Question
I’ve been married for 12 years and I’m really bored with my wife. I haven’t cheated on her, but we have nothing to say to each other and the sex isn’t good. I know this isn’t a good reason to leave her but I don’t know what to do.
Answer
It’s sad and can be very confusing for a couple when they no longer feel like they are in love anymore. Many questions play in their minds, but the one that’s the most confusing is usually, ‘Where did we go wrong?’ It’s not even that you don’t love your wife anymore – this situation can be caused by the fact that you both have just become complacent and don’t feel the need to work on your marriage anymore.
After getting married both of you might have just not seen the need to keep the flame burning and so you stopped doing things that made both of you fall in love in the first place. You need to rekindle that and see where it takes you.
It is commendable that you didn’t cheat on her because of the situation you found yourself in, but I suggest you speak to your wife about this and you both seek the intervention of a marriage counsellor.
Social worker Michele Weiner-Davis on Psychology Today wrote that, “When you get married, you make a promise that you will do something important: love your spouse. You may have also promised to honour, respect, protect, provide, support, obey, forsake all others, etc…”
“Your vows were a deliberate and binding statement of things that you would do for one another. They were not forecasts of emotions you hoped would continue to occur at a later date. They were promises of what you would do,” she wrote.
She also advised, “You need to rekindle your love and see where it takes you. It is commendable that you didn’t cheat on her because of the situation you found yourself in.”
