Not in love with me anymore?

[rock24]

Hi guys...here's my story.

 

I was with my girl for 2 years. We started off as friends and eventually it turned romantic. During that time, she moved away for family reasons. We continued in a long distance relationship. 8 months later, she moved back and moved in with me. We lived together happily for over a year.

 

While our relationship wasn't perfect...we were happy. We were best friends, we laughed, we loved, rarely argued. She is the love of my life and I was never happier. She told me numerous times that I was the love of her life and she was happier with me than she had ever been.

 

A few months ago, some stress kicked in. She found out she would be getting laid off. With the economy as bad as it is, she's had trouble finding work. So that has really weighed heavily on her mind. Her son is making bad choices. He is dating a girl who is obviously using him, but he doesnt see that to the point where he wants to marry her. So she is worried about that as well. I know when stress is introduced, it may cause other things to snowball.

 

She told me about a month ago that even though she loves me more than anything, she feels like that may be like the love for a best friend, that she doesnt feel anything romantic and isnt in love with me anymore.

 

I was crushed. She said she had felt that way for a couple of months, but I had no idea. We didnt argue, we got along. I thought everything was ok. For the next few days, there were lots of tears, I begged her to give us another chance. I researched couples falling out of love. Its common and can be rebuilt if the 2 people want it. She told me she didnt think she could get those feelings back if they were gone. Makes sense.

 

I kept reminding her how much I loved her and how much I wanted us to try again. I kept trying to talk to her about us, trying to find out what went wrong, etc. I'm sure I came across as weak and clingy. That seemed to push her away, so I stopped doing that.

 

Her daughter asked about it a couple weeks later. My girl told her she didnt want to hurt me, things just didnt feel the same. She said it was a hard time for her and she was stressed. Her daughter reminded her how happy she was with me. My girl said she didnt know what happened.

 

I read a book called "I love you, but I'm not in love with you". Its written by a marriage counselor. Its amazing. He writes about cases he has seen, the different stages of a relationship, the reasons couples fall out of love...not arguing enough, not spending enough time apart, losing your individual identity, lack of intimacy, etc. All of those things applied to us. The book talked about ways to fix it, mostly just understanding what happened and how to avoid it from happening again. I read it, it made sense of a lot of things. I asked her to read it, so she is reading it now.

 

My dilemma....I love her, she's the love of my life and I desperately want her back. We were so happy and Im just not satisfied with not fighting for us. In those past couples months, we did couples things, looked for a new bed together, went on vacation, etc. I asked why she did those things if she felt that way. She said she wanted to try everything she could to see if it would make things better.

 

Fast forward to today....we live together. We sleep in seperate rooms. She was hugging me goodbye in the mornings and at night before bed, but hasnt the past couple nights. I am trying to not analyze things though. We get along as friends, although sometimes its awkward.

 

Looking back on the relationship, I see things that could have been improved. One thing she did tell me was that I was a little clingy. We spent all our time together and if we were apart, I would text her or count down time til I could see her. She made comments before about how we didnt have to do everything together. At the time, I didnt see that. I just loved her and wanted to be with her. But now, I see that I was clingy.

 

I have been trying to put the no contact in place for the past 2 days, but its hard since we live together. Basically, I have not gotten up to see her before she leaves for work, havent texted her, tried to put things above her, etc. Im hoping maybe this will give her time to miss me. I have found when I dont contact her, she will contact me.

 

I'm looking for any suggestions/thoughts/advice. I love this woman and I know if we can get that 2nd chance, we can be better than ever. Right now, I am taking a step back from her, trying to get back to myself. I know if she fell out of love with me the way I am now...why would she want to come back to the same person? I have changed a bit. I used to be more fun, more active. So if I can work on myself and get back to that...give her time to do the same...hopefully we can find our way back to each other. Things need to be worked on, sure....but with communication, it can be done.

 

Any help would be appreciated.

[rock24]

Come on guys....of all the views of this post, no one has advice?

[Knight_Ctrl]

NC is really hard to do when you live with the girl, you should definitely find a friend or someone else to live with for a while. Give her COMPLETE space. As far as you realizing flaws about yourself that could have attributed to her "falling out of love with you", be careful. I realized I had flaws to when my girl and I started having problems but when I matured, realized, and tried to fix these problems she told me I was just changing so I wouldn't lose her. Which is true but that's not WHY I started to change. Girls are weird man, they tell you that you have problems but when you try and fix em they get angry because you're changing for them. But you definitely need to not be living with this girl right now.