I don't feel anything any more. Is the love gone?

For most couples, it isn’t love that’s gone, but being in love, and those are two different things. Being in love is a state of the first few years, and it fades for almost everyone. What comes after feels different: calmer, less noticeable, and for many people, at first, like a loss.

That doesn’t mean everything is fine between you. It only means that the absence of being in love isn’t proof.

What happens in the first few years

Being in love is a state of emergency, and a pretty exhausting one. It focuses all your attention on one person, largely blocks out their weaknesses and creates the feeling that everything is easy.

This state doesn’t last. It can’t last, because nobody could live like that for decades.

What replaces it isn’t a weaker version, but something else: familiarity, reliability, the ability to calm each other down. Taken together, that is worth more, and it feels like much less.

Hence the common sentence: “I love him, but I’m not in love any more.” Usually, this sentence doesn’t describe a crisis, but a long relationship.

The difference between calm and empty

This is the distinction that matters, and it’s fairly easy to make.

Calm means:

• You’re glad when he comes home in the evening, even without excitement.
• You tell him about things that happened because you want to share them with him.
• There’s physical contact in everyday life, even small gestures.
• You laugh at the same things.
• When you imagine him no longer being there, it hurts.

Empty means:

• You don’t care when he comes home.
• You don’t tell him anything any more, because it isn’t worth it.
• Touch has fallen away and nobody has noticed.
• You feel relief when he’s gone.
• When you imagine him no longer being there, what you mainly feel is peace.

If you find yourself nodding more at the first list, your relationship isn’t cold. It’s quiet. That’s something different.

What’s behind it when it feels empty

In my work, it’s almost always the same three reasons, and none of them means the love is gone.

Exhaustion. This is the most common one. Small children, two jobs, a sick parent. Feelings need capacity, and if you have none, you feel little. From the inside it looks like the end of love, and most of the time it’s tiredness.

Things left unsaid. When things have been swallowed for years, a layer builds up between you. It doesn’t only block anger, it blocks everything. Feelings can’t be switched off one at a time.

Nothing but organisation. Couples whose entire communication consists of arrangements feel like strangers to each other. Not because they talk too little, but because they only talk about tasks.

What actually helps

Not a weekend for two. That’s the advice everyone gives, and it rarely works, because two exhausted people in a hotel are still two exhausted people.

What helps is smaller and more regular.

First, interest in each other again. Before you do something together, ask each other something again and listen to what comes back. Genuine interest in what is on the other person’s mind right now. That comes before the evening together, not after it.

A question that works for this:

“What was on your mind this week that had nothing to do with us?”

Twenty minutes in which nothing organisational is discussed. No appointments, no shopping, no arrangements. That’s harder than it sounds, and that’s exactly why it works.

Noticing the small gestures again. He mentions something trivial. She points at something outside the window. These are offers, and what sets couples apart isn’t how many of them come, but how often they’re responded to. In long relationships, these moments get lost, because both people are busy with something else on the side.

Doing something new together. Not romantic, but unfamiliar. Something at which you’re both a little clumsy. New shared experiences create more closeness than repeating things from the past.

Saying what has gone unsaid. If there’s a layer between you, no day trip will help. Then what lies underneath has to be cleared up.

When emptiness is a warning sign after all

There are cases in which the feeling is right.

When neither of you tries anything any more. When there’s contempt in the tone, meaning not anger, but disdain. When you no longer believe each other capable of change. When you have no shared picture of the next few years.

These are the signs that really mean something, and they have nothing to do with being in love.

What I’d like you to take away

There’s one expectation that puts more strain on many relationships than any argument: that you should permanently feel the way you did at the beginning.

This expectation makes long relationships look bad, because they’re measured against something that only happens once.

The better question isn’t whether you’re still in love. It’s this: in the last few weeks, have you shared something with each other that had nothing to do with organisation?

If not, start there. Not with a weekend, but with a question.