Ask Andrew – How do I persuade my fiancee that it’s not ‘all over’
I cannot thank you enough for having written “I Love You But I’m Not IN Love With You.” Immensely straight-forward, the advice the book gave to me in such a dark time still has seen no equal (not one person until that point had remotely suggested that my relationship could be salvaged, much less if it were worth it to do so if it could be salvaged). I was nearly as shocked discovering your book as I was with the situation that brought me to it.
Two weeks ago, my fiancée, my girlfriend of seven years, broke up with me with the “ILYB” that you and your readers are all too familiar with. No opportunity to debate the breakup or seek counselling together- after having general “doubts” about us off and on for a couple of months, she accepted that she had doubts and told me about them in the same hour she broke up with me. After discussion and a few days passed, I finally got an answer beyond “sorry,” which was that she felt like we were friends, and indeed we had ominously agreed we were each others’ best friends not a month beforehand. We didn’t argue so much as we discussed during our seven years, and we still get along quite well, what we have seen of one another (sex included in the mix- we both agree attraction’s definitely alive and well). She had a family member die the week before the breakup, as your book suggests is common in these situations, and we both still tear up with one another (her psychiatrist has even given her sleeping meds so that she can rest- immensely clear that she feels guilty).
Ultimately, this is a fairly round-of-the-mill situation for your website, fitting your book nearly to a “T,” but I want with all my heart to fight for Us, as she seems to like the idea of but doesn’t see, even after reading several chapters of your book, that counselling ever would have or would still help us as a couple. In her view, sensible in a way, a marriage isn’t something you “should” doubt, and so doubting anything about us at all, however much we’ve been through, meant it wasn’t right, not just for marriage but our entire relationship in one fowl swoop. I don’t think it unreasonable to think she’s having something of a crisis here, but so am I! Aside from remaining civil and making it clear I’d like to fight for Us far harder than this, that I feel our time and happiness together deserves THAT much at least, is there anything else I can do to help encourage the talk of reconciliation rather than just settling, if I even choose to swallow that pill myself, for friendship? It’s as though, for all her sadness at ending Us, she doesn’t want to examine how it came to her having feelings that she was just friends with me or how to address the fact now that it’s been recognized. Being friendly has seemed counter-productive thus far, as she feels like that we can do that so easily means somehow that we truly had just been friends! I’m a mess, though I remain confident as I can. I wish she had cheated on me or else we somehow hated one another: the end would make sense to me then, at least. Is there nothing else I can do to encourage possibilities of getting back together, not just talks of tidying things up nicely with a sigh from both of us that we wished it’d ended differently? The finality, as though there were no hope no matter how much she wished otherwise, is what hurts the worst, far and away more than the ILYB itself and anything I wish we’d done differently (argue more so, gone out to that club we’d talked about).
Andrew writes:
Let’s start with this friends business. Please stop it. Tell her, it’s just too painful. You can’t meet up, have a coffee and discuss last night’s TV! Your heart is breaking in two!! (I’m not saying that you couldn’t be friends in the future but at the moment it’s nothing short of torture.)
However, I think that you can be a whole lot more than friends – like lovers! So how do you turn it around. First of all…. ‘let’s work at our relationship’…. is a great idea but it’s not the sort of thing that’s going to get people marching under banners. So tell her the sort of relationship that you want: passion, marriage, children, no doubts, 100% commitment. Forget all the rational reasons for staying together (because I bet you’ve told her those before) and speak from the heart. (I explain more about this in ‘Help your partner say yes’) So if she wants to know more and discuss this and how you could make it happen – and counselling alone is not the answer – you’re more than willing to meet up but you can’t do ‘just friends’ at the moment.
Next I would read ‘Make love like a prairie vole’ as this explain how to be sexually initimate – rather than brother and sister. I’d also thrown in ‘Learn to love yourself enough’ and ‘Are you right for me?’ as they will help you work on yourself and grow. I know this all sounds dull but if you can tell yourself ‘I’m going to get something positive out of this horrible time’ it will help you cope (and not break down and send her a begging text). My hope is that when the drama of the split (and the endless ‘what should we do’ talks) is over, she will begin to have as many ’doubts’ about splitting up as she had about the relationship. Finally, she will be ready to truly listen and then you can put everything you’ve learnt about better communication into practise.
