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Marcia was devastated when her husband of twenty-five years told her,
“I’m not in love with you anymore. The life has gone out of our marriage and I don’t think we can get it back.”
Two days later her husband Mark moved out of the house. He said he needed to sort things out. The couple’s two children were distraught and afraid.
Marcia called me in full panic mode.
“I feel blind-sided,” she told me. “We’ve had our ups and down and Mark’s been having a tough time with huge stresses at work, but I never thought it would come to this.”
After telling me about their lives up until now, Marcia broke into tears.
“I love Mark and I don’t want our marriage to end. What can I do?”
I told her that hearing the words “I’m not in love with you anymore” feels like having your heart ripped out. You think your world is collapsing. But it doesn’t have to be the end. In fact, it may be just the beginning of the best love of your life.
Confessions of a Thrice Married Marriage-and-Family Therapist
It’s said that we teach what we want to learn. For more than 40 years I’ve been teaching people how to have successful marriages that remain passionate, loving, and creative through the years. Being a marriage and family counselor has been a satisfying career and I’ve helped thousands of couples. But the truth is my initial motivation for going into the field was to learn how I could have a successful marriage.
My parents divorced when I was five years old and I grew up being raised by a single Mom. I vowed that what happened to them wouldn’t happen to me. “When I fall in love, it would be forever.” I probably remembered that from one of the love songs I heard growing up. “Forever” lasted almost ten years for me. I remarried and my second marriage lasted just two years. Before I married again, if I ever found the right person, I vowed I would learn the secret of real, lasting love.
My wife, Carlin, and I have now been married for 35 years. I’ll tell you truthfully it’s often been a struggle and there were times I wasn’t sure we’d make it. But I can tell you, we’ve learned the secret of having a functional, joyful, marriage. Learning about the four stages of marriage turned out to be the key to our success.
The Four Stages of Marriage
I still remember falling in love with Carlin. We met at an Aikido dojo and later reconnected at weekend workshop on Sex, Love, and Relationships. I don’t remember much of the formal learning because I was entranced with Carlin. We talked, walked on the beach, talked some more. I felt I had finally found my soul partner. We laughed together, played together, made mad, passionate love. Having finally found “the right person” we were sure that things would continue to be wonderful. Oh, how naïve we were. It turned out this was the only the first of four stages:
Stage 1: Falling In Love
Stage 2: Becoming a Couple
Stage 3: Disillusionment
Stage 4: Creating Real, Lasting Love
Falling in Love: Nature’s Trick to Get Us Together
Here’s a thought experiment that can teach us a lot. Imagine the implication of this simple truth: None of your direct ancestors died childless. We know your parents had at least one child. We also know your grandparents had at least one child. You can trace your ancestry back and back and back. You may or may not have children and you certainly know people who will never have children. But all your ancestors did.
How did they do that? Well, they fell in love or at least they fell in lust, which often accompanies falling in love. I call it nature’s trick because it gets us together. It feels so good because all those hormones are triggered: testosterone, estrogen, dopamine, and many others. Without them we’d never make babies and our species would disappear.
It also feels wonderful because we project all our hopes and dreams on our lover. We imagine that they will fulfill our desires, give us all the things we didn’t get as children, deliver on all the promises our earlier relationships failed to fulfill. We are sure we will remain in love forever. And because we are besotted with “love hormones,” we’re not aware of any of this.
Becoming a Couple: Nature’s Way of Keeping Children Alive
It’s good to remember that we are all mammals and must put considerable energy into raising the young or they won’t survive. It starts with mother’s milk and goes on from there. Whether we have children or not, we’re built to be sure they survive. We learn to bond with our partner and with our children. We work at a job. We build a life together.
Disillusionment: The Beginning of the End or the End of the Beginning
At some point things start to deteriorate in the relationship. We fight more. We have sex less often. When we do make love, it’s more about duty than passion, more about immediate pleasure and tension release than deeply felt love.
Things we once overlooked in our partner become thorns in our side. He forgets to put his dirty clothes in the laundry basket. She is late again for an important event. Fights become more common or they disappear completely. Everything may look fine on the surface, but inside we feel hollow and alone.
We get sick more easily, sometimes seriously sick. I began to suffer from atrial fibrillation. My wife got breast cancer. We usually don’t recognize the illnesses as stress reactions. It’s terrifying to feel love slipping away.
This is the stage where many marriages fail. We go our separate ways, eventually fall in love again, we repeat steps 1, 2, 3, and the cycle repeats itself. But that need not be the case. Disillusionment does not mean you’ve picked the wrong partner or the love you thought you had has drained away. It means you are ready to let go of the illusions of love and get down to the real thing.
Hang in There: The Joys of Real, Lasting Love
As a young couple, I still remember my first wife and I going to hear the legendary psychologist and therapist, Carl Rogers, talk about marriage. He was in his 80s then and he and his wife had been married more than sixty years. My wife and I had been together for less than a year and were anxious to hear the great man’s wisdom about love and life.
At one point in his talk he turned to his wife, Helen.
“Remember that stretch when things were so bad in our relationship?”
She smiled and nodded her head. I was amazed to hear that my idol had problems in his relationship. But I was dumbfounded to hear what came next.
“There was that bad patch of nine or ten years when things were awful.” Helen smiled and shook her head as she too remembered. “But we hung in there and worked things out.”
“You must be kidding,” I thought, “Nine or ten years of things being awful?” I couldn’t imagine things ever being awful for me and my wife and if they ever were I sure couldn’t imagine staying in a state of awful for nine or ten years.
Now having been married for thirty-five years, I understand that there can be some pretty terrible times. But getting through those times together is how we learn about real, lasting love. Over the years we learned to heal old wounds, quit blaming our partner for not fulfilling our needs, and reclaiming our lost power. It’s not easy to work things out together. But knowing about the four stages of love and remembering the words of Carl Rogers and the look of love between him and Helen has guided my journey. I hope it will help guide yours as well.
The end of “being in love” is the opportunity for “real, lasting love.” It doesn’t happen fast and it isn’t ever all sweetness and light. But there’s nothing better in the world to do with our lives than to learn to love, deeply and well. I’d like to hear about your own experiences on the path of love. Together we can learn from each other and together we can make a better world.
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You might also like from Jed Diamond:
The One Thing Men Want More Than Sex
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Together 30 years. Of course passion ends but it seems there’s no real friendship to fall back on either.
We were kids when we were in the friends stage first and now we’re in our 50’s and lost.
We both agreed the last 5 years have been like being stuck in “Groundhog Day”.
She thinks a geographical move might fix things but I’m not so sure.
I think we got together to help mend each other’s past difficult issues and now that we’re better individually we don’t fit together anymore, if that makes sense.
I’m sorry but being in an unhappy relationship for 10 years doesn’t sound like a successful relationship to me. Not to mention how everyone around you experiences that unhappiness. Perhaps if you look at in terms of a 30 year relationship in relation to that it seems fine. We really don’t know how much time we have here and I would hate to spend a large portion of my life unhappy
Thank you, this gives me hope.
This really hit home. My husband and I have been together for 25 years and married 20. Well this year he opened up that he had two affairs over 10 years. It all started and was somewhat sporadic yet over the year the guilt weighed on him. He was detached from me and our kids. Yet I would ask what was wrong and try to work on our marriage but always excuses or blaming me. Well after 9 months lots of work still needs to be done but we have really made great progress. We say we have redefined our… Read more »
I’m am so glad you shared your story… I have been married for 28 years, the last ten years have been bad. I can honestly say I love this man more now then the day I married him for everything we have been through and enjoyed. He is unhappy and I carelessly added to his unhappiness with my feelings of anger and resentment. I don’t want my marriage to end.
Thank you Jed. It’s been three months since my blissful but six month long relationship ended, and you took the words right out of my mouth. We’re not speaking and it’s been very tough. But instead of only mourning, have decided to fix what the cause was, I lost myself and became too settled, lost my sense of self and took her for granted. She couldn’t even name the “something” that was missing in our relationship. It was me. I know the love is still there, and could be the real deal if only she would approach it again. I’ve… Read more »
Joel, many thanks. Hope people who liked the article will repost, and let others now. Helping spread the word helps everyone.
Always a very fine experience reading your works Jed. Thank you for your transparency my friend.
The words of Carl Rogers and his wife struck me as they did you! As they should all of us who are trying to stay in long-term relationships. Like really long-term – 40, 50. 60 years! You can be what I like to (probably euphemistically) call “out of sync” for a long time. Probably realistically feels a lot more like miserable. With a few bright spots thrown in. Thanks for your words – to remind us that time lends such perspective.
Margaret, Thanks for your comments. Most of us don’t have an experience of seeing a long-term relationship that remains, passionate and vibrant, through 40, 50, 60 years. We now have a chance to have more of them. Carlin and I have been together 36 years, third marriage for both of us, so we’re going to keep going as long as we last. We just had a wonderful talk this morning with her telling me about a dream she had last night that was detailed and complicated. She asked me, what if I had any interpretive thoughts. I didn’t. The only… Read more »
Wonderful, Jed. I’ve been married 30 years and there was a stretch of pretty bad years. But going through them, I never believed divorce would happen. I took a ‘leave of absence’ for a few months at our 25 year mark and came back stronger and less intimidated. Not long ago my sister (divorced 3 times) told me that when someone falls out of love, there’s not much you can do to get it back. When she wanted to end her marriages, nothing could make her stay. My marriage, though very challenging and devastating at times, kept going because she… Read more »
Tami, I’ve found a similar thing. Carlin and I have been together 35 plus years, and went through some difficult times. We struggled to stay connected and learn the lessons that we were challenged to learn. How I have a much better understanding of the process and want to continue to help other couples stay connected so they can experience the benefits of Real, Lasting Love.
My partner and I work with couples whose relationships are at the breaking point. We teach them the simple methods of Secure Love (secure attachment, or secure functioning). There are some simple changes in behavior that bring back the feelings of security, safety, and generosity. “Hanging in there” is a good start – and learning some new tricks and techniques go a long way toward repairing what is broken. Thanks for being a spokesperson for the benefits of sticking around for the fourth stage. I left many good relationships in the past that had hit the third stage. Sure glad… Read more »
Lion, Thanks for the comments. I agree, part of the process is recognizing what isn’t working (my two previous marriages), a willingness to do the inner work to prepare myself for the kind of relationship I really wanted, and going out and learning the skills required to make a relationship last. I appreciate your work on the path, my brother, and for the teaching and sharing that you and your partner share.
Hi,
How do you bring about feelings of security, safety and (mutual) generosity in a realationship?
What tools can be used to avoid security and safety leading to complacency, being-taken-for-granted, and ultimately resentment?
I’ve found that creating greater levels of security, safety, and mutual generosity start with a recognition of “how things are” in the relationship. Most people can tell you on a scale of 1 to 10, for instance, how well the relationship is meeting their needs. If your score is low and you want it higher, the next step is practicing empathy. One of the practices I use is based on Marshall Rosenberg’s non-violent communication, where we tune into a situation and the person’s feelings and needs. Let’s say my wife is upset with something I said. I might say, “You… Read more »
Thank you for answering. But your example is based on a scenario where the partner owns up to what’s actually “wrong”. And I think most of us are familiar with situations where that doesn’t happen and instead the communication breaks down. If you don’t mind me asking, how could one for instance handle a situation where there was something wrong with how the dishes were put away (in the eyes of the partner), but the partner would just answer with a snark that “Nothing’s wrong! Everything’s just fine!!” and then go silent from there? Or say that there really wasn’t… Read more »
FlyingKal, Good question. It’s not easy to engage a person in discussion, when they aren’t willing to discuss. The good news is it can be done. Here’s how. A person can’t not communicate. Most communication is non-verbal, and men use it more often than women, who generally are more communicative in words. So, sometimes the woman can say something like “When you shake your head and give shrug your shoulders (or whatever he does), I’m wondering if you’re angry because … (fill in what you think he might be angry about) I made the comment about the dishes.” He might… Read more »
As a therapist/marriage and family counselor for more than 40 years, I’ve found that people leave because they are in too much pain and don’t know how to create a relationship that is real, loving, and lasting. People also stay in a relationship that is dead because of the same reasons. Whether you want to stay or want to leave, its likely the old relationship is over and its time to learn the skills and get the help to create a relationship that is what you’ve always dreamed it could be.
Hey I read something like this in a book “The road less travelled” by M. Scott Peck. It talks about the illusions about love and what it really should be about , he said Love is “Loving when you don’t feel loving” . So I was happy to see this! I guess great minds do think alike Great article! 🙂
There are “rough patches” and then there are couples whose marriages have run their course. My aunt and uncle were unhappy together until the day he died, but they hung in there because that’s what they were supposed to do. My aunt lingered on for another ten years, unhappy and bitter, never moving on. Because again, that’s what she was expected to do. One life, one spouse, that was it. I always wanted to ask her, “Was it really worth it?”
I really love this piece. We made it 17 years, to disillusionment and, without warning, my husband left. I wood have worked to real lasting love but you can’t do that alone, so it seems what needed to happen has and I’m now going through a very hard time. But, I will get through it. And, I believe there will be something better for me someday, because I’m open to it. This is good.
Jenny, the pain is great. Sometimes there’s nothing worse. All who have been through it can feel with you. As you say, there will, indeed, be someone better for you someday. Life is a journey, we each do separately, together. Thanks for sharing your journey. I look forward to continuing to deepen our connection.
Thank you for the great piece Jed! I also find myself in the midst of this terrible third tier. After 10 years living together and a 14 year relationship I am willing and able to try and get to the next level and to a real relationship but sadly my wife has giving up and nothing I say will change her mind. She has moved on and the door is closed, I would like to think that there may be some hope but she coldly states “you are in denial” so I have no choice but to let her go… Read more »
Great piece! Jenny, I am in the same situation that you were in. My wife and I would have been married 17 years next month. She moved out one month ago. I also was willing to work on lasting love but my wife was ready to move on. I have come to realize that this is a incredible opportunity for me to find true love with another. I look forward to the journey. Good luck with yours.
I really like this piece as well. Since I’m pretty sure my wife and I are in the midst of one of those “terrible patches”, it resonated pretty well.
Life seems to have fun putting on this slippery patches or then getting us stuck up to our armpits in mud. I’ve learned to relax, take life with the sense of humor it requires, keep loving, and keep living. Glad you can share our journey.
I really love this piece. It’s beautiful, honest and very insightful. Thank you for posting quality content that I know will benefit many a person, including myself!
Jacqueline, thanks for your comments. They mean a lot. I also appreciate your work and feel that sharing our experience and expertise can be helpful to many. I look forward to hearing from you and others who feel passionate about relationships.