Help! We don’t love each other anymore
IT’S that thing that would make some men die for their women, it’s that feeling you get when you see that special someone. It suggests a commitment, passion and respect towards another soul. For most it’s indescribable and indefinable; it just is. What are we talking about here? It has got to be love.
While a necessary component in any relationship if it is expected to grow, it is unfortunately a missing ingredient in most. In some case there is a lack of love shown by one partner towards the other and in other cases, neither person in the relationship really have that ‘special feeling’ towards each other.
For counselling psychologist with the Family Life Ministries, Joan Rhule, a loveless relationship is characterised as one where both or one partner displays a lack of commitment to the other. They are only involved to satisfy basic needs such as financial support or fulfil emotional and sexual gratifications.
Rhule believes such a relationship shows a lack of self-esteem on the part of the individual giving all the love. “They really don’t know who they are. If I really know my identity and my goals, then I’ll put a premium on myself. At least I would know that if I’m going into a relationship then I would have to have some level of commitment from that individual.”
Simone, a university student in her 20s, says that despite her partner’s lack of commitment to her, she continues her relationship with him because they live in the same house. However they sleep in different beds. Although they live separate lives, they continue to introduce each other to friends and family as a couple.
She says that although she loves her boyfriend of nine months, he does not show any love towards her. In fact, he has gone as far as to verbalise this fact. But having nowhere else to go, she continues to live with him hoping that one day things will change for the better.
“I really care for him,” she says of her boyfriend. “Him have him good ways and him bad ways, but I still want to make it work.”
Although her boyfriend’s behaviour towards her suggests a lack of respect for her and her feelings; having invested so much already in the relationship, she intends to continue even though she does not expect to see any change from him.
Rhule says that sometimes persons also enter a loveless relationship on the rebound after being hurt by a previous partner.
“So you might have had a broken relationship and you might want to show the other partner that ‘you have broken up with me but I can find somebody else’,” she explains.
Local psychologist Leachim Semaj believes that over time some couples tend to outgrow each other, and this results in them losing that loving feeling that in previous years would have been very evident in their lives. Despite this, they continue to pretend that they are still the same “lovey dovey” couple in front of their friends, while at home they don’t get along.
“You find it at all strata, but especially at the upper strata of society where you see them in public at special social events but for all intent and purpose, they probably have separate rooms at the same house or even the same bed but they live together like room mates but the important social events, they are there together. There are times when either or both are living entirely separate lives,” he says.
Couples like this, he says, continue to maintain a facade, because while living such a life might be painful, fully breaking it apart might be too disruptive for both partners and the family they have built together.
“You have two kids, you own a house together, you have a common set of friends, so anything to disrupt the whole thing would be too disruptive so you build your new life as you continue the pretense of the old one,” he says.
But while the psychologist believes that love is important in a relationship, he does not dispute the fact that a couple can live peaceable and comfortably with each other even without the romance being present in that relationship.
“The notion that romantic love is the most important type of love is not so. Many people are comfortable with the fact that the romance and the passion of the love are no longer in the relationship, because they’ve now gotten their children. They just need somebody to make sure that the bills are paid, the kids are taken care of and so on. So it is possible for people to live as room mates,” he asserts.
Rhule shares the same view, as she believes that a couple can exist peaceably with each other once they have the same values.
“I know of couples who live together, they do everything for one another, but they don’t love each other. They don’t really sleep together, but they are under the same roof, they are just there. For the children’s sake they don’t get a divorce. They don’t want to live separate lives for the whole thing of appeasing society because what would society think of this family ending up in divorce? They are just there for convenience but not for love.”
If it is a case where one individual loves the other but this love is not being reciprocated, then it might prove to be more difficult, Rhule says.
“Everybody has a love bank, and if you are always putting out and not getting in anything you will get depleted after a while,” she says.
She believes this can lead to, among other things, depression, frustration and a feeling of loneliness.
Simone says she can attest to all these feelings and more, as a result of her current relationship. She said it has also affected her academic performance as she has stopped producing the high standard of work she was used to prior to the relationship.
“There are times when I’m there and I have sleepless nights and sometimes I cook and I can’t eat. This is the worst I am doing in school ever. Most times I sit and a wonder if all of this makes sense. Sometimes I become very depressed and I look back over my life and I ask myself if this is what I come to,” she says.
One method she uses to cope with all the hurt is to write all her feelings in her journal. This she says helps her to actively do something and vent her anger over the situation.
Rhule says in such a relationship where only one person is showing love, there needs to be some amount of probing to find out what is the problem. If nothing is done to find out what the problem is, then there can’t be an improvement in that relationship.
Semaj believes that the woman might not necessarily react in a negative way if she is not being loved. Some can cope by redirecting their interest into something else.
“If you are a woman and you still want that passion, and that love, and that intimacy and so on and the man is no longer giving you that feeling, then it hurts you even more, but if you have gotten on with your life emotionally where your life is now about your profession, your career and your children, then you can easily sublimate your passion and interest into them.”
He says it is the same situation for some men who instead of moping around, usually find someone else who can make him feel desirous and loved.
“So you find that persons are now outsourcing some of there relationship issues, because the original partner has given up that role.”
But he believes there is still hope for couples that find that they are in a loveless relationship. Some measures can be applied to try and restore the relationship, especially in the initial stage when the couple first finds out that they are having problems.
Semaj says that couples should first acknowledge the situation and try to talk to each other about it. If this does not work then they should try and get a close and trusted family member, or friend to act as mediator and provide advice. If this fails, then they should try and go to counseling sessions.
“A relationship is like any other living thing, it is like a plant, if you don’t nurture it, if you don’t water it, it doesn’t grow, if you leave it alone it can go from bad to worse,” he says.
allwoman@jamaicaobserver.com
