Today we are going to hear from Kathy whose husband can’t seem to bring him self to find a kind word for her.  When things go south in their marriage, he resorts to name calling and assertions that he doesn’t love her and she doesn’t deserve him.

Do ever find yourself in a situation in which your husband acts in a certain way to make your feel unloved?

Does he act in a way that make you feel he doesn’t care to please you?

Is he ever so brazen or vindictive to tell you he doesn’t want you or feel for you in the same way?

sad times in marriage

A bit later in this article I am going to list out the 10 signs or things your husband might do or say that point to the possibility that his love for you is eroding, maybe even disappearing.

Sometimes these signs of dying love come in the form of constant put downs and cheap shots and other behavior that makes you feel he has nothing but disdain for you.

In some of the worse cases I have seen, it can be like he holds contempt for you and can barely stand  being around you.

Or he may accuse you of holding him back from doing and experiencing other things.  Taken all together, it can feel like he wants to wipe clean away all of the good times the two of you use to enjoy together.

I hear that a lot from some clients about husbands that cut them down in ways to make them feel like the marriage is headed for a wreck.

Sometimes the behavior from the husband is more subtle, but nevertheless piercing in the pain it can cause. For example,  “My husband just told me that his feelings for me have changed and he does care about me like he use to?

Or, “Chris, you won’t believe what husband said about me.  He thinks our love has grown old and it’s harder for him to care about me as he should.  I think it is big cop-out and something else is going on

Are you in a marriage where you husband can’t bring himself to simply tell you he loves you or worse, tells you the opposite….in other words he says he never loved you or has stopped loving you?

Perhaps the signs of his love simply just vanishing over time are to be believed.  What people say and do sometimes are backed by real feeling.

What If He Really Hates Me?

Just maybe your husband’s heart is not in the marriage because he has his heart somewhere else.

But let’s not move too fast.

I have seen plenty of cases where men try to convince themselves and their wife as well, that they don’t love them anymore.  A man can bend himself into an emotional pretzel trying to talk himself out of love.

I see this often when a guy is having an affair and is trying to justify his actions or feelings, not understanding either very well.  I have seen lot of cases of a husband getting caught up in an emotional and physical love affair with another woman and at the same time trying to convince himself that he must not be in love with his wife anymore.

But as it turns out, love is not really as fickle as some people try to make it.  People don’t just fall in and out of love lickety-split.

That sure doesn’t stop a husband from pulling away from his wife.  He can do it in all sorts of ways.

And it need not be an affair that causes your husband to act this way.  A man can withdraw his love or act like he doesn’t care for lots of different reasons.

Are You Married To a Cruel Husband Who Always Puts You Second

can your man get passed your past

Honey, I just don’t want you anymore. I am not the same person.  We have grown apart.  I need to do the things I want to do and you get in my way.  The love between us is just not the same.  You are like a sister to me”, her husband exclaimed.

That sounds cruel doesn’t it?  It sound like a cruel thing for a husband to say because it is.  A husband and wife should never talk that way to each other.

The whole notion that your husband is some kind of new person or has changed in some kind of meaningful way therefore you are not worthy of him is often a crock of bull.

Men or women who talk that way are most often just putting themselves first and putting their spouse second.

Talking this way to your spouse is not simply a bad thing to do because it is poor manners (which it is), but because it is cruel and destructive to the relationship.

When men often put themselves ahead of their wives’ needs or choose to constantly criticize their wife, they are not only showing a warped sense of love, but are likely exhibiting  anarchistic tendencies.

It seems some men can’t throttle back their anger or resentment and choose to reach deep into their bag of ugly wife tricks to try to emotionally injure their spouse.  It may not happen to some of you out there.  But I hear it a lot.

But do you know what I also hear happens a lot?

These same guys who are cutting their wife down in one moment, will try to quickly make up if they think it suits them.  Hence you get the old “back and forth” kind of husband who has a loose relationship with love.

I Can’t Stand This Any More

Now let’s get something straight here right off the bat!  I am not talking about the majority of husbands out there.

Most men understand the importance of expressing love to their wives and not withholding expressions of affection.  They are not mean or vindictive.

some guys are good

This article is aimed at those wives who suffer the pain of wondering if they will ever be loved in the way they deserve.  It is for those who are involved with a man who can’t fight fair and chooses to shoot low.  It is for those ladies who feel unloved, under appreciated, and unsupported.

It is for those women whose husbands some act in such a horrible, hateful way, they are left with the gloomy question of whether it’s still worth trying any more.

So let’s hear and learn from Kathy.  Here is her story and what she chose to do when her husband starting withdrawing from her, withholding intimacy, and failing work on the marriage.

What is wrong with my husband?  He gets mad at me and to hurt me he deliberately withholds his affection.  I see it in his eyes and the way he avoids me.  It is like no fight can be so small that he won’t try to get even with me.

Sometimes I think the truth is my husband has never been in love with me like I thought.  I am not even sure if I want to be married to him.  Honestly, the marriage is a mess.  Like Chris says, we make withdrawals from our trust in each other all the time.  And he is not depositing anything good into our marriage bank.

I use to think that if my husband didn’t care for me anymore, what would I do.  I would have these panic thoughts.  The fear of my husband not loving me or him deciding that I was not enough would royally screw me up.  It would utterly just disable me for days. 

Now I think differently about these things. I realized that he was never going to get to that place where I needed him to be.  I realized my husband was not going to be the loving and caring kind of guy I dreamed he might be or that I could turn him into.  So, yes, I deluded myself for a long time.  6 years to be exact. 

My husband and I went through all those stupid phases.  Once I was the love of his life.  He couldn’t have enough of me.  Everything he did was passionate and romantic, even over the top.  Of course, I soaked it all up thinking that everything he said was 100% true.

It was like crazy good.  Sex was hot and he just couldn’t stop telling me how beautiful I was.  While even those early good days had some nasty bad patches, we got through them fast and my husband would make it up and do something wild and exciting for me.

Part of me knew I was living on the edge of  his unbridled passion.  He was just that way and I went with it.  I always figured that our marriage would flatten out and we would have to work on things.  But I didn’t see this coming. I didn’t expect my husband would turn away from in all the important ways.

The Turning Point For Our Love

when things changed in our life

I mean we had problems. 

A couple of years ago, I had an affair and he found out about later.  It was stupid decision by me.  I happened after we had a particularly big blowup.  I stormed out of the relationship for a few days and slept with an ex.  But it was really short-term and I knew immediately it was wrong and I was jeopardizing my marriage.  It took him a few months to find out, but that is another story.

Maybe that is what the trigger that go us to where we are now.  I don’t know for sure.  He had a revenge affair on me when he found out about mine. Admittedly, I didn’t handle that well.  He was wrong, just as I had make a bad mistake.  But I had never been cheated on before and we almost lost the marriage a few years back because of this incident.

Perhaps neither of us really forgave the other.  With had some sexual problems during that time as well.  He had some difficult with following through on sex with me.  It would upset him and he would then blame me and then new fights would emerge, followed by us both dredging up the past.

So our relationship has been rocking along like this for a while.

But just about one year ago, his enthusiasm for me started to really flatten out.  There were some issues with work and our marriage was going through these ups and downs and he was getting medicated for mild depression.  Then out of the blue he started telling me that we don’t work as a couple anymore.  I pressed him for whether he was cheating on me again.  He denied and if he is, he’s covering his tracks pretty good.

Part of what he was saying was true and I knew we both did things that negatively contributed  to trust and intimacy issues, but I would get upset with him because he just seemed to not want to try.  It was like he was looking for ways to bail out of our marriage and I wasn’t ready for that.

My husband would say stuff like he loves me, but he is not in love with me.  I mean really, what the crap does that mean?  How can he be so sure that he is no longer in love with me.   I would tell him he was being over dramatic and that he is letting his passions run amok.  I would tell him that he was trying to project on to our marriage like we were in some kind of movie where the lovers were doomed.

We would argue, then he would say stuff like he knows all the signs of when a husband truly regrets having married his wife and that he fits them to a tee.

So many stupid things  come from his mouth.  He reads everything and falls for stuff I think. 

We Damaged Our Relationship When We Forgot to Care For Each Other

forgetting to care for each other

Then we would take turns blaming each other. It was like neither of us care that we were damaging our marriage.  My husband would blame me for ruining his life.  I would blame him for screwing up mine.  And we would just keep saying hurtful things to each other.

I mean this didn’t happen everyday.  But I would not be exaggerating much when I tell you that I am at my wit’s end.  I am not sure if I can tolerate any more hurtful words from him.

It’s like he wants our marriage to fail and doesn’t want to work at making it better.  Almost like a marriage death wish.

I even told him that.  I said, ‘you are trying to screw us’ aren’t you?  

Now my husband  says stuff like let’s just put the marriage out of the misery.  I know what he is doing.  He wants to break up.  And I know what I am doing.  I want to prevent the split up.  I am not ready to let it go.  Obviously he is which make me more suspicious that he has someone waiting for him on the other side of separation and divorce.

You see, I don’t believe he knows what he wants.  He keeps telling me he doesn’t love or care for me like he should.  Hearing that hurts, even though I don’t totally believe him. 

Part of me has lost respect for him.  He can also stoop way too low sometimes  Just recently, my husband told me he can’t stand to be around me and that sex with me reminds him of the affair I had.

Now I know that has been a problem for him.  I cheated and I was wrong.  But it happened years ago.  I asked him for forgiveness a long time ago and at that time, after a long while, he finally said I was forgiven.  He even wrote down in a poem and we got along for a spell after that.

But often my husband  just can’t let things go.  So what do you do when your husband of several years tells you that sometimes he can’t stand you for the things you have done and he isn’t sure if he still loves you?

It makes me sick that he turns everything into such a drama.  Just let go of it, I tell him.  He agrees, then he falls right back into his victim world.  Honestly, I think he needs therapy because some of his obsessive hangups are poisoning our marriage.

So after talking with Chris I agreed something meaningful needed to happen to completely change the direction our marriage had taken.  I chose to follow through on the very thing my husband wanted. 

He kept saying we are not working as a couple and that he doesn’t know if we will ever work as  couple again.  So I decide to give him what he wanted.  A way out.

I told him that neither of us were happy and that our marriage was a mess due to a lot of reasons.  I told him there was a cancer growing on our marriage and that was having a horrible and devastating effect.  I suggested we take a 30 day break away from each other so we can both begin the processing of healing.  

Some of the words I used in my discussion with my husband, Chris gave me, but most of what I told him came from my heart.  I was wounded.  My husband was in pain too. 

We both agreed to try talk about our relationship again in the future but not before he moved out temporarily and we both committed on improving ourselves.  Then we would meet to explore whether our marriage and all the good times we have had together was worth trying to get back.

Right now I am in the healing stage.  I am trying some new things out and while I miss the good parts of my husband, I am relieved that I am no longer in an environment where I feel bad about myself and am always feeling like I have to snap back to protect myself. – Kathy K.

 10 Signs That Your Husband May No Longer Love or Care For You in the Same Way

we are lovers no more

As you can see, Kathy is on both a personal and relationship journey.  She still has some work to do.  Both of them do.  Their marriage is very complicated and there are a number of issues they still need to work through.  So let’s wish her well and I will keep tabs on her.

Meanwhile, if you find yourself wondering if the same or similar kind of thing could be happening in your marriage with your husband, let me at least offer you the benefit of what you might want to look for that can clue you in on whether your husband is truly falling out of love with you.

Honestly, there is no perfect list of Signs that can reliably prove that your husband cares less for you and your marriage is headed for a wreck. There is no “my husband is tired of me quiz” that has 100% success rate.  Every relationship will go through some bad times.

Just because the two of you are fighting and ugly words fly back and forth doesn’t mean that it’s time to learn to say goodbye to each other.  The marriage is not necessarily all over just because you think he has stopped loving you.

Far from it.

What you think he feels and what your husband actually feels around the question of love, are not always in agreement.

Your husband may openly question his love for you, yet not even realize the depth in which his life and love is interwoven with your own.

But if you are trying to put together clues that your husband’s heart is no longer in the marriage, consider these behaviors.  If your man is behaving in many of the ways described below, then you may very well have some serious work ahead of you.

Remember, any one of these events, if taken singularly, does not point to the demise of your marriage.    Even if 3 or 4 of these kind of things are happening to you, it doesn’t predict the two of you are on your last legs.

It may simply point to areas of the relationship you both need to shore up.   Don’t forget, a marriage, particularly those that have been around for years, have a lot of built-in traction and staying power.

So let’s get on with.  What are the 10 Signs that indicate your husband thinks of your differently  –  that he doesn’t love you anymore – or that his love for you is changing, drying up.

  1. Your husband has had multiple affairs or continues to cheat on you and he knows that you know about his indiscretions but doesn’t respect you enough to stop.
  2. The man your married is now telling you that he has fallen in love with another woman and that he no longer feels the same way about your marriage.  Just like that he wipes away with that one utterance all your faith and trust.  While you still find your husband’s words unbelievable, he leaves you reeling with this revelation and makes no effort to soften the blow.
  3. Your guy seldom wants to  work on the relationship.  He seems to have little invested interest to make things better and blames you for everything that is wrong with the marriage, with little regard for his own poor behavior.
  4. You and your husband in the past use to talk about everything but for some time now, he seldom wants to talk to you or listen to you.  It is like he is somewhere else and when you complain about it, he does little to change his behavior or gets upset that you keep bringing it up.  It is as if someone has turned your husband’s passion meter completely off and there is nothing left over for you.
  5. He treats you in an abusive and cruel way, using both verbal abuse when provoked and emotional detachment when he wishes to punish you.
  6. Your husband’s emotions are all over the place.  One day he loves you and says lots of sweet and wonderful things; then the next day he can’t stand you and behaves badly and tells you he is not attracted to you.
  7. He keeps telling you that he doesn’t like you or have fun being around.  He seldom remembers important days like your anniversary or to give you a card or gift on your birthday.  Your husband avoids doing things with you and always seems to have an excuse for what he can’t be with you.
  8. He doesn’t want to kiss you or hold you and seldom does he initiate sex.  When the sex is over, he can’t get away from you soon enough.  There little in the way of cuddling or talking and sharing.  The act of sex is mechanical and over with without you being fulfilled.
  9. Your husband acts like you are not even there.  You have become the invisible woman and if he is not outright trying to avoid being around you, he hardly notices you when you are right there
  10. He doesn’t want to sleep with you.  He would rather be alone by himself than be with you in bed. He insists he can’t sleep with you for any number of reasons.  Maybe he complains about snoring or gritting of teeth or that you twist and turn too much.  Or maybe he insists that its him that is bothering you, so he is going to do you a big favor and let you have the bed all to yourself.

In our next article, I am going to talk about how you should go about making sense of these dying love signs and if indeed you should take them seriously.

In other words, is your husband going through a phase?

Is all his talk and actions a big smoke screen because he is hiding some ugly truth?

Could he have actually fallen in love with another woman?   How do you go about weighing the importance of each of these signs or hints that your husband’s love for you could be drying up?

Tune in for my next few articles on this topic to learn more about the sometimes confusing world of love and marriage and please go down to the comments an ask any questions you have or if you have a story you wish to share, I would like to hear it!

How likely is your marriage to succeed?

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13 responses to “Why Does My Husband Act Like He Doesn’t Love or Care About Me

    1. Hi Chris,
      Which articles are the follow ups to Why does my husband not act like he loves or cares about me?
      We have been separated for the past year because my husband said he loves me but he’s not in love with me. Now I think he flat out hates me and is annoyed by me.
      He filed for divorce before he wanted me out of his premarital home during Covid when my business was closed.
      It has been a rough year.
      Your words hit home and I need to hear more of them.
      He is done. I shouldn’t still be wanting to save something so disrespectful to me. But I can’t believe this is really him. Hateful, angry and obnoxious.
      Help.

  1. My wife has time for everything and everyone else except me. The kids, friends, her sister, the dog. I’ve tried explaining to her how this really bothers me yet she disregards it and somehow makes it my fault. Most times when I’m frustrated with my wife, I just keep to myself. In most cases a man’s wife is failing in the bedroom. That’s why he’s acting that way. A man understands love from his woman through sex, PERIOD.

  2. Hi, n ur article n Kathy’s story is a blue print of wat we r going thru. I’m so confused as to what to do, bc we’ve always been together thru thick or thin. I honestly don’t even realize it wen it started to all go south. Bc we been together again for good amount of years again. N I’m so over it too just our situation is that if I’m not aroud he culdn’t afford to live n sorta vice versa except my income is higher then his but still no where’s near to where I can afford to live on my own n we finally moved back in to his dad’s house n he feels as if I should just stand up n leave N he knows I can not first off I can’t afford it n second is bc I had his back the entire time we were trying to move back in to help his Dad grow old happily. So I’m asking wher m I suppose to go. We’ve built this distinction on our own n well wat I m askin is should I expect help frm him on establishing housing for myself bc I seen him thru evrythng..dis is my biggest concern. N den wen I had a chance to secure housin den he had begged me to stay .

  3. Oh …. people people. Only too late does everyone realize they should have just rented and not bought …. especially given how modern social issues, basic economics, and varied restrictions marriage inherintly cause all significantly strain life more than just ordering a pizza and being alone in peace. If not happy, get a divorce … or complain about it online and buy 59 self-help books, which are good for starting fires in the desolate cabin you’ll be living in after paying alimony and child support for years. Good luck chasing that love rainbow boys and girls. Interesting articles though ….

  4. I’d be willing to bet my house that most of these women have driven their husband’s away over time by consistently and frequently rejecting or attacking them. That’s what men do to protect ourselves. We withdraw from the source of the injury and pain.

    You want to know why? Look in the mirror (and I’m not talking about how you look).

  5. I have know many guys in my lifetime that are simply married to their job because they don’t want to come home to nagging from someone who thinks they have some special knowledge nobody else has

    I have been happily married going on 15 years. I married a real women

  6. Simple. The husband fell in love with someone else. For some crazy reason, therapists want to apply their gobbly guke to this problem, instead of coming straight out and saying it. It happens to single men and and it happens to married men too. Absolutely no difference. If clients were told the truth in the first 5 minutes, they would be out of business in a week. Wake up everyone.