What To Do If He Doesn't Love You Back

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6 Min Read

Contents

How To Know He Doesn't Love You
What You Should NOT Do When He Doesn't Love You Back
What You Should Do When He Doesn't Love You Back
Takeaways When He Doesn't Love You Back
What Readers Think (30+ Comments)

Part 2 of 2

One of the most painful experiences for a woman is when he doesn’t love you back.

Unreciprocated love leaves you feeling lonely, hurt, and resentful. It can also make you feel silly for loving him in the first place and think maybe you should stop.

But we all need love, and while most of us can love for a while without getting love back, we can’t do it forever. Living too long like that will cause both people to suffer.

So, what can you do when he doesn't love you back?

How To Know He Truly Doesn’t Love You

In the first article, He Doesn't Love Me, we looked at some excerpts from my Google Hangout, Loving Someone Who Doesn't Love You. Some were very illuminating.

Let's look at some others to see what we can learn about what to do when he doesn't love you back.

When looking at the responses from couples in this situation, the partner who isn’t feeling any love often has a passive-aggressive attitude.

It can be a struggle to know how to address what’s clearly become a problem, and so it festers allowing resentment and anger to build

Although they should, partners rarely go to the other and say,

I'm not feeling like this relationship is meeting my needs and we need to make some changes."

Instead, they let things fumble along, allowing problems to go unaddressed and negative feelings to continue to grow. This just seems easier than facing an uncomfortable and difficult conversation.

So, instead of telling you the painful truth when he doesn't love you, he avoids it.

However, when people fail to address the difficult issues they often end up doing the things I mentioned in the previous article and often look for love outside the relationship.

Avoiding issues that we anticipate will create conflict is extremely common. But doing this often leads to passive aggressive responses because the problem is still present, unresolved, and fueling negative feelings.

What You Should NOT Do When He Doesn’t Love You Back

Before we talk about what you should do when you feel he doesn’t love you back, let’s address what you should NOT do.

First, don’t ignore what’s happening within your relationship.

Putting your head in the sand won’t make issues get better or go away. In fact, it most likely will make them much worse.

When love has faded from a relationship, whether it’s one-sided or on the part of both partners, there are always signs.

Waiting too long to respond to them makes conversations about what’s happening even more painful and difficult. If you deal with things as they present themselves then the small problems may never become big ones.

Second, don’t seek love and comfort from someone else.

As I mentioned earlier, living in a relationship without love makes temptations more appealing and what’s worse - justifiable.

Betraying your partner with someone else is never justified, no matter how "Out-of-Love" you feel.

Once you’ve stepped outside your relationship and initiated an affair – physical or emotional – you’ve opened a whole new world of problems. There’s nothing about this that will make things better, and no explanation that will make your partner say, “Oh, it’s okay then.”

What You Should Do When He Doesn’t Love You Back

One of the keys to dealing with this is actually being really direct about addressing the problem. Many aren’t comfortable doing that. They don't know how to communicate well, and need someone like me to teach them how.

Communication in a relationship needs constant practice. Most couples don’t realize this and fall into the trap of assuming their partner just knows or understands certain things.

“He should know I love him”
“She should know what bothers me”
“He should know how much he’s hurting me”
“She should know what I need from her”

Being together for years doesn’t make your partner a mind reader.

They can’t truly know what’s on your mind or how you feel unless you tell them. The biggest contributor to relationship problems of all kinds is a lack of basic communication.

A common phrase I hear from a lot of guys is that they "love their partner," but they're "not in love" and that the love is gone. The distinction people make between "loving" versus "being in love" is often at play when someone is feeling that they're not being loved back.

What many people don’t understand is that love changes over time.

Couples or individual partners often get scared when the initial passion felt in the beginning starts to fade. They start to believe that the love is simply gone.

What good communication and effort can show is that it’s not. Couples who’ve been together for a long time will tell you those passionate feelings often come back.

Life is complicated and hard. The absence of that star-struck feeling doesn’t have to mean things have gone bad. It may just mean as a couple (or individual) your focus is on something else right now.

That being said, there will also be times when your husband simply doesn’t love you back. The good news, however, is that it doesn’t have to stay that way.

One of the reasons you may feel he doesn't love you back is because he doesn't love you in the same way he used to.

When a man tells me, "I love her, but I'm not in love with her," his partner often feels he doesn't love her at all.

Love is something that isn’t just words.

A lot of people misinterpret this or misunderstand this. Love is an action. It's a behavior. It's something that we need to be actively doing and when we’re not, that's what contributes to growing apart. Typical responses from the person who's feeling in love with someone who doesn't love them back can be problematic because it becomes something that's considered normal.

Unfortunately, over time that enabling and acceptance allows the things I mentioned earlier, like an affair to happen. Often people will minimize and excuse behaviors that they shouldn't.

People don't just land in unloving relationships. They allow once loving relationships to grow into an unloving one.

So, if you find yourself in a relationship with someone you don’t feel loves you back, here are some suggestions:

Talk

The love may be fading, or perhaps your partner is distracted by something else and has no idea how his distraction is being perceived.

Regardless, voicing your concern starts a conversation. Remember, he’s not a mind reader.

Consider what's changed

What’s different now than when things were good?
Did you stop doing things together that you both enjoy?
Do you treat each other differently now?

Bringing back some of the things that existed when you were happy can help reframe things and reinitiate some of the original feelings.

Make new efforts

Being bored in your relationship can be mistaken for lack of love. Shaking things up with new activities and new approaches to things can sometimes breathe life back into your relationship.

Takeaways When He Doesn’t Love You Back

Being direct with your partner when there's a disconnect is crucial. If you’re not feeling like you’re getting the love you need in the relationship, you must address that with him.

A lot of women don't do this out of fear of the response.

Will he get mad?
Will he leave?
Will he blame me?

Or, even worse,

Will he confirm my worst fears and tell me he really doesn’t love me?

Not addressing it, however, won’t solve anything.

In fact, avoiding difficult topics will contribute further to the breakdown of the relationship.

Feeling he doesn't love you back is very painful. But the key to change starts with honesty – with both yourself and your partner.

Remember, you didn't start out in an unloving relationship – you both allowed your relationship to become one. Take responsibility for that and you'll take the first step toward getting the love back that you want and deserve.

Editor's Note: This post was originally published on September 29, 2013, updated on September 4, 2018 and May 24, 2022. It’s been further updated for additional accuracy and comprehensiveness.