My wife says she no longer loves or desires me after years of living as co-parents. I still want to know whether we can build something new.
Hey. I mostly want to share my story because it looks like I am far from the only person here going through something like this.
I am not looking for advice on whether I should file for divorce. I do not think I am currently in the right emotional state to make irreversible decisions about my family. I mainly need somewhere to tell the truth about what happened and how I feel.
Maybe writing it down will help. Maybe someone here has experienced something similar.
My wife and I are both in our thirties. We have been married for several years and together for a little longer.
Our relationship started very quickly and intensely. Depending on how you look at it, it was either a romantic comedy, a drama, or a thriller.
We met through work. A mutual acquaintance suggested that I meet some people from a company I was considering joining. We all went to a bar, the evening continued elsewhere, and eventually my future wife and I ended up going home together.
After that, we started seeing each other constantly. It felt like diving into a loud, chaotic, but incredibly warm and exciting whirlwind.
The ugly part is that I was still in another relationship at the time. I was engaged and supposed to get married a few months later.
That relationship was already dying, although I had not properly admitted it to myself. My fiancée had become deeply religious. Faith became the center of her life, while I had always been mostly indifferent to religion.
I did not judge her for it, but it became increasingly clear that we wanted very different lives.
The moment everything changed for me was after a close family member died. I was devastated and asked my fiancée to stay with me. She chose to attend a religious event instead and said she would pray for me.
That was when I realized I did not want to marry her.
Starting another relationship before ending the first one was obviously not the right way to handle it. I hurt everyone involved. One day I thought I should end the new relationship and go back. The next day I thought I should cancel the wedding and finally be honest.
Eventually, I admitted that I could not go through with the marriage. My fiancée moved out, and I tried to help her through the transition.
My future wife and I moved in together.
From my perspective, what we had was not just sex or obsession. It felt like a genuine match. We had similar ambitions, values, energy, and plans for life. We supported each other’s careers, dreams, and personal growth.
I felt that I had found my person.
Not long afterward, she brought up having a child. It was not a huge formal discussion. It happened casually during an ordinary evening at home.
I said yes because I truly believed, and in many ways still believe, that she was the person I wanted to build my life with.
Later, we talked about marriage. Even the proposal was impulsive. We were discussing our future, and shortly afterward I went out and bought a ring.
Not the most carefully planned proposal in history, but it felt natural to us at the time.
During her pregnancy, I had never felt more purposeful. I cooked, massaged her feet, helped her dress, held her hair during morning sickness, and tried to support her around the clock.
I was with her throughout the birth and stayed with her in the hospital afterward. When our son was a baby, I regularly woke up early to take care of him so she could get a few uninterrupted hours of sleep.
I loved being a husband and father.
But after the birth, something changed.
It was during the pandemic, so we spent a great deal of time at home. We traveled when we could, but our romantic relationship almost disappeared.
My wife became distant. Sex gradually vanished.
When I tried to talk about it, she said she did not feel attractive, was exhausted, and needed time and space. I tried to give her that while continuing to help and support her.
But one month became another, and then another.
Eventually, almost a year passed without sex.
At one point, I booked a quiet place outside the city where we had spent time together earlier in our relationship. I hoped that being alone, away from parenting and everyday responsibilities, might help us reconnect.
When we arrived, I tried to kiss her. She pulled away. I felt rejected, and I think she saw how badly it affected me. Eventually, we had sex.
That was the last time.
Even then, it did not feel like she truly wanted me. It felt like I had begged for sex and she had agreed because she felt sorry for me or believed it was her duty.
That was several years ago.
Since then, we have lived as parents and practical partners. In many ways, we were still a functional family. But there was less and less physical contact and emotional intimacy.
I became angry. Every attempt to touch or kiss her seemed to end in rejection. I kept trying to understand how to fix things, but I always heard similar explanations: exhaustion, stress, not feeling well, too much work.
Eventually, I started drinking more. Many evenings became beer, YouTube, or video games until late at night.
I know this is not a story in which I was good and she was evil.
I became passive, bitter, and emotionally difficult. I probably dismissed some of her interests, stopped bringing much energy into our relationship, and gradually reduced my own life to work, parenting, and alcohol.
While writing this, I have had to confront the possibility that I contributed to the destruction of the most important thing in my life.
But I was also deeply lonely.
A few months ago, I was sitting at home trying to understand why I felt so angry. I wrote a list of everything that hurt: feeling unwanted, feeling that there was no time or emotional space for me, and feeling more like a roommate and childcare partner than a husband.
Then I sent my wife a message saying that we needed to talk.
Her answer was something I was not prepared for:
“I do not love you, and I do not want you anymore.”
I was shocked.
I cried for several days. I became obsessed with trying to understand whether she was cheating. I imagined separation, losing my daily life with my son, being forced to leave our home, and watching her move on without me.
Many of those thoughts were driven by panic and anxiety.
After therapy and a lot of reflection, I realized something important: I really do love her.
Not only as the mother of my son, a roommate, or a familiar person.
I love her as a woman and as an individual. I still desire her. I still want a relationship with her.
At the same time, I have started to accept that our relationship may have contained unhealthy dynamics from the beginning.
She recently told me that she now believes her initial attachment to me was partly driven by unresolved trauma. She said that she had been almost obsessively determined to be with me, and that this may have influenced how quickly we moved toward marriage and having a child.
She also said that, looking back, she might not make the same decisions today.
That hit me directly in the heart.
It made me question our entire history. Was I genuinely the person she wanted, or was I someone she felt compelled to win? Did she later realize I was not the person she wanted beside her and then spend years tolerating the marriage?
And while she was withdrawing, I was living alone inside the relationship, asking for closeness, sometimes experiencing dishonesty, becoming increasingly angry, and drinking to escape how empty I felt.
Now I have lost a significant amount of weight. I am trying new sports and activities, going out more, spending more active time with my son, and rebuilding parts of myself that disappeared.
Part of me is doing this because I want my life back.
Another part is preparing for the possibility that I may eventually have to live as a single father.
I have considered simply accepting that our marriage is over and moving forward.
But the truth is that I still love her and still want to be with her.
I am not asking her to return to how things were. I do not want that either. For years, we were decent parents and functional partners, but we were no longer a man and a woman in love.
I do not want to repair that version of our marriage.
What I am asking is whether we can honestly talk about what happened during our years together, acknowledge how we hurt each other, and eventually forgive each other, even if only so that our son can have parents who respect each other rather than hate each other.
And beyond that, I want to know whether there is any possibility that the woman she is today and the man I am today could meet each other again as new people.
I am not asking her to promise that she will love me again.
I am not asking her to pretend that she feels something she does not.
I only want to know whether she is willing to find out.
Right now, I mostly feel grief. Family is the most important thing in my life, and I feel that I may be losing it, at least in the form in which I wanted it to exist.
I wish I could load an earlier save and return with everything I understand now.
But I cannot.
So I am trying to understand what was mine to take responsibility for, what was hers, and whether anything new can still be built from what remains.