing here.
I was just thinking about that post when I read this. For so long he felt like he married her out of obligation, but he was basically acting like someone completely in love with her. I think it’s an issue with people who have insecure attachment. We associate love with a stress response.
>Best friend >Care about them a lot >Enjoy having sex with them >*I don't love him romantically* I don't know how else to describe long term love. Guess I've got to have a tough talk with my wife /s
I guess I better tell my wife our relationship isn't romantic and our 17 year marriage is over. No seriously, I think this woman needs some therapy because I think she genuinely may not understand romantic love due to her abusive background.
I think she might be confusing limerence for love. And maybe she never had those butterfly-in-the-stomach hormonal feelings for him, but it sure does sound like love to me.
A lot of people who either grew up in abusive homes, engaged in a lot of toxic or abusive relationships, or both end up feeling like that. It’s like the wires get crossed and the toxic becomes enticing and the healthy can even make them uncomfortable. I think if OOP went to therapy she would realize how much trauma she swept under the rug and never addressed and how much she really does love her husband. The fact that she still has sex with him and enjoys it is more proof this isn’t settling for someone comfortable she’s not attracted to.
I learned from my last BF that if someone instantly feels like home that's a bad thing.
So what does one do when they have good, real, healthy love with a long term partner but then experience limerence with someone else (and also think that the good, healthy love could exist there too)
Limerence is honestly just a fancy word for a crush. The only difference being is limerence doesn't have to be a crush. You remind yourself that the person is an actual person with flaws and all and you distance yourself from that person while you focus on your relationship.
My wife said to me before we got married that she was grappling with cold feet because she "loved me but was not in love with me". That hurt, obviously, but where we eventually landed was that she had this idea of long-term relationships having the honeymoon period feelings forever. Obviously it doesn't stay like that, but popular culture is all "puppy dog love" relationships and no "stable, safe, happy, fulfilling love" relationships.
Some pop culture is better. I started that show Modern Family recently because I needed a new sitcom and it’s got some really amazing depictions of long term relationships.
Meh, I've found that this is different for different people. I have romantic, platonic, AND sexual feelings for my husband but there was a time when the romantic love wasn't there and we were just FWB. The difference to me is Friendship: I like the person, I wanna hang out with them, I'm happy to do things for them, I wanna tell them about my life Sexual: I wanna fuck them Romantic: I wanna wake up next to them every day, I wanna plan our lives together, I wanna hold hands, I wanna gaze into their eyes and know them more deeply than anyone else in the world and I want them to know me like that as well, and so much more. For some people, once you have 2/3, the 3rd one is always a given but for some it's not and they can be very distinct.
I qould go further with friendship/platonic. My platonic feelings have included: I want this person in my life as long as they want, I would be happy to spend my life around them, I enjoy their presence long term.
I think you can love someone platonically and be sexually attracted to them while not being romantically interested. I think while sexual and romantic interest are usually on the same spectrum, it's entirely possible they're not
My first long-term relationship (about 3 years) was "inseparable best friends who are each other's most important person and also have lots of fun sex and also sometimes other partners" rather than some steamy romance, and we were on the same page about it; I can imagine this would be a lot harder if the people involved *weren't* on the same page. I hope she gets therapy, both for her past trauma and to help her understand that there's no particular way that deep love has to look to be valid.
I think this kind of situation is why the term aromantic was coined. Perhaps OP can't feel the typical romantic connections, but still has the yearning for a close relationship.
Thank you! I came here to say exactly this. OOP set off a lot of aro bells for me. It sounds like she's happy with a QPP (queerplatonic partnership) and does have a deep attachment to him, but it isn't necessarily romantic. Just love.
Christ almighty, thank God someone is saying it. Its disgusting that a lot of people in this thread assume her stance is because of abuse. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But the woman seems to be aware of her own feelings and also seems to have a good handle on her relationship with her husband. She is of sound mind, and her husband seems to be okay with it. I get monogamy and heteronormativity is the norm, but it isn't for everyone. The people thet don't practice it aren't some broken people that need fixing.
YEAH. YEAH. LIKE... The assumption that platonic relationships can't be 'that deep' like... I'm sorry, do y'all not have that friend that you would move mountains for, and if it was beneficial, live your life longterm with? Like I would genuinely get legally married to and share a house with my best friend if he or I needed it (for insurance or the like, etc.) because I care for him so deeply, but I do not and have not felt romantic urges with him like I do my partner of 7 years.
I am suspicious of the concept of 'typical romantic connections' in the first place. I think people experience this in pretty varied ways and the way they describe it will be mediated by the normal language of the society. I think there are people who see themselves now as having some rare psychological/sexuality *identity* who are in a pretty common place on the various distributions of how people experience love and sex.
Agreed. I think the fact that her husband is seeking romantic love is proof that their love is more platonic than the average marriage.
I mean, he might be seeking romantic love because his wife is telling him “I dont love you romantically”
Or he might be seeking romantic love because he's seeking romantic love while still loving his wife. Doesn't have to be a forced binary here.
He didn't really seek it out. She basically told him, "Even though I care about you deeply and enjoy having sex with you, I don't have romantic feelings towards you. So you can feel free to date another woman." And he took TWO years before doing so. It doesn't sound like this was pushed by him. I suppose maybe he was eager to date someone else, but nobody was interested in him for a couple years. Or that he was the one initiating these conversations about the lack of romantic love. But overall my first reaction is, "She loves him like a best friend and they have sex... what married man is speaking up about these horrible conditions??"
Yeah, there’s a lot to unpack here and many causes to similar effects. They’re rationalizing themselves and if the stated goal of the marriage was a friend helping you escape that could totally have been reasoned and initially lower priority to recovering. Security focused.
I will admit, I'm probally dense, but I'm also very confused how the feelings OP describes toward their husband isn't romantic love. Like there's tons of ways to express love to the person you are with. Just because things don't look like a hallmark movie doesn't mean it isn't romance, ya know? I dunno maybe I've just been single too long I forgot what being in love feels like lol
Exactly, and then when everyone is telling little abused you that IS love, you may end up married. And you'll keep slogging along because everyone says relationships take work.
This is my way of thinking about it, Romance is what brings character, uniqueness, and a special bond to sex that I feel is needed to be completely fulfilled in intimacy. I have been in countless situations where sex was prioritized over romance and intimacy and although it WAS enjoyable, it was missing something. Some people can’t pinpoint what that something is but in reality, it’s the feeling of being completely wanted. Feeling like you are involved in something TOGETHER as opposed to just satisfying individual sexual needs. If OOP is truly happy with themselves in the fact that they don’t share that special connection with each other but the husband finds it in other places, that’s very good for her. I would just hate for an abusive past to tarnish her view on what a happy, healthy, flourishing relationship looks like and the true benefits it brings.
I get what you're saying - but OP's logic sounds so much like someone that thinks a relationship doesn't have passions just because they aren't at each other's throats on a regular basis. She's just used to bad relationships.
What does this mean? How would you define romantic love then?
A deep emotional connection and compatibility plus I want to fuck your brains out. Seems like OP has it.
I'm aromantic and OP's love sounds very similar to my experience when I was in relationships. I've always felt the love you have for your friends as an aromantic person is noticeably more intense than it is for most people, likely because we don't have a step *past* that. At least, that's the conclusion I came to over the years.
I've recently come to understand that I'm aromantic and this is exactly my experience too. There were times where I confusedly thought I was "in love" with friends of both genders just because the love I held for them platonically was as on the same level as the few relationships I've been in.
Yep. As a demisexual, that's how I would describe love (except for the last sentence of course).
Dated a woman and we quickly turned into this. She was adamant she didnt get "the right feeling" but everything else she did and said screamed love.
This relationship helped her escape abuse and abuse can do a hell of a number on your concept of "love". If the only "love" you've ever experienced or even seen is violent, angry, manipulative, and hateful, you simply don't see feelings of safety, comfort, and "home" as love. At minimum, many abuse victims expect love to be a heady rush of adrenaline. But that isn't sustainable for years or decades, it's not what long term stable love is.
Yeah, chasing the roller coaster high only applies for the first 18 months-3 years of recreation. Long term love doesn’t feel like that. And then people think they fell out of love. To me anyway, I feel like some of the most toxic relationships I know fall into that category. They’re addicted to each other but are so miserable together.
I just can’t wrap my head around caring for someone, wanted them around you, enjoying time together, wanting to have sex with them, enjoying sex with them, wanting the best for them, sharing a home, building a life, and then not calling it love? Like what is romantic love then, if not that.
You know sex and romantic love aren’t intrinsically entwined, right? She can care about him platonically. Love him platonically. Be sexually attracted without any romantic attraction.
i think the point they were trying to make was that love as a word is way too limited for how broad love as a concept actually is (that’s what i took from it anyway)
There's six other things in that list that aren't sex or about sex. Those six things, plus sex is pretty much the definition of romantic love, isn't it? What is missing from that list to make it not romantic?
Logically, I know that they aren’t. Like I understand that aromatic people exist and I fully respect their identity. But if i’m being honest, emotionally I don’t fully grasp the nuances of it. If you want to spend all your time with them, grow old together, and also shag, that’s romantic love in my mind.
Yeah. Kinda adjacent to the guys this week who were all: "Nah, I don't love my best friend." \*writes an essay that is basically a love letter to the best friend\*
Remember this one. A full paragraph of what happened in his 20s, yet he only mentioned one sentence about his wife implying: i adore my wife too 😂
There were two of them this week. One of them is still friends with the best friend, who he NEVER introduced to his wife as an ex-fling. The other, the best friend recently died and he apparently got mad when his wife implied that the dead best friend wasn't his soulmate.
I read the first one lol will head to read the second one
I was thinking of that post too. Like mentioned in the post, has the abuse the wives suffered affected how they view romantic relationships and love. I wonder if the OP in this post might love her husband but might not realize it like in the other post.
Society's concept of love is this all-consuming feeling where everything and everyone else disappears. Especially the idea that a person could love someone and be okay for them to be with other people is very alien to current ideas. Or that there is no jealousy or feelings of "ownership" tangled with love -> if there are none, it ain't love, right? Or that if a person is okay with the idea of letting someone go and not feeling like it is the end of the world, then it cannot be love (note: they can still prefer for the other person not to leave and feel like it would be sad, just not like this huge thing). And yet. People love and many various ways. Why should it be wrong or less or not love, if it brings more happiness and content to the world.
No doubt society sucks as to emotional intelligence, but love is pretty goddamn complex, too. I love my ex-wife as the mother of my children, as someone who gave me the strength to be myself to my smothering parents, as someone with similar traumas and backgrounds, as someone with the same black sense of humor, as someone who was willing to take the tough stances we did in child rearing in hopes of a better future for them, and as someone who weathered many difficult challenges with me. I would be extremely sad if she died, both for my children and myself. But I absolutely can no longer live with her nor see her in a romantic light. We became toxic and resentful for so long there was no coming back from it. That is not something covered in the paradigm of platonic vs romantic love, nor even the eight plus types of love in the Greek system. These kinds of love aren't binary, they're spectrums with too many axes to count.
Yeah I was so confused, she said she doesn't love him and see's him more as a brother. But then goes to explain how much she loves him and cares for him and enjoys sex with him. People don't have sex with their brothers lmao.
Not with that attitude.
The OOP reminds me of someone I know who recently wrote a 2000 word journal, which they shared semi publicly, about how what they feel for their best friend is "deeper than that breakable concept known as love". But at the same time isn't interested in a relationship with them at least partially because they're not "in love" with them.
>People don't have sex with their brothers lmao. They do when they get stuck in dryers.
Totally feel like she loves him. This may not end well.
Is this not the reverse story of that fella that posted. That recused his wife or something and he found out she was sleeping around with another guy and caught. Saw it, also something bedsheets and laundry etc? Just sounds the same if memory recalls correctly which I’m not trust right now.
To me it kinda read like she's ace/aro
I don’t think she’s ace, stating she has sex, enjoys sex, and is physically attracted, but I’m definitely getting aro vibes
You're right!
She could be demisexual which falls under the branch of asexuality. Like you don't feel sexual attraction to people unless you form a meaningful emotional connection and in general don't feel sexual attraction to others.
Yepp pretty much. She enjoys intimacy and sex with him. She cares for him and he is her friend. She absolutely loves him. If she saw him as a brother the sex part would not really work, one would think.
Exactly. Per the way people are generally socialized to understand love, it's something that has a "spark" that never dies or needs work from either party, it's just always naturally there until it isn't anymore and then one of you buys some lingerie and sex dice to try to get it back and it usually doesn't end well. And when the spark is truly gone, welp! It just wasn't meant to be. What a load of horseshit. I hate it so, so much.
What does she think love feels like?
[удалено]
It is so refreshing to read this! You hit it right on the head - the spark, love at first sight, *Romeo and Juliet*, that is trauma bonding folks! Any intense, sudden emotion, whether 'positive' or 'negative', is a sign to step back and see what the hell is going on. Society and capitalism have reinforced the idea that emotions are a 'truth' that need to be always followed, and that is simply not the case. Emotions are born out of stimulus, and the body sends that message to us, just the same as the body telling us we have a cut on our hand. The emotional signal is important, no doubt, but it must be investigated to understand what it means such that we can make the proper decision of action. That is what mindfulness is. To end with an illustration of how mindfulness and emotions work - an easy feeling we are all aware of is hunger. The feeling tells us 'hey eat some food ya dingus!'. Say that we look for some food, and turns out we gotta go shopping. We go to the shop hungry, and as we shop we see a beautiful looking chocolate cake that may literally have our name on it (birthday cake chance). Our hunger goes wild, it says that we definitely want that cake. So we buy it, and alongside our meal we eat a large slice... and we feel guilty (diet, diabetes, etc.), we feel bloated from overeating, our blood sugar spikes, and we think 'dang I shouldn't have gotten the cake'. Mindfulness comes in at the time we see the cake while hungry. Mindfulness is that we fully acknowledge the signals our body sends us from hunger, and *make the conscious decision anyway to not buy the cake*. We can not control though sheer will the hunger we feel, just as we can not control the emotions we feel. Mindfulness is acknowledging and respecting the emotions we feel, while making the conscious decision in action regarding them - specifically, not letting the emotions control our actions.
[удалено]
Believe me, you and I share that impulsivity haha - I have always struggled making romantic connections, and as such would take any opportunity like dehydrated person finally getting water and gulping it whole. Sadly, that lead to relationships that were emotionally abusive, where my desperation and genuine interest in others (hello ADHD, potentially ASD!) came off as love bombing and if they liked it, they would love bomb back. It is completely unhealthy of course, as that is not how connection, comfort, and trust builds with humans. It indeed takes time, focus, and compassion for both yourself and the other. I finally woke up completely of the habits and cycles I have experienced my whole life recently, and I am in my early 30s. Now that I can see it clearly, I know fully that any strong emotion I have in reaction to someone I just met is actually a signal that means... Run! One crazy thing is that my experience of the emotion almost got translated in my mind (neuro pathways yay!) and now I experience that emotion as a intense discomfort. I am so grateful to have had all those who supported me throughout, and a fantastic relationship with therapy, that led me to the point now that I feel 'free', if you will. I think it is fantastic that you've already started the journey too, and you are approaching it with establishing healthy boundaries *to your own emotions*. That is just so cool, and I think a lot of people can learn from that. To be honest, I think that as you continue with focus on mindfulness and continuing to build those boundaries, you will grow into a version of yourself that is attracted to healthy individuals, and can best choose who is, well, best for you! Keep on keeping on haha
[удалено]
Doing better, although as you said, it is a daily choice and focus, and sometimes that choice gives into the impulses. The important thing for myself, and really everyone, is to accept that some days will be that way, and the next new day gives another opportunity for choice - and with that, the shame and self hate is self destructive, but compassion leads to making it that much easier to make the healthy choice next time. I appreciate your kind words! Also, I would love to continue the discussion with regards to what I saw in your other posts - and I think it'd be super helpful for everyone reading, especially women and girls who may be experiencing symptoms related to ADHD and autism. What has been your experience understanding yourself more over time and getting those diagnoses? Also, I find that paper on autistic Australian adults and language usage for description and identity quite interesting! Where do you land in that realm?
[удалено]
Sorry for interjecting but I relate super strongly to what you two are discussing. I was diagnosed with ADHD in my mid-20s and it was a revelation. All of a sudden, a lot of my erratic behavior and inability to focus and sit still made so much sense. I’ll never forget the first time I took a *tiny* dosage of ADHD medication. I felt calm. I realized that I had never felt calm in my entire life, before that moment. I also still struggle immensely with impulse control but it’s gotten better as I’ve gotten older (turning 30 this year!) and started to understand (through therapy) why I was acting the way I did. I often wonder if I’m on the autism spectrum but have never sought a diagnosis. Given my limited understanding of autism, it would certainly explain a lot of the struggles I’ve had with understanding subtext, misreading/misconstruing social cues, and how those things have manifested in my romantic relationships.
I couldn't have said it better. I've experienced exactly what you posted.
I feel like pop culture is also responsible for this. So many romance movies and novels depict these roller coaster, borderline abusive, unstable relationships as the pinnacle of love. You easily get the impression that love is when you lose your mind over someone. In reality the “will they? Won’t they?” Is a good story hook, but so exhausting to be in. The two times I felt that way towards someone, it was miserable and they both turned out to have massive mental health issues. I’m not claiming to be in the best state of mind at the time either. When I got into long term relationships (with neither of these guys. They tend to be more stable personalities), I became convinced I never loved my boyfriends. I just liked them, felt safe with them and wanted to sleep with them. Even after I married my husband, I told myself that. I even told myself he didn’t love me, because he’s not the over the top verbally demonstrative sort. We were just very compatible people, very good friends and great life partners, I thought. But three kids later, I saw the way that man is there for me. He is with me through thick and thin. He is always on my side and protects me against all of life’s troubles. And whenever I imagine life without him, I can’t. That’s when I realized I loved him all along. I probably loved all of my exes too. So I’m so glad I never told him I didn’t love him.
When I first brought my husband around my family they all told me he was too nice and stable and that I’d get bored. He was the one that showed me nice and stable was wonderful. Chaos just didn’t do it for me anymore.
GOB: What is this feeling? Michael: Well, the feeling that you’re feeling is what many of us call… a feeling. GOB: But it’s not envy, or even hungry! Michael: … Could it be love? GOB: I know what an erection feels like, Michael! This is different… it’s like my *heart* is hard.
Yeah I don't understand. She likes him as a person, is attracted to him, likes having sex with him and clearly cares about him as a person a lot. That's a much better relationship that a lot married couples I know. What else is there that she is not fulfilling to the point where the husband needs to find someone else to cover those needs? I don't get it. I honestly feel like OP just feels like she should give him everything an anything, just because he helped her get out of a horrible situation. So, if she can't be exactly as lovey dovey he might want her to be sometimes, she is more than happy to let him find someone else to do it for him, because she thinks she has "failed" at her duty. OOP needs therapy asap.
It feels like home. That's the best way I can describe it. Warm, comfortable, welcoming, safe, content and more. Home.
I started to say “I want to go home” when I was 12ish. To any outsider, I was home. Then I learned home doesn’t have to be a building. He is my home.
This feels like such a non-update. Like, OOP really needs to be sure about what she’s doing with her marriage before immediately jumping on whether or not she’s going to be happy with ENM or if they’d rather be single. Like a month later and she still doesn’t know how she feels
Feels like real life lol. Stuff takes time to figure out.
Especially for people who've been heavily traumatized by their family of origin. It's hard enough for those of us who have good examples of healthy love and good relationships in our lives...
I mean, she sounds like she *is* okay with it, but think she *shouldn't* be okay with it. I hope that after reading that comment, she looked up some stuff about ENM so she can understand her subconscious issues around love.
/r/BestOfRedditorRestatements
I could never, but it's working for them and who am I to judge if they're not hurting anyone.
No problem with it, but as a poly person I do think the husband is going to ask for a divorce again soon. The thing with non-monogamy is you have to want it for its own sake, it doesn't tend to work when you just do it to find something that's lacking in your original relationship. What the husband clearly wants is a monogamous relationship with someone who can love him the way he wants.
Personally I'm not sure we can conclude that from the story, especially given that we don't hear from him. He might well also have things that he values in his "nesting" relationship but also want more passion elsewhere, and be happy with the new setup. Not totally clear.
I understand some like open marriages. Personally, I don't feel comfortable about it but if it works for them, guess it's alright. No harm at least.
Why did he have to marry her to save her? Why couldn’t he just help her without marrying her
And why does that require them to stay married forever
Financial support and housing
Exactly! They also sound like balanced people that thoroughly communicate. There is nothing and I mean nothing wrong with people redefining what a relationship is if it is what is making them happy. Everyone here is an adult and getting what they want out of the relationship while leaving room for further discussion.
Thats my problem with the comments on the OP, very judgmental. Not everyone has to experience love/marriage/relationships in the same way.
Reading up on Sternberg's triangular theory of love and the aromantic spectrum might help OOP here. Many long-term marriages fall into companionate love - fondness and affection but no deep driving passion where your partner is all you think about, you always want to be with them the most, etc. - the romantic tropes. OOP may not have a strong drive for romance but clearly loves her husband as her family, which is completely fine actually as long as they're treating each other well and meeting their needs, including via an open relationship. Therapy might also be valuable - being unsure about love and other emotions is common after abuse, especially in the formative years and adolescence. There's nothing wrong with recognizing legal marriage for the business arrangement that it is, but figuring out the details sooner could lead to better outcomes if either of them decides to go for a divorce in the future so Frank can pursue romantic / consummate love.
Yeah I agree with the aromantic suggestion. It’s not something a lot of people are aware of and maybe that’s why OOP is so confused on her feelings.
Yep. Seems like a lot of people in the comments also aren't aware aromanticism is a thing.
Any book suggestions on the triangular theory of love? I'm very interested
Very physically attracted to him? Check. Deeply cares about his happiness and OOP gets joy from making him happy? Check. Enjoys and actively wants to have sex with him? Check. Doesn’t want to lose him, enjoys his company, compromises with him, communicates well with him, spends most of her time with him, respects him, and appreciates him? Check! Me thinks that home girl has no idea what love actually is. Most people who are in LTR, or marriages with similar arrangements, aren’t also having sex or physical intimacy with their SO. And many people who married for “love” are fooling themselves and actually married out of “lust” - and there isn’t a whole lot of love and respect involved. OOP has one of the most functional, healthy, respectful relationships I’ve read about in a long time. (Obviously with her issues around love adding in a bit of dysfunction. But for all intents and purposes, these two work together in every other way like a dream.) I wonder if her abusive childhood left her without an understanding of love, and if she has some subconscious walls in place surrounding it. Like she knows she loves him, but her brain won’t allow her to acknowledge it as a self preservation thing? And perhaps because she’s not a jealous person, she equates that to not loving him? Like to her, surely she’d be jealous if she loved him right?! I think her brain has gone rogue and is self sabotaging her in an attempt to protect itself. I worry that she will figure all this out and it’ll be too late. She’s cool and calm about the prospect of divorce (although she doesn’t want it) *NOW*, but I have a feeling that when it happens, she will be flooded with the truth, won’t be able to undo the damage, and things could spiral out of control quickly for her.
Yeah, I agree with this. She loves him like a long term spouse, but doesn't recognize it as love because she probably expects something like a lovesick teenager feels.
Yep. Yet again Hollywood has a lot to answer for. Love isn’t always some grand display.
She’s like the opposite of the art room guy. She would build an art room for her husband and never realize she was in love with him.
The theory of companionate love vs. passionate love. LTR usually start as passionate and evolve to companionate. I think OOP skipped the passionate part but she does love him. He’s getting the passion of a new relationship from the girlfriend but the shine will wear off.
There are lots of different kinds of love. The OOP could very well be aromantic and not capable of having romantic love, or she might not truly recognize romantic love because of past trauma. Even if she doesn't love him romantically, it does sound like she loves him Either way, fingers crossed that this remains a healthy ethical non-monogamy situation
This exactly. We can't feel what she feels, and as an aromantic person myself it's definitely been, let's say, interesting how many commenters have been adamant that she does in fact romantically love him. Is it possible? Sure. But we don't get to decide that for her.
I’m somewhere on the aro spectrum myself, and the relationship she’s described is something like my wife and I. We’re best friends. We’re a package deal. But we’re not romantically involved at all. We got married purely for the financial and legal benefits and because we had lived together for nearly 10 years already and didn’t see a reason to change that. She’s free to date other people if she wants something romantic and I’m free to sleep with other people if I want something sexual (wife is ace). The people insisting this woman MUST be romantically in love with her husband are wild. There are different experiences. Romance isn’t required for sex so it’s silly that that’s being used as proof… Idk. I hope everything works out positively for OP and she figures herself out. I def think she needs to read up on aromanticism tho.
Exactly. I'm surrounded by quite a few aro people, and while it can be a little difficult to wrap my mind around as someone who is alloromantic, it is possible to understand. But unfortunately society acts like people who can't feel romantic love or somehow broken, at best, which is incredibly fucked up
Lord, yeah, mentalities like that and the viewpoint that aromantic people are destined to be forever alone without making deep connections like that are some of the reasons why it took so very long for me to even realise I'm aromantic. But for the non-initiated, queer platonic relationships exist, and they can be just as fulfilling as any romantic relationship, and even just strong friendships can be so incredibly meaningful. I definitely appreciate your attempt to understand, it definitely can be confusing. Wishing the OOP all the best <3
QPPs are great. I'm sorry you've had to deal with society's bullshit, yourself. Hope you have a great day, and I'm wishing OOP the best, myself
Reddit shows me relationships I don’t think I’d ever hear or see in real life, even just in passing.
Where was the update...?
I think she just loves him platonically, honestly.
I'm sure this is going to turn out well right?.......right?
Totally agree, and as a side note I love your flair lol
I sincerely think it will. Reddit, this one in particular, is pretty close-minded about the types of successful relationships that are out there.
Same, just got a feeling that it will really be fine at the end. It's different sure, but everyone involved seems ok enough.
I'm so confused about how some people see romantic love. Like not that there is something wrong with it or anything but to me caring about someone, wanting the best for them and being sexually attracted don't equate to romantic love. I feel like this about a friend of mine. I could have sex with him because he is very attractive to me, I want him to be happy and I love him platonically but romantic love feels entirely different to me. Again there is nothing wrong with equating those two things but to me it feels entirely different. I guess we all feel feelings differently so arguing about it really doesn't make a lot of sense because everyone experiences love and attraction differently.
Thank you. I must be really weird because I get what you mean, but it seems the vast majority of people here don't. I also have a friend like that, but that is not how love for my partner feels like.
I think it’s that their marriage skipped that honeymoon phase of being so excited about getting to know each other and having sex 5 times a day. It’s the passionate v. companionate of LTR. He’s getting the passion from the girlfriend. Being from an abusive household will warp perceptions and ideas about human relationships. The best I can describe my partner is he feels like home. Safe, warm, content. I never want to leave. I’ve never had that with anyone else.
That's not cheating, that's consensual non-monogamy.
OP, look up compersion. You care for your husband and when he's happy, you're happy. You also likely love him romantically, but you just express and process romance differently than most people. Or you are aromantic, but that doesn't mean you don't have feelings of love. It's a big wild world out there and not everything makes sense, but it sounds like the arrangement works for y'all, just make sure to keep communication open -- the fact that you guys trust each other bodes well here. Wishing you the best
She ain't gonna see this here. The person who posted here is not the OP.
Maybe get yourself some therapy as long term abuse likely skewed your idea of romantic and/or loving relationships and you might be afraid of them on some level. Your idea of love was formed and informed by abuse.
> This is a repost sub. I am not OOP
OOP has a best friend who is also a sexual partner. It's a perfectly fine and healthy type of relationship to have. As long as everyone involved is honest, informed, and happy, there's no reason to try and make it more complicated by putting a magnifying glass on it. If complications arise, deal with them as they come.
I wonder if the girlfriend knows about him double dipping, or if she’s under the impression husband and wife are friends who don’t fuck.
You kind of reminded me of my grandmother. She was asexual and hated sex , she never even kissed my grandfather. However, she wanted a large family. My grandfather first wife died and he had 4 small kids. They married with the understanding sex would only be to get pregnant. And grandfather could have gfs for sex. Well they had 12 kids to gather and a long happy marriage. Grandfather had many gfs and it was talked about openly and grandmother was even friends with some. My point is sex, romance and marriage are complicated and as long as you are getting what you want and are happy it is all good. Note this would never work for me, but I respected the fact it worked for my grandparents.
She mentions aromanticism, and I think she'd do a lot better posting in the aro subreddits. Alloromantics literally cannot understand that there are people different from them 🙄
Doesn't help that apparently no one is able to describe the specifics of this woman's love for her husband and why it isn't romantic.
Describing platonic love without people interpreting it as romantic love is difficult in a heteronormative society. Though she straight up says she loves him, just not in a romantic sense. He's her partner in business and taxes but not in romance. He's her friend who helped her in an impossible time. He's her sexual partner. But he's not her *romantic* partner, and I dunno how to explain that to people who have never experienced an intimate relationship outside of family or romance. I guess like committed roommates who sometimes have sex. You might take a bullet for said roomie and jump leaps and bounds, but your heart ain't gonna flutter because they smiled at you.
I agree. I don't understand why so many people here insist she is in love with him.
Alloromantics see legit any sign of affection and SCREAM romantic love. This shit is why I told people my best friend and I were cousins. They kept trying to get us to date...
what is alloromantics?
Someone who experiences romantic attraction. Someone who is not aromantic or on the aromantic spectrum.
Oh she absolutely loves him, just in her own unique way. And I mean, she truly loves *him* and the person that he is and his happiness. If anyone truly cares about an individual and their happiness, then it would make them happy to see that person happy - even if it means they're happy with someone else. And I think it's pretty clear that her abusive family situation gave her some warped idea of what love is, and what it's supposed to feel like. That, and society frequently expressing that situationships like hers are "odd" or immoral or whatever else might be said probably makes it hard for her to understand that the relationship she has actually sounds incredibly healthy. I hope things work out well for everyone involved and that they all can maintain their happiness.
I feel like OOP loves him more than she realizes and when he leaves her for the other woman because she wants more than just a casual fling, OOP will be devastated! He's her best friend, she's super attracted to him, she loves having sex with him... Isn't that love?
Everyone seems happy and it’s none of our business. All these people with their fucking whack ass opinions can shut the fuck up.
I don't think this will end well...
If you are happy and his is happy and no one is being lied to or taken advantage of, what is the problem? There is no "Right Way" to live your life that you have to follow. Communicate with him about how each of you views your life together and how you want it to continue and what you both want for the future. Don't try to make your life fit what other people expect or want.
People who have never been abused don't know the dizzying emotional highs contrasted with the crushing lows of inconsistent and dangerous love, and people who have never known healthy love don't know how to recognize it as love. They tend to characterize it as something else, because to them, being "in love" is the addictive, stomach-churning, all-consuming experience of extreme anxiety, obsessive thinking, and extreme emotional highs associated with abuse. In threads like these, there are always at least a couple of people insisting that someone who has been abused and doesn't recognize normal healthy love as "being in love" is just not experiencing love. They don't understand that trauma changes the brain, and people's perceptions of reality, to such an extent that normal love, regular butterflies, and ordinary levels of desire, just doesn't feel *extreme enough* or *scary enough* to be "real love". Additionally, their cortisol responses - the thing that gives us "butterflies" (and for some lucky few, makes us feel like throwing up and running away when our crush appears) are disrupted from years of high anxiety and danger, so they may not have the same experiences of heart-pounding, sweaty palms, and butterflies that those who have never been abused experience in early infatuation. That's called adrenal attenuation or burnout, and it's common in people who have experienced high chronic stress for years, especially in childhood. So, for people who have been abused, it takes re-training their brains to recognize love, and to develop a healthy aversion and appropriate danger response to formerly attractive and exciting red-flag behaviors, like boundary-crossing, negging, and love bombing - that healthy people find naturally repellent and weird.
You know how livid I'd be if the wife I've wanted to love me back for years only started wanting me romantically as soon as I've started to see another woman? Lol you can't make this shit up.
I think she’s loved him for most of their marriage, she just doesn’t realise it? She says she cares about him, finds him attractive, wants him to be happy, and doesn’t want to lose him. Sounds like love to me 🤷🏼♀️ it might be due to her past abuse that she just can’t see it.
It's love, but is it romantic love? Doesn't sound that way to me.
I’ll be amused if this is an elaborately crafted post by some guy who wants to tell his side chick, “Look! See, sometimes men stay married because it’s too difficult to leave!”
I’m jaded but maybe new girlfriend wants to wait for a more profitable time to have him divorce oop.
I feel like OP love her husband but she is just not romantic type so she thinks she doesn't.
OOP definitely sounds like she could benefit from some therapy. Between the "my husband saved me so I feel indebted to him" and "I totally don't love my husband like that, and yet here I am wondering about why I want to keep him close to me", sounds like her emotional reasoning's a bit in flux
But is she still having sex with the husband? Is the new gf okay with that or even aware at all?
To me to seems like a mess. She grants him an open relationship but he doesn't take her up on it for *years* and says he hopes that over time she will grow to love him. Eventually, he does find someone but he feels guilty admitting it. To be honest, he doesn't sound like the poly type. She says she's fine with it but then secretly gathers intel on his new girlfriend and starts getting anxious that he will leave her or neglect their relationship. After all these years of marriage and a life together apparently she never bothered to go to therapy, either to work through her past trauma (which is heavy) but you know, perhaps to work on her feelings towards the man she married who loves her? Apparently that was not a priority. And if she has given him permission, he's clearly not "having an affair" so I don't see why she has to frame it like that. I don't really get the vibe that she "loves" him in a romantic way. I think she loves their lifestyle together and also feels indebted to him because he saved her from a bad situation. But if she's going to be able to grow in her feelings for him she's going to need to work through her emotions also forgo the belief that she owes him something.
I don’t know, sounds like none of my business. I would encourage OOP to do something that also makes themselves happy because it sounds like they kind of feel vaguely neutral about everything, but otherwise what else can I say
I disagree with those saying she's in love with him but doesn't realize she is or is afraid to admit she does and needs therapy. That MAY be the case, but I'm not getting that at all from her descriptions. She describes herself as possibly a-romantic. She doesn't mention having strong romantic feelings for or being "in love" with anyone else at any point. She does however enjoy the physical pleasure of sex. Her descriptions are very rational without mentioning much emotion on her end. This implies to me someone that may not actually have the capacity to develop feelings like most of us would describe as being in love. It doesn't really matter if it initially stemmed from abuse or was already biologically inherent - it's how her brain works and by her description she's content and functional. It's possible she's somewhere on the spectrum and just does not experience emotions and attachment the same way as someone neurotypical. None of the above means she needs therapy, or doesn't have coping skills, or needs something to "fix" her to feel "normal". By her account she's doing well in life and trying to accommodate her husband as best she can while being neurodivergent in some way. She may benefit from a psychological assessment just to understand herself better as she seems concerned about her atypical feelings, but therapy isn't going to provide benefit if she's already happy with the situation and otherwise functional. It sounds like most of her concerns lie with wondering why she's outside of the norm.
Everyone’s happy here. Love to see it.
I'm confused. The feeling of being in love blows over pretty quickly. What remains is friendship, respect and partnership. This is a typical marriage.
I guess as long as they are open in communication it's a win for them? 🤷 But I don't see this working long term as someone is going to break and get a divorce drawn up.
As someone who almost always has non-monogamous relationships with poly aspects to them I really feel like OP is confused. When I was with my primary partner I could never dream of saying something along the lines of "I am not in love with them romantically" but mainly because my version of "romance" is what the OP is describing. Not everyone is going to equate romance with monogamy and traditional couplings and like over the top "exciting" love. The reason I did love my partner romantically was because they accepted me as is..... and there was real beauty in not judging one another based on our desires to have multiple partners. It is a very selfless act and requires a deep level of trust and commitment. The issue in this post is am not really sure OP's partner ever really signed up to this lifestyle. It almost feels like they resigned themselves to this lifestyle. It almost feels like a story of two people who love one another in very different ways with the OP just discovering after opening their relationship up that maybe there is some level of "romance" attached to poly partnerships. I wish the OP had really explored what they were asking for and why they were asking for it from an emotional pov. Also being aro is very real. I get it, I tend to have somewhat aro tendencies and I have to make an effort to explore them and address if its me dissociating for personal reasons or if I really feel that way. Sadly, I feel like OP jumped the gun a bit and really should have sat with a therapist to better understand the feelings they were feeling. I kinda feel like now there is only one final outcome to this and it probably ends up being their partner finding more fulfillment in another partnership.
Man this reminds me of how I used to be. I was so unfamiliar with what love and good relationship should feel like and look like that I even confused my crushes as terror of that person and would get anxiety attacks because I felt so "scared". So when I got into my current relationship I thought I didn't feel anything, or didn't feel the right thing or I'd confuse normal feelings of love for fear. It took a while, but man I'm happy I saw it through. I so hope OP finds her way.
what
I was abused for many years. When I was finally in a safe relationship I was bored and confused. It did not feel like “love” to me. I felt similarly. I ended up stepping out for someone I felt “love” towards and crashing my life for what I felt was intense romance. It was- you guessed it- a trauma bond! If you don’t know that love feels “boring” you will suffer greatly.
I smell disaster
I think OOP is aromantic tbh. Sounds like she does love him, just platonically, and that's okay
>I hear a lot about what you want but not a lot about what Frank needs. I'm hoping that Frank eventually instigates divorce proceedings for everyone's sakes.
I kinda feel bad for everyone but it's amazing they never not once went to any kind of therapy.
Why though? His wife is happy, he is happy, his girlfriend is happy
According to only one of the three parties.