You may wonder at times if your partner has fallen out of love with you, or, just doesn’t feel as strongly about you as they once did.
You may remember back to those times when your partner brought flowers, or made you dinners that featured all of your favorite foods, or always remembered your anniversary.
Then, it seems those nice big gestures fell by the wayside. And without them, you feel simply… unloved.
If you doubt your partner’s love for you, it may be a matter of missing the signs and signals that they do—very much—still love you. In this blog, I’ll tell you how to erase that doubt. Read on…
50 Shades of Love
A lot of couples fall into an easy trap: they think that if their partner doesn’t treat them exactly the way they did while they were first dating, their partner’s feelings for them must have evaporated. The sizzle has cooled off and now they take you for granted.
For all you know, they may be on the prowl for someone new to replace you.
This is what doubt does: it begins to play with your head. You may have a very rigid concept of what “love” looks like, and that concept may resemble something out of a Hallmark card.
Movies and marketing have sold us an idea of what live looks like. You may even blame Disney. If our partner isn’t putting a glass slipper on our foot or waltzing us around a costume ball or showering us with rose petals, we think… “This person doesn’t love me!”
And in the early days of dating, our efforts to woo the heart of each other may very well look like a stage set. There may be dinners out, dancing, flowers arriving each week, chocolates, tickets to football games… who wants that magic to end?
However, and this is something that your grandparents most likely understood a lot better, as love matures and deepens, it doesn’t always retain those frilly characteristics. At some point, life demands may take over, and your focus may be drawn to just keeping the roof over your head.
This doesn’t mean couples should allow romance to die, but understand that romance is one thing, and love is another. They work great in tandem, but just because you don’t see all the hallmarks of romance—those roses and chocolates—doesn’t mean your partner has fallen out of love with you.
Love has many shades to it… it’s not just red-hot and sizzling.
So, if you still have doubt that your partner loves you, here’s a clue to look for…
Evidence of Your Partner’s Love for You
If your partner no longer sends you a dozen roses, it doesn’t mean they no longer love you. But if you have doubts about their love, here is the number one way to set your mind at ease:
Uncovering Evidence of Partner’s Love: Look for Acts of Love
Does your partner clean snow off of your car in the winter? Or change the oil for you? Does your partner bring you your favorite takeout on Friday nights? Or make you soup when you’re feeling sick?
Because we get caught up looking for the big picture, you know—that Disney stage set—we may miss out on seeing the little picture… that’s all of those things, those tiny moments, which make up life. And, your partner may be doing little things that make your life more pleasant, or easier, and you have been missing them because you were focused on the big acts.
Often, we take for granted those acts of kindness our partner may do for us. We are so used to them that we no longer see them for what they are: acts of love.
The way to gauge these acts is to ask yourself, “Does my partner do this for everyone?”
Your partner knows you more intimately than probably most other people in your life. They remember that you like egg drop soup instead of chicken noodle when you aren’t feeling well. They know to tell the waiter to hold the salt on your meal, or to top off your gas tank before the week begins.
They know the little things about you, and they take time to make sure those little things are fulfilled in some way, pitching in to ease some of your burden.
So, your task this week is to look for—and write down—any act of love you catch your partner doing.
As your list grows, your doubt should diminish.
My best to you in discovering your partner’s acts of love.
Do you doubt your partner’s love for you?
Do you have a preconceived idea of what that love should look like?
Is it possible you’ve been missing acts of love?
Please share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.