can u hold on 2 ur relationship even though you don't love your partner anymore?

I have been there. My husband cheated on me when I was pregnant with our first daughter and it devastated me. I was emotionally numb and/or hateful towards him. I do believe though that marriage is not something to be taken lightly and I talked to my pastor, we did some counseling and then I got the advice that saved my marriage. A good friend and a good christian told me that it doesn't matter if we don't love them anymore. We made a committment to God that we need to honor no matter what. That if I didn't feel love for him I needed to act like I did and eventually my heart would catch up. It works. It's called 'act your way into feeling'. It's kind of like, tricking your heart. So I pretended that I was in love with him and that I forgave him and not to much later, maybe a month or so, I actually started to feel love for him again. That was 6 years ago and we are still good. I still use that if I feel yucky towards him. Marriage and love are not about the feelings. They are about committment. Marriage is a huge committment and love is not about feeling gushy and lovey. It is about being there for someone nomatter how you feel for them at the moment. Love is about holding it together through the unthinkable times. It is not always pleasant, it is not always fun, it is not always the best feeling. When you truely love someone, you can make yourself get through the bad times. Sometimes things happen and we don't feel like making it work anymore. It seems like more of a hassle than what it's worth. But it is imparative that we give it all we have and continue to fight otherwise, we will never be truely satisfied with ourselves or with anyone else.

I think I would just hold on. To me love is not everything. Besides love we need money, shelter, food and clothing. If I have to live without love but I get all other things, I should consider myself to be lucky because I still have someone who cares to give me all the necessities in life. With my husband now, I can feel our love is not like before. Now we are not in love anymore, but we still love each other. I think our love now is like the burning coal which do not have real fire, only the coals are burning. But I believe this type of love can still grow just like the fire in the coal. If we add woods to it, new flames will appear. The same if we blow it, fire will appear. To me, the fire represents the love we have. As long as we have the hidden love in ourselves, I will continue my relationship with my husband. I know I still love him, and he still loves me too.

Well it really is hard to answer your question. Firstly, I am not into your situation right now and is hard for me to relate my situation. But here is my answer to it. First we should know what is the reason why we fell out of love if its just because of monotony of being together perhaps you need to divert into something that will excite your life. If there is some serious issues on money, I think that is so shallow reason to just fall out of love, Money should never be an issue over marriage although it is an important part of marriage but the lack of it is not a ground to lost your love for him/her. If there is some extra marital problems that may be serious enough to really lose your trust and love but if it can be talked and reconciled why not try it than just give up on it. There are many ways to determine if your marriage is working or not. Try Marriage counseling or if your belong to a religious sect they might be able to intervene as counselors and maybe they might be able to enlighten you and your partner if you still would be able to work it out for the best.

I can't think of a reason that you would want to do that. Not only would that be miserable for you, but leading the other person on to think that you feel one way while you feel another way. I would communicate my true feelings to that person, call it off, wish them the best and move on with life.

I dont think it would be a good idea to do so. I think it's bad for the both of you. I went through the same thing. My feelings for my then-boyfriend did a complete 180.I ended up being miserable because I was forcing myself to act like i loved him. But then i realize as much as i dont want to hurt his feelings, I am preventing him from finding someone who can give him the true love that he's looking for. So I had to break it off. And now we are both doing great

Honestly, I dont even know why you have to do that. You only are not fooling yourself but your partner as well. I think it would just be fair to your partner that you be honest and tell straight to the face that you dont love your partner anymore. Just be honest.

I've only had one relationship and that is what I'm still sticking to up to this day. But if I'll ever find myself in that situation, I think the best thing to do is talk to my partner about how I really feel. After talking it would be easier to decide whether to try to make things work or just let each other go. I always think that communication is the best way to resolve problems and issues.

cathya, Fixidity. Too much of that element fuels the inability to be adaptable and too much endurance to burn. That's probably one of the top few gross misconception people often have about Love - they reason to themselves that if they remain unchanged till the very end, it probably suggested that their Love is the ultimate truth. However, there's a clause in this belief; it's only when Love is mutual. In all other cases, it's almost karmic - like a devil lurking behind the stone idol. And the latter is simply narcissistic. Before people begin to congregate in this topic and start preaching perseverence in being narcissistic in Love, allow me to throw a question (as well as to the floor): Why do you even think that your brand of Love is the greatest of all and that he/she has no one else but you to accept this lifetime? In short: Who are you? The truth is that you love yourself the most; insofar you don't exactly consider the other person's growth and perspective as much as your own indulgence in possessing the other person, like some insatiable hunger. You are feeling so much pain and misery is because of your refusal to understand that your 'perceived Love' is based on a superficial belief of harbouring a non-existing relationship. It amazed me at how you could felt so anguish about the failure of your relationship, yet the crisis has taught you absolutely nothing beneficial to implement into your current relationship, other than this senseless pinning for a lost cause. You ought to keep the memory of your failure to strive towards a brighter future in all aspect of Love and not dwell so much in your own intense emotions till it misled you into this whirlpool of depression and a confused state of mind. If you cannot handle it, then avoid putting yourself in such a predicament. Learn to release yourself from this emotional bondage and live a free person. You can only move if you enlighten yourself the reason to move. And the reason to move cannot come from others - it has to be from within. Cheers.

Sometimes relationships change with time and need. Things do not always remain the same. Change is inevidable and healthy. It is nice to come back to a relationship and find that you are still friends no matter what transpired before.