Episode 3: Lost Love

When choosing to love your partner especially when things are hard is the hallmark of a lasting marriage. What happens when you lose love in your marriage. What happened to your love. Has it changed so much your left confused? Have you lost it? What does that mean anyway? Maybe your partner has lost it and you don’t know what to do. How do we bring it back? Maybe you haven't lost it but things are not as exciting and spunky as they once were. We are going to dive deep into this hard topic and discuss what you can do to bring your marriage back to a place of love and happiness.

Episode Transcript

You're listening to the confident marriage podcast. And I'm your host, Jessica. Thank you for joining me for episode three. Lost love. Hey, just a huge thank you to all those who subscribed to my podcast last week. Really happy you guys are digging me. I'm digging y'all too. I'm getting lots of feedback on the intro.

I'd like to hear what you guys have to say. So take a moment to visit my website. Www.totheconfidentmarriage.com. Send me a quick little line through contact us and let me know. Do you love it? Could you do without it don't be shy. We want to know what you think. We know he's no Eminem, but he's got some skill.

So let us know. Do you like it? Could you do without it, we're looking forward to hearing back. This is your guys' show too. So let's get started. Today, I'm going to be talking about when you lose love in your marriage. It's a super hard topic. I know the question is, is what happened to it? Has it changed so much that it's just left you utterly confused?

And what does it mean anyways? Maybe your partner's lost it and you have no idea what to do and you feel utterly and completely powerless. Are you even able to bring it back? Maybe you haven't lost the love in your marriage. Maybe things are just not quite as exciting and spunky as they once were. We're going to dive really deep into this hard, hard topic, and we're going to discuss what you can do to bring your marriage back to a place of love and happiness.

I know that when we get married and we're standing at the altar, the furthest thing from our mind is that there's going to come a day. Or we look at the person that we loved so much and have to face the reality that either you or they have lost the love we marry for life. We marry because we feel that this person is the one that we want to spend the rest of our life with through good and bad.

We don't always realize how bad the bad can get. And it's devastating. It's scary. And it is one of the most crumbling feelings a person can have. I am by no means going to sit here and tell you what love looks like for each of us love looks differently. And I'm not going to tell you what the signs are that you or your spouse has fallen out of love.

Your love relationship with your spouse is different than anyone else's. And to generalize the signs is absolutely misleading. It causes panic where there may not need to be. And I'm not going to sit here and define you, your spouse or your marriage. I can tell you though, that even I have fallen into the trap of reading those articles that give you sign after sign after sign that I, my partner or the both of us have fallen out of love.

Along with so many other articles about various relationship topics that have caused me to close the laptop in absolute tears and start a discussion with my husband that made him look at me. Like I was just absolutely clinically crazy where the fuck did that come from Jess, but I digress, but honestly, the sheer panic, when I read those only the look closer and remember this doesn't make sense.

That's how he's always been. That's his personality, or I'll read something that kind of makes me rethink how I'm feeling and what I'm thinking. And I'll know, that's just kind of who I am and that's how I've always been. I even look at other people's relationships and I look at these signs that I just read and, and I look at their marriage and I can see where those things are kind of in their marriage.

And I know. That they are absolutely in love with one another. And yet they display some of those same signs. I'm not sitting here saying that all those articles are complete crap. Sure they fit some cookie cutter bill and they very much have some merit to them, but we don't need to define ourselves and our relationships based on generalizations.

I think we would all have to agree that we are not synthetic human beings. We're not all the same. We are all unique. We all have different personalities and we all do things differently. We say things differently, we behave differently. So then why would a list like that apply to everyone and be true? So what I'm saying to you is this, you know, if you or your spouse has lost the love.

You don't need anyone to tell you that or give you some questionnaire. You already know the answer. The fact that it's even crossed your mind enough to make you pause is all. You need to confirm that even if the love isn't lost, it's time to make some healthy changes and improve your marriage falling out of love.

Yeah. It's, it's common in marriages. It doesn't happen to every couple, but it does happen to a large number of marriages and they hit this bump. Bump. That's really inappropriate. This beastly mountain. Yes. It's perfectly normal, but it is scary as hell. Nonetheless, it's normal, but it's enough to paralyze you.

What do you even do in that moment? It's very much a deer in the headlights filling. You don't know what to do. Next. The only thing that seems logical is to separate or divorce or have an affair. So I'm going to start off with a story about myself. I was previously married. The whole relationship itself lasted 15 years and boy, Oh boy.

Did I fight to save that marriage? The marriage didn't end because of lack of love though. It was because there were major serious problems that he was, he wasn't willing to work on. There came a day that my six-year-old daughter looked up at me and she said, mommy, why don't you and daddy kiss or hug or hold hands.

And I remember where I was, I was standing in the kitchen and I just about dropped the plate. I was holding. I had asked myself the very same questions along with many others time and time again. I knew that there were serious problems and I'm not going to say exactly what those problems were just yet that's for another podcast.

But I knew I had tried and he wasn't in a place where he was able to make the change so that our marriage could work. And it wasn't something that I could live with anymore. And you'll guys understand that when we talk about it, he's not a bad guy. He is a great guy. But these things were very toxic for him, for a marriage and for our family.

And I didn't want my daughter to think that this is what a marriage was about. I also didn't need to hurt so deeply for another 15 years. I loved him, but for the sake of me, him and our daughter, I had to walk away. When I had presented a divorce to him, he totally agreed. He wasn't going to give up his lifestyle and would rather be single I'm grateful for his honesty.

And oddly, I was relieved. I don't regret my decision. One bit, we both gave it another full two years. I gave my effort and he gave it in his own way too, but it wasn't going to work and we both decided to end it. I know what you're all are thinking, Jessica, why are you telling me a story that isn't a lost love?

And that has a sad ending with divorce. When you're trying to teach me how to save my marriage. So first let me say that there are aspects to my story that are more appropriate for another podcast. And I will give you all the dirty details into that. The reason why I talk about this particular story. Is that there are some very important messages.

I need you to hear about it. The first one is there is an aspect of divorce that isn't talked about much, and I'm going to talk about the ending of that marriage and that aspect of divorce. No matter how good or bad the relationship and no matter how good or bad the ending is, it will always leave a scar no matter what, even in my case.

And if you remember, I said, I never regretted the decision and yet it still left a scar. It's not fair. Trust me. I know. Even when you don't have children with them, they will always have a piece of you again, no matter how bad or how good it was. There will always be a part there for them. And a part of you will die with the end of the marriage.

Now, no one is going to be able to tell you what that looks like. It's unique for every person, but I can tell you it very much feels like a death and it sticks with you for life. When you say till death, do you part a really weird thing is that it is really until death to you part sadly, you will always mourn your spouse and the lost marriage, not to mention, but I'm only going to talk about briefly that a divorce.

Has scientifically been proven to cause negative physical health side effects. In addition to that, the financial impact it's ridiculous. It happens in ways that you didn't even know would or could divorce should never be taken lightly. And just when you think it's the last resort, it's still not. You've got to keep pushing the second reason why I share that story.

Is because there is no way to full proof of marriage and there are going to be situations where separation or even divorce is going to be a reality. That's what we're trying to avoid. And that's what we're going to talk about. The last takeaway from that story. And again, this is something that we're going to dig into in a future episode where there's a more appropriate topic for it.

But my current marriage and the whole idea of the grass isn't greener on the other side, this wouldn't be such a common phrase if it weren't so very, very true. If you heard mythical marriages, you heard about the glasses analogy. Briefly where we all wear a pair of glasses. And they're our very own pair that we see life and the world through these glasses were created in our mental warehouse, built up of our life experiences, our beliefs, our exposure, situations, and events, and no one in this world wears those same pair of glasses.

The way that you do. These glasses dictate how we view situations, how we respond, what our morals are, our values, our opinions, our fears, our shrinks, everything you and your spouse are wearing your very own set of glasses. And this is where the differences in the conflict in your marriage come into play.

Hence the problems. And just like your spouse wears their own set of glasses and you wear yours. So do other people, the next relationship. Yeah, I could be better. Hinted also could be worse and sometimes it isn't until years and years into that new relationship that you experience a relationship trauma.

There are many marriages that had not experienced infidelity or discover their partner's alternate lifestyle until 20 to 30 years into the marriage. My only point here is to not look at the situation as if it could be better with someone else. And while it could, nothing in life is guaranteed just like it never was with your partner.

I want to create this groundwork and understanding before moving on, because it's really important to know I'm going to talk about the dynamics of our relationships so we can see where you or your spouse may have gotten here to begin with. One of the things we really need to keep in mind is that I know it's really hard to stand back and say, well, you're the one who fell out of love.

You're the one who had the affair. You're the one who was addicted to pornography. And it's really easy to stand there and say that, you know, you did a majority of the damage here, but we also need to recognize that no matter how small, moderate, or large our part was, we always have a part. That's going to be something that you're going to have to work through or work with someone else to try and figure out.

But there's this dynamic that's playing behind the scenes and it is a very, very common in human nature. It is not something that we realize is going on and it's not something that's really talked about very much, and it's not really understood unless you're in the field. And so we're going to talk about the relationship stages.

And this is probably going to explain a lot for you. Stage one is widely known as the popular name, the honeymoon phase, but we're going to dig deeper into what that means. I like to call this our clown stage. This stage usually lasts between four to eight years. My marriage, that lasted one. So as you could see, everybody is different.

As I always talk about. In this stage, we're still wearing our clown suits. We are still very good at hiding some of our faults and disguising our behaviors. We still hold back some of our negative as to not scare the other person off. We're still very much on guard and we're holding back. We're more.

Patient with the other one. We're more understanding we're more forgiving of our spouse. We are still very much putting in some major effort to impress and woo our partner. Let's be honest. There's a level inside all of us that is afraid that if they really got to know us, they wouldn't accept us or love us anymore or not to mention that both people are so very excited.

The love is new. The person's new you're still on cloud nine. Stage two is where we start to get comfortable. And I call this the discovery stage things we once could live with, start to infest areas. We didn't think it could, we start to get a little bit more uncomfortable. And we can't continue to be this amplified revision of ourselves and our true character starts to seep through the cracks.

So those wonderful qualities that once we wanted to magnify, they're starting to level out and be closer to our real nature, those qualities that we wanted to repress, maybe even things that we really wanted to change. They also start to hit more truer levels. We become less mindful and we get more comfortable and these things start to slip.

And before we know it, we are in full blown self mode with all our faults and all our wonderful qualities. And this is where our partner one day looks at us and says, who is this person? This isn't the person I married. Oh. But it is. It very much is it's your partner in their true form. It always was. And yet they are still that person.

They're not any different. They haven't left. You're just not exposed to all of them as they are. You too. Now this could be the moment where you find that love has lost or it's starting to kind of slip. Uh, maybe there's something that happens in the marriage that creates this, an infidelity, an addiction that comes out.

Uh, there are several things that could happen in a marriage that could create the love loss, but this is one of the most typical ways that this starts to happen. Ideally, we would have known about this. Before stage two and we could have done stage one a lot differently and ignored and bypassed the stage too long before shit hit the fan.

Unfortunately, this is the part about relationships that is not really talked about that much. And so it's not really known or understood when stage two ends. You have a crossroads to take you either start doing the work, and yes, a relationship takes work and they don't just work by themselves without.

The time and energy put in. If it's not working, that means work isn't being put in for it to work. Therefore it's not working. The good news is that they are not hard work forever. The second option is to completely ignore this, let the resentment and the anger and the trauma start to develop things, start to get worse, and you could be looking at the end of your marriage.

Now I'm assuming of course, that you're all here to do the hard work. So let's talk about that. Doing the hard work doesn't mean that you will never have to revisit these stages again in your marriage, an illness, a death, and fidelity. It all could revert and you'll have to reduce stage three. It'll just be in a totally different way.

Aside from that when most couples are successful in clearing the way and doing the work on the relationship during this time phase, the marriage becomes easier as time goes on. The reason for this is because you and your spouse took the time to develop the tools and the skills from this, infiltrating your marriage again, and taught you how to deal with things as they come up.

As life goes on. Now, if you can identify. How the two of you got here and what the problem is, you're in great shape. Maybe it's addiction, pornography, poor communication lies, whatever the problem is, you have the ground to start from. If you can't identify the problem, that's okay. You can start doing the work and you will discover them.

And even if you do know once the work starts, please know that it is very common for other things to start to surface through this time. It's going to be very hard. It's going to be very difficult and you're going to have to push through. You have got to stick with it. You're already committed. Don't step back because of fear because of hurt because of anger.

I promise you it will be rewarding. All right. So let's talk about that. Work here is the biggest step of all. You cannot rebuild love on old ways, old habits and old behavior fears that were hurting your marriage to begin with. You can't expect anything to change. You can't expect it to get different if you're doing the same thing.

And if what you two were already doing in your marriage got you to where you are to begin with, then it's just going to happen again. Have you ever heard the saying insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. Pause for a second. Think about that. You're watching someone trying to open a can with a spatula, like come on now.

And you're watching them turn the cat around and all these different directions and taking the Canon to different rooms, trying and trying to open that stupid can with a stupid spatula. And they swear it's going to open. They just have to get the right angle and you're thinking to yourself, uh haven't they figured out that the spatula won't open.

The damn can. So you offer them a can opener and you tell them to use that instead. And they just look at you and they say that looks so much more complicated. I don't know how to use that tool. It looks like hard work. I don't even know how to figure it out. I'm just going to keep trying the way that I know how.

Yeah, the can opener is going to take a little learning curve to figure out not much, but yeah, if you've never used anything close to it before, it's going to be a little bit more difficult, but once you get it, It's much easier than what you're already doing. So yeah, it's going to take some work to find out what the tools are U2 need and just like any project, not one tool is going to fix it all.

It's going to depend on the problems. It's going to depend on the circumstances it's going to depend on, on your personalities, your relationship dynamic, and taking a look at what you guys have already tried. Evaluating the problem is crucial because then you can identify what is happening to create the problems and find a way to do it differently.

Then working on changing that dynamic, which will lead you to, to falling in love again. So I want you to think about that and for a moment, we're going to step back and I'm going to talk about my marriage with my husband. He wasn't the one that fell out of love. I fell out of love. There was a point in my marriage with my husband that I couldn't stand to look at him.

I didn't want his hands anywhere near my body. I didn't want his eyes gazing at me. There were days I didn't even want to be in the same room as him. I had gotten to a place where I was so hurt. I was so devastated. I was so angry that he could do the things that he did to me. And then look me in the eye and tell me that he loved me.

After a couple of years of that, it started to really get to me. And there came a time where I was done, maybe the shoes on the other foot. And maybe you didn't do anything to have this happen. Maybe there weren't tragedies in your marriage. And it just happened. My point is. The I'm sitting here talking about standing up and saving your marriage.

Even if the love is lost. I am the one who lost the love. And here I am, we got through it. So to answer your question, can it come back? Hell yeah. Can we do this by removing the poison from our marriage? It starts with the work that I talked about earlier. And as you start doing that work, you're going to start to notice a change of dynamic in your marriage.

A little fun and exciting sparks are going to start to come up. You'll be finding yourselves, hanging out a little bit more going on dates here and there, and the tables will start to churn. My last podcast, the foreplay before the foreplay. I know we're not really thinking about that so much right now if our marriage isn't this place, but it has some really good tips to rebuilding that emotional connection and desire for one another.

That's another really good way to start rebuilding that love while working on the marriage. Definitely go back and listen to that one, because everything I talk about in that podcast does directly relate to this as well. I highly encouraged the two of you to work with the marriage coach or a counselor issues chart, working to identify where these problem areas are.

I caution you though. The last thing you need to be doing is fighting back and forth about who did what and whose fault it is that is not going to get you to anywhere near rekindling your marriage. I know this for a fact, this is actually the wrong way to go about it. You're staying stuck where you are by doing this.

And it's exactly what you've been doing. That's destroying your marriage anyways. Stop it. Don't do that anymore. You need to find someone who's going to walk you through this objectively. Almost as if making your grocery list and just like you watching the person opened the can with a spatula, you need someone with no ties to either one of you to help you identify how this came to be, where the mistakes are being made and what you both are doing wrong.

Lastly. Okay. The game plan on how you two are going to correct it and move forward. Using proven strategies. That's going to help walk the, both of you through the transformation. After a few months of doing this work, you two will start to see a difference in your marriage. You'll start to feel the connection coming back and just like the negative cycles I've talked about in the past positive cycles happen too.

Those are going to start taking place. And this is where that positive cycle starts to form. It starts to magnify. It starts to grow and it starts to build on itself. Just don't give up on that marriage. I know that when you're in that place of not feeling love for your spouse, the desire is gone and maybe you just can't stand them anymore.

The last thing that you want to do is try and fix that marriage and stay. Like seriously. I know I've been there. I remember thinking I don't even want this man putting his hands on me. Why in the heck would I want to fix a marriage to spend the rest of my life with this guy? I get it. But I can tell you from experience that I not only had very legitimate reasons to leave, but I also was so, so done and I didn't give up.

I learned well and good for my last marriage. That's not the answer I pushed through. And even though I thought that there was absolutely no hope, this man is never going to change. I'm never going to love him again. And things are not going to get better. It did. Oh my God. It did. And had so much more beautiful and sexy and deeper than it was before.

Was it a blessing? Hell yes. It was a blessing. Did it suck? Oh my fucking God, it sucked. Like you wouldn't believe it was awful, but the reward definitely outweighed how much it sucked this week. I want you to spend some time thinking only about the reasons why you fell in love with your spouse. I want you to reminisce on it for awhile.

I want you to reach out for help too. Don't try to do this on your own. I do offer coaching for couples as well as individually. If you'd like more information, visit my website, www.theconfidentmarriage.com. Send me an email. I'd love to chat with you guys. Even if it's not with me, find someone who does work for you, as long as you don't give up on that marriage and you give it your full effort that will make my heart sing.

So, as I said, it's a really, really hard, hard topic. And I really hope that you guys got a good starter on what you need to do next. If you have any questions about what we talked about today, want some pointers, some advice, some guidance don't hesitate to email me. Um, even if you're not going to work with me, I'm here to help you.

So I know that's probably one of the heaviest podcasts. I've done so far. I'm proud of you for sticking in there and for wanting to learn how you can make a difference in your marriage. Next week, I'm going to do something a little different. I know that I've spoken about my marriage and my experience and who I am a little bit throughout my episodes, but next week we are going to do a, who is Jessica podcast.

I'm going to talk a lot about my history, my past my experience, my education, where I have. Then where I've gotten to and where I'm at today. And, uh, so if you have questions you want me to answer on that podcast? I will have some time for Q and a, so submit those. Uh, and I will definitely acknowledge you if you want to be anonymous, make sure you put, don't say my name.

I definitely won't do that to you. So that's a really good time for you guys as submitted those questions. If you have the question, other people have the question, so send it in so I can answer it. And I hope you all have a fantastic week. Don't forget. We're a community. So share the podcast on your social media and hit that subscribe button.

I hope you guys all enjoyed the show. And I hope you have a amazing week. This is the confident marriage podcast. And I'm your host, Jessica. Thank you all for listening in .