You have this nagging feeling that your husband is no longer in love with you. Learn what to do next
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If you’re feeling like you aren’t loved the way you’d like to be it can be really painful. Especially if the love had been there once and is now gone. So, it's understandable to want to know how you can make someone love you and get the pain to stop.
But making someone love you is a tough task. There’s no magic formula -- falling in love is so much more complicated than 1, 2, 3. And there are particular considerations if it’s a matter of falling back in love. So, what does it take to make someone love you?
Before we start exploring the ways you might make someone love you, let's look at some excerpts from one of my Google Hangouts to see what we can learn.
The question is, can we make someone love us? More specifically, how do we make someone love us? Commonly when we’re struggling with these questions, we really want to focus on the reasons why somebody doesn’t love us.
As it turns out there are multiple parts that we need to consider. We need to look at our our part as well as well as our partner's part, and then both of our parts together.
In a previous Hangout on loving someone who doesn’t love you, I discussed some of the reasons why somebody doesn’t love us. You might want to go back and look at that hangout to get a better idea of some of the reasons more specifically. Here, we’re going to focus on the part that we play in it and what we can do about it.
That is a really important piece to remember: we have a part in this. Often we are focused on the other person and looking at what they’re doing or not doing as far as loving us. We want to see what we can control to make them love us instead of focusing on what we really have control over which is ourselves.
This is an important point -- the answer to how to make someone love you starts with us, not them.
Let’s begin by looking at the question of how. Before we can answer how to make someone love you, we need to answer the question, “Can we?” The real answer about being able to make someone love you is that we really can’t. We’re looking to have control over someone else, but we often can’t. We can influence them, and we’ll look at ways that we can influence our partner and how they might love us more the way we are looking to be loved.
We need to understand the difference in the control -- that we can influence our partner but we can’t control them and actually make them love us. What can you do? How can you make someone love you?
First, we need to look at ourselves and see how we can be more loving. A common complaint I hear from a lot of people in counseling is that they just don’t feel like the other person is meeting their needs. Yet often times they’re not willing to look at themselves and see how they might be contributing to that.
Let’s focus first on ourselves and look at how we might be able to be more loving to our partner. This can be difficult because when we feel like we’re not being loved back we oftentimes don’t want to give the love, but a relationship needs to be fed. It requires that we don’t make our love conditional. Oftentimes people will do that -- they’ll withhold their love until they are getting the love back. This creates a catch-22, because the other person is oftentimes doing the same thing. The first thing we need to do is look at ourselves and see how we might be able to be more loving.
This is a tough one -- loving someone who doesn't love you. But it's the first step in how to make someone love you. If we don't make our love unconditional, how can we expect the person we want to love us to do that?
The second thing we can do is look at how we might be able to be more lovable. A lot of times this is a difficult thing to do -- to actually look at ourselves in the mirror and see how we might actually be contributing to the problem. Often we really want to focus on the other person, but if we look at ourselves and really give an honest assessment of what we are doing in the relationship and how we might be able to change some things to be a bit more lovable, oftentimes we will find some things.
One of the things that people bring up in counseling is their partner being critical. Sometimes it’s how the person is taking care of himself or herself that can be something that makes the partner feel that they are not lovable, or they can be more considerate. Oftentimes thinking about the other person’s needs can make a big difference in making ourselves more lovable.
If we're in a relationship with the person we want the love from, or have been in one with them, then most likely we've gotten feedback from them at some point about how we could love them better. If nothing is coming to mind, think harder. How to make someone love you has to include changes we can take to make ourselves more lovable.
So first, we can work on being more loving; second, we can work on being more lovable. The third thing we need to do is to not accept not being loved. This is a real tricky one because a lot of people mistakenly accept not being loved and stay in a relationship when they really should not. We’re going to focus on this because that is really the part that we can influence some control over and have some power in the relationship in our refusal to accept not being loved.
How to make someone love you starts with beginning to not accept not getting the love. We need to recognize that we deserve to be loved and expect that in the relationship from a partner. Some negotiation has to take place so that we figure out how to meet each other’s needs, but just that underlying idea that we deserve the love is really an important thing that we need to believe.
I explain more about how not to accept not being loved in the above video at the 4:33 time mark. Take a listen and also hear what the other Hangout participants had to say. The most important point of this post is that how to make someone love you has to begin with our focusing on us before we focus on them.
Once you’ve spent some time evaluating your own behavior and have begun making the needed changes within yourself, you can focus on creating love between you and that someone else. But it can be hard to know where to start. To help you begin, check out these tips.
If you really want to make someone love you it’s important to remember that although it may sound contrived, it’s actually true that you first need to love yourself. Being comfortable with, and feeling positive about, yourself will allow you more easily follow the tips above and offer the best possible version of you.
Editor's Note: This post was originally published November 30, 2013 and has been updated with new information for accuracy and comprehensiveness.
You have this nagging feeling that your husband is no longer in love with you. Learn what to do next
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Thanks Kurt was able to post on face book. And the book 5 languages of love I myself will pick up as more insight into any and all relationships.
Thanx so much for this
My fiance I have been with him 5 years he swear at me all the time telling me how stupid I am how useless I am I think he doesn't love me please help me what to do
Fortunate, Speaking to you so rudely and disrespectfully all the time doesn't sound very loving to me. Only you can know if leaving is the right thing for you to do, but maybe seeking out a professional counselor would be helpful for you for support. -Kurt
Kurt,
I've read the articles and listened to the pod casts from the other women.
I understand that if I want him to love me its about me and not him. I feel like I'm in a very dark place where I don't live myself and I'm totally lost--I don't know what I want, I need to get a job--doing what I have no idea. I feel alone, scared and have thoughts about how much easier it would be to just check out. I don't have any friends and nobody to talk to--and truly feel my husband doesn't love me and really just wants me to get a job so he can leave me.
Teresa, When we're in a place like you are we aren't very attractive (mentally and emotionally). When you change this you will be, which is part of the reasoning for focusing on yourself. Glad to hear you say, "I need to get a job." Maybe your husband will use that to justify leaving, but you'll be better prepared to handle it if he does. But maybe that won't happen because you'll be more appealing and attractive then. Best wishes on making a better you and being with someone who cherishes that. -Kurt
Kurt,
I don't know how to get out of this dark place. I don't eat or sleep and mostly spend my days crying. I don't feel like doing anything ever. I also have started cutting haven't found anything sharp enough yet though. He didn't find me attractive when I wasn't in this dark place--that's part of the reason I'm here. Listening to all of his lies.
Teresa, Trying to stop the pain by cutting doesn't work. You need to talk to someone, so the next time you're thinking about hurting yourself please call 800-273-8255 anytime 24/7. -Kurt
I feel touched by your comment. I am this way now and don't know what my next step should be to make things bette or easier.
Any advice on overcoming this part of your life and maintaining stability?
What if your husband tells you all the time love you and he still has sex with you every night but at the same time when he gets mad he wants a divorce or when you bring up the girl that he cheated on you with he wants a divorce but at the same time he still says love you be careful sleeps in the same bed with you does everything a husband should do well except for the buying the cards and buying gifts and stuff on special holidays