If you have lost your feelings for your partner then this means you’ve probably spent sometime feeling that your partner doesn’t understand you.
You may feel that you’ve told them you are unhappy, but they have done nothing about it and so now you think they don’t care.
Or maybe you think they do care, but whatever they do does nothing for you now.
Maybe all you feel is resentment, and you have lost respect for them.
It’s very painful to think your partner doesn’t care about how you feel and so the natural reaction is to try to get though to them. If that doesn’t work then pulling away to protect yourself will feel like the most natural thing to do.
After all, why would you want to keep getting upset about someone who seems not to care? So, getting strong and numbing your feelings for your partner would make total sense.
These are totally normal behaviours for people who fear being hurt, and so they do what they can to protect themselves from even more pain.
The challenge they face is this. When someone feels they have to protect themselves in their relationship, a few things will happen to them without them knowing.
They start to behave in ways that contradict what they say is important.
Whenever we act in conflict with our true essence, this actually helps us to feel more pain. This additional pain causes us to want to block out more of our feelings.
So, a totally lovely person who claims to value trust, integrity and love can actually have an affair.
Now their behaviors don’t match what they say is important. You might hear people in this place communicate they don’t like who they have become. So now they feel even worse and they blame their partner resulting in them attaching even more pain to their partner. This helps them feel they have to leave their relationship to feel good again.
So what you will notice is a person in this place who’s attached massive pain to their partner will have not only changed their behaviors, but also their focus too.
This is critical to understand because when we change our focus, we also automatically change our feelings. So if we believe, as most people do in this place, that their partner doesn’t care, then the focus will be on removing love so they don’t feel exposed. Do this for long enough, and that quest will be achieved.
In summary
The person has stacked enough proof their partner doesn’t care, so they protect themselves from more pain through numbing their feelings. This results in them changing behaviors with their partner which compounds the pain because now they have become someone they are not. (If both people are doing this, it’s what ends up being the case; it’s very destructive.)
This change of identity combined with a history that equals pain helps the person to totally change their focus.
This new focus will totally change how they feel about their partner so they can start to communicate word like, I love you, but I’m not in love with you. I feel detached from you. It’s to late for me, what I felt for you has now gone.
All of these feeling are true for this person, this person does feel dead emotionally with their partner, but what they are not aware of is they are the ones that created their own emotional shutdown. They shutdown in reaction to their translation of their partners behaviors.
So the big questions are…
- Has the person in emotional shutdown got it right?
- Can their feelings of love come back?
Has the person in emotional shutdown got it right?
Now, of course, if someone is actively trying to hurt you on purpose, then leaving is really the best choice. I find that most couples are just living in reaction to their own fears, and they cause pain to each other because they are scared, not because they want to actually hurt their partner.
Most couples just don’t understand each other. They struggle to communicate, they make assumptions about what their partner has said or felt. In fear they typically enter into conflict, but because they don’t understand each other their resentments just get worse.
Each time they fight they die bit-by-bit until there’s no point in fighting anymore, respect and trust is now lost and full detachment is in place.
So we know the person that has detached emotionally is actually trying to keep themselves safe. What if their coping mechanism is about to destroy a perfectly good relationship and the reason they are both in so much trouble is simply they haven’t understood each other.
Most couples are translating each other incorrectly and this really is the route to many of their problems.
So, if a person has fallen out of love, can it come back?
The simple answer is yes of course. They are the creators of their feelings. When a couples learns how to understand how to build a relationship that has a secure foundation this will rebuild the trust that’s lost. This will free them to spark their passion again. When they commit to meeting each others critical needs whilst committing to being true to who they really are, then…
…everything can change. Understanding, focus, feelings.
The biggest lesson anyone can learn is this. Your feelings are created by you, this means you are the creator and this means your in control and so you can change your feeling them once you know how.
So if you do feel something don’t just assume it’s true, become curious and discover the truth, because it’s the truth that will really keep you safe.
Many couples come in to my session with a total lack of understanding of each other and themselves. They don’t know how to create a successful relationship, they don’t know what they really need, or how to communicate it, and they assume their partner will just understand them and blames them if they don’t.
- For the women out there, the man in your life won’t understand you because he has never been female, so you have to help him understand in a way he can connect to.
- For the men she does operate with your version of logic, hers is logical but it’s just different to yours. Your job is learn about her.
Men and women are so very different and so leaving a relationship without learning why you’re in trouble just means you could just repeat the same mistakes until you see a pattern in yourself wasting years of your life.
Life is to short to not master the one part of your life which is most important to us humans. Don’t guess, don’t cross your fingers that you know best, especially if you have children.
Find out the truth for you, because that’s where your true security sits and once you have that, then you can be free to live your adventure.
What to know more? Get in touch now.
Harley Street Expert | Founder & High Performance Coach
With two decades of experience helping couples out of crisis, Stephen the founder of The Marriage Breakthrough Program, uses his proven system for rescuing and rebuilding relationships on the edge of divorce. A trusted advisor to CEOs, entrepreneurs, and industry leaders globally, his work blends emotional intelligence with strategic clarity. Known for navigating highly complex relationship challenges, Stephen helps individuals and couples find clarity and direction when everything is at stake.
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