“I love you… but I’m not in love with you.”
If your spouse dropped this bomb on you recently, you’re probably spiralling.
You’re wondering, “How can you love someone but not want to be with them?”
Here’s the truth: This isn’t the end of your marriage. It’s not a character flaw. It’s simply a loss of polarity.
I’m going to explain exactly why this happens—and give you three specific steps to flip the switch, create mystery, and get them legitimately “in love” with you again.
What It Means
So, let’s start by decoding this phrase: “I love you, but I’m not in love with you.”
When your husband or wife says this, the first thing you need to understand is that they’re usually being honest.
They aren’t lying to let you down easy. They really do love you. They care about your well-being. They probably still think you’re a great parent, a reliable partner, and a good person. You share a history. You have a deep, comfortable bond.
But… that bond has become safe. It’s become predictable. Basically, you’ve become roommates.
Psychologists often refer to this as “Companionate Love.” It’s warm, it’s fuzzy, and it’s stable.
But it lacks the danger, the excitement, the mystery, and the sexual polarity that makes someone feel “in love.”
You see, we often mistake “love” for a single emotion, but in a marriage, there are two distinct engines that keep the car moving. One engine is attachment—that’s the safety, the comfort, the friendship. That’s the “I love you” part.
The other engine is desire. That’s the “in love” part. And here’s the brutal truth about desire: Desire can’t exist without space.
Desire is the feeling of wanting something that you don’t fully have. It thrives on a little bit of uncertainty. It thrives on the unknown.
When you’ve been married for a while, and you settle into that comfortable routine where you know exactly what your spouse is thinking, you know exactly what they’re going to do on a Tuesday night, and you’re always available to them… the “unknown” disappears.
The gap between you closes. And when there’s no gap, there’s no spark.
So, usually, when the “in love” feeling fades, it’s because the polarity in the relationship has died.
You’ve become too available, too predictable, or perhaps you’ve just let the romance slide for too long and allowed yourself to become a “sure thing.”
But, just because that feeling is gone right now, doesn’t mean it’s gone forever. Attraction isn’t a static thing. It’s a light switch.
You can flip the switch back on… but you have to stop doing the things that turn it off.
This brings me to the first major phase of your recovery plan.
Step One: Stop Trying To “Logic” Them Back To Love
This is the single most common mistake I see my clients make. When we hear our spouse is pulling away, or when they drop that “I’m not in love with you” bomb, our survival instinct kicks in. We panic.
We feel the ground crumbling beneath us, so we try to grab onto something solid. We try to grab onto logic.
We start acting like lawyers in a courtroom. We try to present evidence to the jury.
You might find yourself saying things like:
- But look at our history, we’ve been through so much together!
- Think about the kids, do you want to break up this family?
- We promised for better or for worse, remember?
You’re trying to negotiate desire. You’re trying to debate their feelings. And folks, listen to me closely: You can’t negotiate genuine desire.
Attraction isn’t a choice. It’s a biological reaction. Your spouse can’t “decide” to be in love with you any more than they can decide to be hungry or decide to be tired. They either feel it, or they don’t.
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When you try to argue them out of their feelings, two terrible things happen.
First, you validate their decision to pull away. When you beg, plead, and present logical arguments, you look weak. You look fearful. You look like you don’t believe you’re a prize worth fighting for. And nothing kills attraction faster than insecurity.
Second, you create pressure. Your spouse is already feeling guilty. They probably feel terrible about hurting you.
When you list all the reasons they “should” stay, you’re just piling guilt on top of their lack of attraction.
And when someone feels pressured and guilty, what do they do? They run away. They withdraw further to escape that pressure.
So, if your spouse feels zero spark for you right now, crying, begging, or presenting a logical argument for why they should love you is actually going to make things worse.
It makes you look needy and pitiful. And pity is the absolute enemy of desire.
You don’t want your spouse to stay with you out of pity. You want them to stay with you out of passion.
So, effective immediately, you need to accept their feelings. This sounds counter-intuitive, I know. You want to fight for the marriage. But right now, the way to fight is to surrender the argument.
Don’t argue with them. When they say they aren’t in love with you, look them in the eye and say something calmly like, “I understand you feel that way right now. It’s hard to hear, but I appreciate your honesty.”
And then… drop it. Walk away. Go do something else.
This creates an immediate pattern interrupt. They’re expecting you to beg. They’re expecting a three-hour emotional conversation.
When you don’t give them that reaction, they’re suddenly thrown off balance. They start wondering, “Wait, why isn’t he falling apart?” or “Why isn’t she chasing me?”
That confusion is the first tiny seed of mystery.
Step Two: Create Scarcity
I mentioned earlier that desire needs space. It needs oxygen. If you’re always there, always available, always checking in, and always asking “what’s wrong?”… you’re suffocating any chance for a spark to grow.
There’s a concept in relationship psychology called the Pursuer-Distancer Dynamic. Right now, you’re likely the Pursuer. You’re anxious. You’re leaning in. You’re trying to fix things.
Your spouse is the Distancer. The more you step forward, the more they step back to maintain the distance they feel they need. If you chase them, they’ll run. It’s simple physics.
To fix this, you have to stop chasing. You have to stand still, or even take a step back yourself.
If your spouse says they aren’t “in love” with you, they’re likely feeling smothered or bored. You need to pull back your energy. You need to focus entirely on your own life.
This means you stop initiating all the contact. You stop sending those “thinking of you” texts in the middle of the day. You stop asking for reassurance. You stop hovering around them in the kitchen hoping for a crumb of affection.
Instead, you get busy. You get genuinely busy. Go to the gym and actually work out. Pick up a new hobby that gets you out of the house. Reconnect with old friends you haven’t seen in years.
You need to remind your spouse—and remind yourself—that you’re an independent, high-value person who doesn’t need them to survive.
This is terrifying for a lot of my clients. They tell me, Brad, if I pull back, won’t we just drift further apart? Won’t they forget about me?
The answer is no. They won’t forget about you. They live with you. Or they’re married to you.
What’ll happen is that for the first time in a long time, they’ll have the chance to miss you. You can’t miss someone who’s always standing right in front of your face.
When they see you thriving on your own, when they realize you aren’t sitting by the phone waiting for them to validate you, that’s when curiosity returns.
They’ll come home and you won’t be there, and they’ll wonder, “Where is he?” “Who is she with?” “Why do they seem so happy without me?”
That curiosity is the first step toward falling back in love. It shifts the power dynamic from you being the “beggar” to you being the “prize.”
Now, finding the balance between “giving them space” and “ignoring them” can be tricky.
You don’t want to be cold or mean. You just want to be distant and happy. If you pull away too hard and act angry, it backfires. If you don’t pull away enough, you look needy.
Step Three: Break the Pattern.
The “Roommate Syndrome” is built on routine. It’s built on boredom.
You come home, you talk about the logistics of the day, you talk about the kids, you watch Netflix, you go to sleep. Repeat. Day after day. Year after year.
That routine is the grave where your sex life and your romantic connection have gone to die.
If you want your spouse to see you differently, you have to act differently. You have to shock their system a little bit.
I don’t mean grand romantic gestures. Please, don’t go out and buy 100 roses or book a surprise vacation to Paris. That falls under “trying too hard” and it’ll look like bribery.
I mean changing your vibe. I mean changing the way you show up in the world.
Think about the version of you that your spouse fell in love with ten or twenty years ago.
Were you passive? Were you boring? Were you clingy? Probably not. You were probably confident, maybe a little bit cocky, maybe a little bit mysterious. You had your own life going on.
Over the years, you’ve likely become “agreeable” to keep the peace. You’ve become “safe.”
So, you need to disrupt the image your spouse has of you in their head.
If you’re usually the one who pursues and nags? Stop. Be cool. Be unbothered. If you’ve let yourself go physically? This is a wake-up call. Join a gym, change your diet, get a haircut, update your wardrobe.
When you look better, you feel better, and your spouse will notice. Visual attraction matters. If you’re always agreeable and passive? Have an opinion. Stand your ground on something small. Don’t be a doormat.
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There’s nothing less sexy than a partner who agrees with everything just to avoid conflict. A little bit of friction creates heat.
You want to become somewhat unpredictable. When your spouse can no longer predict exactly what you’re going to say or do, they’re forced to pay attention to you again.
They have to take their eyes off their phone and look at you. And that attention is where the spark of attraction comes from.
I also want to touch on one more crucial element here, which is the timeline.
You need to be patient. You can’t fix years of eroded attraction in a weekend.
If you start doing these things—stopping the logic, creating scarcity, breaking the pattern—you might not see a result in day one or day two. In fact, your spouse might test you.
They might act cold to see if you crumble. They might try to start a fight to see if you’ll beg.
You’ve got to hold the line. You have to be consistent.
Re-attracting a spouse who’s “fallen out of love” is a slow burn. It’s not an explosion.
It starts with them noticing you again. Then it moves to them being curious about you again. Then they might start initiating small texts or conversations. Then, eventually, the physical touch returns.
If you rush it—if you try to jump from “roommates” to “lovers” in one night—you’ll spook them and reset the clock. Let them come to you.
Let them bridge the gap.
Look, hearing “I love you but I’m not in love with you” is painful. I know it hurts. It attacks your ego and your heart simultaneously.
But remember: Feelings are fluid. They change like the weather. Just because the spark is dim right now doesn’t mean the fire is out. The fact that they’re still there, talking to you, means there’s still an attachment.
If you stop the begging, if you create some mystery, and if you focus on becoming the best, most confident version of yourself, you can make your spouse look at you with those fresh, hungry eyes again. You can remind them why they fell for you in the first place.
It takes time, and it takes discipline. It requires you to control your own anxiety. But you can do this. Thousands of my students have done it before you.
