I’m Not Sure I’m in Love With My Partner Anymore

Sometimes, moving away from a relationship begins with a decision we've made up in our minds. After I see a couple together for a first session in therapy, and they report increased conflict and trouble communicating—nothing that's a deal breaker in a relationship if the pair are committed to working on it—I'll then see them apart for the subsequent two consecutive appointments, when very often one declares, "I'm not sure I'm in love with him/her anymore." This happens a lot, and I often wonder, and of course, I ask, what does love look like for you? What does "in love" mean beyond attraction?

Because movies, television, and literature often tell of love that was "meant to be," with beautiful actors playing the part of lusty, near-missed entanglements, we romanticize love from a very early age. The idea of "the one" is simply an idea written in romance novels and romantic comedies.

A few years back, I was shopping for wedding cards when I came across one that said something similar to "Congratulations on your wedding" on the front and inside: "The good stuff is what comes inside the marriage." So often, our love stories stop at the wedding, but the decision to spend our lives together is just the beginning.

Author Alain De Botton, in his novel, "The Course of Love," writes, "Love stories begin not when we fear someone may be unwilling to see us again but when they decide they would have no objection to seeing us all the time; not when they have every opportunity to run away but when they have exchanged solemn vows promising to hold us, and be held captive by us, for life." He says, "We have allowed our love stories to end way too early. We seem to know far too much about how love starts, and recklessly little about how it might continue."

We often confuse lust and romanticism with commitment and love, or we opt for the rush of the first over the complexity of the long and winding road of the second. "He will need to learn love is a skill rather than an enthusiasm," writes De Botton of his novel's main character. "Love grows slowly and richly with each experience in which you stand by your partner's side, with each roadblock you conquer, with each loss you endure together, with each moment shared that is beyond words: a birth, a death, a moment in time only shared by the two of you." Wow, that sounds romantic to me. But this type of love is rarely written about in books, movies, or songs. He writes, "…in so many love stories, there is simply nothing else for the narrator to do with a couple after they have triumphed over a range of initial obstacles other than to consign them to an ill-defined contented future—or kill them off."

There is no definitive answer about what real love is. Still, I suspect it has to do with sharing a life, with all the messy ups and downs, with choosing your partner over and over again, and being witness to that person's life and inviting them to be witness to yours.