WTF Does "I Love You But I’m Not In Love With You" Even Mean?

 

Welcome back, brother!

 

We are continuing our weekly Happy Man Mindset email where we discuss topics from the Goodguys2Greatmen community.

 

My name is Charlie McKeever from Austin, Texas.  As a senior member in the community and Certified Goodguys2Greatmen coach, I share with you my personal journey as well as insights from walking and talking with men here in the community. The perspective I have gained from them have fundamentally changed me, my marriage, and my life.

 

Three years ago my wife avoided me, only gave me one word answers to questions and eventually told me she wanted a divorce.

 

Today she regularly tells me she loves me on her own. She enjoys spending time together and we have open, honest, grown up conversations where she shares her thoughts, feelings, and experiences with me. A lot has changed over the last three years and those changes are what I will continue sharing with you in these emails.

 

In the previous two emails I told you how I used sex as a measurement of relationship success and how I let other people make my decisions for me for decades. These two relationship issues and others I wasn’t even aware of eventually lead to my wife telling me she, “didn’t want to be married anymore.”

 

But before she said those words she said, “I love you, but I’m not in love with you.”

 

What in the actual f*@k does that even mean you might ask? Maybe your wife has said some version of this to you too. It’s confusing, frustrating, and it’s one of the more hurtful things you can hear from someone you love.

  

So what does she mean? What was she trying to tell me and what is your wife trying to tell you?

 

How can she both love you and not “be in love with you” and how can that eventually end up with her saying, “I don’t want to be married anymore?”

 

Here’s what I have learned, the hard way…

 

In general, women communicate feelings and men communicate facts.

 

Most men experience one or two feelings at a time at most.

 

Most women are experiencing a woven tapestry of emotions all at once, all the time.

 

Men and women’s brains are just wired differently. She’s not broken. You’re not broken. You’re both just different.

 

It’s natural and normal for you to be a single focus, mission oriented, “get $hit done” badass. In fact, you might be a superstar at work AND feel like a falling star at home.

 

It’s also natural and normal for her to feel her way through life. Her feelings are so tightly integrated with who she is, she has a hard time separating her feelings from herself. Her feelings also shape her reality.

 

If she doesn’t feel safe, then in her mind she isn’t safe. If she doesn’t feel loved, then in her mind she isn’t loved.

 

When she says she loves you, she is saying she cares for you as she might care for a close friend. But when she isn’t feeling connected to you romantically, then she feels distant and separated from you. That’s when she doesn’t feel romantically “in love with you”.

 

She cares for you, she just isn’t having “the feels” that make her all warm inside for you as her man.

 

When this separation and distance from you goes on too long, she begins to lose hope that things will change. She starts to mourn the death of the relationship and she starts to close her heart so she won’t be emotionally hurt anymore.

 

That last part is important, so let me say it again. She closes her heart so she won’t hurt anymore. 

 

That sucks!

 

She’s NOT enjoying it and she isn’t doing anything “to you”, she’s simply trying to do something “for herself”.

 

And that’s what my wife was doing for herself. 

 

For two years she felt my increasing disappointment with our sex life. She felt my disapproval of her choices and decisions. She felt my overall resentment for not “meeting all my needs”. 

 

These feelings weren’t loving to her and eventually she grew tired of feeling like she was broken, like she couldn’t do anything right, and like she wasn’t enough.

 

Eventually she closed her heart to me to protect herself.

 

Now, I would love to tell you that all I had to do was recognize how I was influencing her feelings and say, “I’m sorry” for everything to change. 

 

I would love to tell you that all I had to do was explain to her how the logical series of events had led us to that point and that all we needed to do was work together as a team to turn things around. 

 

I would love to tell you that all the hours I tried talking to her helped her to see my point and convinced her to see what I saw, but it just doesn’t work like that.

 

You can’t talk yourself out of something you behaved your way into!

 

No amount of talking, explaining, reasoning will make her FEEL differently. She doesn’t work that way.

 

Words are a head thing not a heart thing. 

 

She needs to experience a different version of you consistently enough, for long enough, so she can begin to trust you again, feel close to you again, and open her heart to you again.

 

Right now, she’s like a scared, injured, wild rabbit who has retreated to her protective hole of emotional safety. 

 

No amount of stomping around outside the whole or telling the rabbit why she should come out will get her to poke her head out. 

 

Only time and a different version of you, a calm, confident, patient version of you, will begin to see her timidly start to poke her nose out of the hole. Then her head. Then her body. Then her fluffy tail.

 

Real change takes time!

 

It took time to get here. It’s going to take time for things to change. Expecting her to flip an emotional switch overnight just makes her feel more hopeless and drives her farther away.

 

That’s why it’s so important for us to take our focus off of her and start focusing on becoming the calm, confident, loving, and patient man we want to be.

 

So, where do you go from here?

 

You are a good guy. You want to be proud of the man you are being and you want your relationship with your wife to be better, but if you could have worked this problem out on your own, you would have done it by now.

 

You need better insights. You need another man to walk and talk with you to help you understand what to do next.

 

You don’t have to go through this alone.

 

You are not required to join a men’s group or hire a men’s coach. Just be willing to take the first step by reaching out and starting a conversation with someone who understands, will listen, and who cares about you.

 

At this point we always ask you, "What do you want?"

 

It's one of the hardest questions for men to answer.  Why?

 

It seems as if we've been programmed to be afraid of saying what we want! 

 

Only a total jerk would clearly, plainly and unapologetically say out loud what he really wants for himself and his life...right?

 

Wrong. In fact, if you don't decide to clearly state what you want and go after it, nobody else will do it for you.

 

We send you these emails to stimulate your thinking and to stir your emotions.  That's the first step to taking the lead in your life.

 

If this email jolted your thinking...or if it tugged at your heart, then you are being called to stand up and do something.

 

We want to show you what it’s like to speak with a man who has lived what you’re going through.  It’s rare to feel totally seen, heard and valued by another man.

 

Simple.

 

We live to serve men.  We live to light a spark of realization in your mind that change is possible. Confidence is natural.  And becoming empowered to improve your situation is mandatory.

 

If you do want to talk about our coaching programs, groups and courses, that may take another call. 

 

First things first.  Let’s get you moving in the right direction for now.

 

Click HERE now to schedule your personal conversation.

 

And if you want to send Charlie McKeever a personal message about this email, you can email him at charles@happymancoaching.com