Dear Neil: I would like to know whether my husband is having a midlife crisis. He keeps saying he loves me but is not in love with me anymore, and that I am not the person he married. Can you help? Lost in Sacramento Dear Lost: It sounds like your husband is saying he no […]
There are so many ways of detaching and disengaging in a relationship that we’re not always conscious of when we are doing it. Here is a list of some of the most common ways people disconnect from each other: Making your intimate partner a lower priority in your life. If you do this, your partner […]
Dear Neil: My husband spends most of his free time in front of the TV, and he hates it when I try to talk with him while he is watching something. I earn more money than he does, and I have a passion for salsa dancing. Although my husband knows how to salsa, he doesn’t […]
Dear Neil: I’ve been married for 37 years. My husband no longer notices me. For Christmas, he bought me a book I’d already read, the same calendar I’d already purchased and a lovely pair of earrings. I had told him about the book and calendar when I read and bought them. Last evening, I put on […]
Dear Neil: I recently broke up with my boyfriend of two months, and I’m having a very hard time moving on. About a month into our relationship, while he was drunk, he told me that he was paranoid about getting close to me because he was afraid I would break up with him. During our […]
Dear Neil: Me and my partner have been a couple for 3 years. In that time he has left me and come back eight different times. He came back to me 2 months ago, telling me he loved me and that he really wanted to make our relationship work. Things were going very well, and […]
Dear Neil: Before marrying my husband, I was concerned with his inability to communicate his feelings, but I hoped that once he left his family he would come out of his shell. After four years of marriage, I found myself lonely and was left to my own devices every weekend because he enjoyed restoring classic […]
Dear Neil: I read your recent article about willful blindness, and it brings up an issue I am grappling with in my marriage. I have expectations which are not being met, and I’ve been ignoring a variety of behaviors. My husband and I have virtually no intimacy whatsoever. Other than eating together and watching TV […]
Dear Neil: My husband and I have been together for 19 years. The last ten have been horrible. I was sad, dysfunctional and felt lost, unloved and unworthy. Now my husband has had enough, has lost his passion for me, met someone else (three weeks ago) and is instigating separation proceedings. I have done some […]
Note: This is the first of a two-part series. Click here for part two We all know that it feels more intimate to be connected to the person (or people) we care about and love. Much less understood is how a couple who starts out with lots of love, erotic energy and hope—lose their close […]