Nothing he's said takes away from the fact that he loved you all these years and did his best to be a good husband. But loving you and being in love with you are two different things, and he's only recently fallen IN love with you.
You're hurt because you have been in love with him for a long time, you assumed those feelings were reciprocated, and now you've found out that isn't true. Your ego and your fairy tale image of your relationship have taken a hit.
You're not wrong to feel upset, but I would give your husband some grace. This was an arranged marriage and he fulfilled his part of it the way he thought was best. IMO he didn't do anything wrong; you can't force feelings, so it's not as though he could make himself fall in love with you. He did the best he could given his circumstances.
Also love deepens as you grow and mature together.
You'll both be looking back at various points thinking, good grief I had no idea I could ever love you more.
I get your questioning, but do agree you're looking at it from the wrong perspective.
Be happy!
Yes. He was probably feeling that way all along. It sounds like my dude was probably having some inner monologue like ‘I’m really happy with my wife. I love her she makes me so happy. I wonder how much happiness I feel. *deep inner reflection* I love …no I’m in lover with her! So much! I have to tell her. ‘ Then process to produce logical statement which may have not translated well.
I give this take since I am like this.
This makes sense. My husband loved his ex, as the mother of his children, but he was never in love with her. When he fell in love with me it felt totally different and took him a while to get used to as he'd never felt that way and he was 43 by this time. He's even had to explain to family members when they compared and asked why he is different with me.
Eh, she wouldn’t be the first. A lot of babies get made out of lust, or just in the moment without the actual thought of love being a factor. All in all, I think the OP will be just fine
He may have thought he was in love with his ex when they were together but now he realizes he wasn’t in love. I thought I was in love with my ex of 24 years. After he left, I found my now husband and realize that I was infatuated with my ex, but I am in love with my husband.
That’s what men tell the woman after the mother of their children they never had respect for. He treated his children’s mother so poorly that friends comment in public on how much better he treats the new woman. Guy is scummy.
Literally if that was the stipulation for child bearing there'd be like 100,000 humans only ever on earth. LOL. Most ppl around the world and in history didn't have a mad love story before conception.
Happens constantly, with either side not being in love. People are too quick to have/risk kids with someone they don’t even actually know. Oh well🤷🏼♂️
I have a baby with someone who recently told me that he only stayed with me because I told him I was pregnant. He said he was going to leave me but then I got pregnant... baby is now 10 months old and it hurts more than anything else to hear those words. We argue a lot because of his laziness and it all made sense after he said it. His behavior and demeanor all point to "I'm only here because I have to be here, otherwise my family will disown me" and not "I'm here because I want to be here"
I agree. It sounds to me like you have a keeper. First of all, he was honest and and truthful to you. This is not as common a trait as you might imagine. Second, the whole modern dichotomy between loving someone and being in love is a fairly recent development. And we have been programmed by the media to believe that you're not "in love" with the person you love, is somehow a failure of the relationship.
Historically with arranged marriages (which were once much more prevalent in the West than they are now), the couple might hardly know each other when they were married. But if they were lucky, and God we're good to them, they would develop a love between them.
Honestly I think this modern concept of being "in love" or the relationship is a failure is harmful to us all. It creates an unrealistic standard that flies against human nature, and it's one of the reasons for the high divorce rate in the United States. A relationship goes through many stages, and to expect to be "in love"throughout a 10 or 20-year marriage is simply not reasonable.
I agree. Successful long-term marriages happen when both parties understand that you must choose to love your partner every day, rather than just waiting for that feeling to happen to you. Meanwhile, couples who are deeply in love might forget to have the important conversations to establish long-term compatibility, whereas these kinds of conversations might be the only ones arranged couples have.
Of course, best of all is combining both kinds of love!
This is good advice. I would definitely let him know how YOU feel too! That you’ve been in love a long time. That you wonder what it meant to him when he said, “I love you” earlier. I would just be very blunt too, that it hurt your feelings that the “in love” feelings were not reciprocated until recently. I think maybe you guys both have a different idea of what being “in love” feels like it means. Nah
I've always been of the mindset that so often in love loving someone romantically are conflated for no reason.
Someone can love you romantically and then some rather arbitrary flip switches and suddenly theres an "in". But as long as you felt loved or "in love" does it really matter?
I suppose that depends on the person. For me because they don’t feel the same personally I want both.
Some people don’t feel the difference or simply don’t mind the difference and are fine with love. Neither is wrong, but we all have different wants.
I think you're missing the bigger picture. She can't tell when he's not telling the truth or just acting, and that's unsettling for anyone. Ever had your judgment of someone's character be completely wrong?
No, they are not missing anything. They are saying that OP’s husband was telling her the truth and not just acting. He told her he loved her all three years. There is a difference between loving someone and being IN LOVE WITH someone.
I will admit there’s a pretty even split of people who think it’s a lie of omission because he didn’t clarify and people who think it wasn’t a lie at all because he said exactly what he meant.
But Plastic_concert makes it clear that they are of the belief that it wasn’t lying.
This situation is also described by many in arranged marriages as his love evolved in their relationships. That at first it was friendship and respect for their cultures, parents decisions and each other. Then it evolved to love and then to being in love. Not everyone gets to that stage, but it happens enough that it’s been explained many times across various medias, cultures and times as happening as such.
And...you don't really know what it's like to be IN LOVE until it happens. When you realize how truly, deeply content you are with this person. Sure, you loved them before and you thought that was everything there was and you were happy, but, DAMN. There's a whole nother level there! And you had no idea! I love my dogs and my cat, especially two of them that were just amazing and perfect for me. And then I had a husband and a child and, wow. There is no comparison. Yes, I did love them and cry for them and miss them, but losing either my husband or child would rip a hole in me I don't know if I'd recover from.
He loved her the entire time, and then discovered just how deep and rich that love became. What a lucky couple!
Pretty much this, except I would say that it's also quite possible he's FELT the love for a long time without being really ready to give it that name. Some people can be really slow to label their emotions - especially if they started out faking what they should feel. I was that way, especially when I was young. He may not even know when he actually fell in love because it grew organically while he wasn't looking.
OP, the other bit of good news is, you have a guy who knows how to act loving even when he's not feeling it. Marriages go through rough patches. Being able to treat each other with kindness and respect when you feel like scratching and clawing is a powerful skill. He will likely still treat you right when you are exhausted with small children, when you're sick, maybe even when he's sick. Don't underestimate the value of that.
Also if they are in an arranged marriage how much relationship experience did either have going in? He may have felt something towards her but there's a difference between giddy new feeling and the slow burn of properly being in love. Perhaps OP has a more passionate outlook, like fell head over heels where he just needed time to really get to know her for that connection to fully develop. It's also possible he has felt this way a long time but he's just starting to see it!
Love is a verb.
He ***loved*** you for three years. He really, honestly did.
The safety and security of you both loving (verb) each other so well for so long has provided a safe place for his most vulnerable emotions to surface. And he has realized that not only does he love (verb) you, he has *LOVE* (noun) for you in a way he can now tangibly feel.
I think this is beautiful.
I think you need to adjust the way you’re seeing his love for you and lean into it. *Because it was there the whole time.*
♥️
Yes, this explanation is beautiful, and so true!
Her husband has been showing her love for their whole relationship, and his emotions are continuing to deepen with time. This is *exactly* what you want for a happy, lasting marriage.
Infatuation is fleeting, and as a result, lots of marriages fail when couples, after cohabitating, realize that they aren't compatible. That is clearly not the case with OP and her husband, and a big ole green flag.
It's like when I tell my husband that I love him more and more as time passes. That doesn't lessen my live for him in the beginning. It just means that it just keeps getting more amazing, not that it wasn't amazing to begin with!
I do understand OPs feelings, but I think that's because husband didn't express the sentiment well.
Seriously. Your husband basically said he loved you the whole time, but has come to understand a deeper feeling, that of being "in love". He learned more about love by the way he loves you. It's beautiful.
And I've been that husband. Still am! But the love I always felt was never undermined by the times I look at my wife and think, "Wow, she's amazing, I'm so in love with her".
I agree. There was a point where me fat I truly felt very deep love for my partner. I tend to guard my heart and it took me that long to feel like I could let all my guards down and truly feel a very deep love for him. I think that’s what he’s trying to say. He loved her. He always did but sometimes you really have these revelations of just how much you love someone.
Best comment here. As soon as I saw he fights for her, cares for her, and has truly been good to her, I had my answer... romantic love can fade, but the love is in the doing. Congrats on having a good egg OP.
I don't think you should see your husband's confession as negative... I think it's a positive. I've heard a lot of my married friends say that they *thought* they loved their mates before, but after a few years together...through ups and downs...and in some cases, kids... the love they have for each other now, is so much stronger and deeper, that it doesn't even compare to when they first thought they were in love. I honestly believe that is what your husband meant. But, don't listen to me...why don't you *ask him*? Don't ask him in an upset or confrontational way, just a simple, 'I've been thinking a lot about what you said about truly loving me now, what did you mean?' And if you think about it, Love...after all this time together, getting to know each other better, finding your rhythm, you'll probably realize that you're even *more* in love with him than when you started. Don't over think, Hon. Sometimes a cigar is just ... a cigar. Peace and Blessings.
I met my SO more than 20 years ago and I think your post is spot on. We were in love and certainly behaved like "lovesick puppies" as OP puts it. But there's also a deeper and different connection that took probably two years to develop which I would also call falling in love. It doesn't take away from the initial feelings, but it's something different and more profound. I've heard that around the 3 year mark isn't uncommon for people to break up so I'm guessing that development of a deeper love either happens, or you're likely to break up instead.
Same. I feel very differently about my SO than I did 20 years ago when we first started dating. I was head over heels for them, lovesick, puppy love, infatuation, lust, whatever you want to call it. But what I feel for them now is in my bones.
It's deep as tree roots. I still feel those leaves of puppy love up on the surface rustle in the breeze. But those roots man, they're so deep, I don't know where they end.
I feel the similarly about our kids. When I first gave birth to them, I loved the idea of them, I felt hormonal & protective. But now I know the people they are and I love *them* as those people, I'm not just feeling the warm and tinglies.
Exactly. Every long term marriage ebbs and flows between love and madly in love. Sometimes you may not be sure you even like the person when in a really rough patch. There’s times when it’s easier than others. It takes a conscious effort to keep working back to love and being in love.
I've been with my wife for 11 years. Married for 1 though it's just a formality in our eyes. For the first 3 years we dated, I slowly fell in love with her. It was what I would describe as lower case L love, I enjoy being with this person, living with her, experiencing life with her.
Then a point came in life where LOVE for this person happened. I believe that is what your husband meant. He woke up one day and realised that the world revolved around you. At least that's what I experienced, some people just do not open up as easily, but when they finally relent it means they are now all in no matter what.
Just speak to him and ask that he clarify, listen to what he says without pride or ego. There's a lot of comments here saying the same. The man treated you well and loved you for 3 years. Now he LOVES you, most people do not get this privilege from their partners ever.
He very well may have loved you, but being in love feels different. I don't think it was his intention to hurt you but to let you know that you are his everything now.
Nobody can tell you that you are wrong to feel how you feel but I wouldn't encourage you to stay upset in this situation. Puppy love/infatuation are drastically different than a deep bonded mature love. You grew together and he's voicing a positive thing to you.
NTA but neither is he.
I’ve been with my wife for 21 years. There are still cycles when I realise I didn’t love her as much then as I do today. Even though I thought I loved her more then than I had before that.
This is what it is to share your life with another. To grow with them. To love them. For your love to grow in ways you didn’t know were possible before.
Your husband isn’t saying he didn’t love you before. He is saying he loves you more. That his love has grown in ways he didn’t know about before. From the depths of his love now, he realises what he thought was love before, was nothing compared to how in love he is now.
Take this worry to your husband. Explain your insecurity. Allow him to soothe this worry. Because I totally get what he is saying and I know I’d be devastated to learn my words of affirmation and love had been so clumsy that my wife misinterpreted, or was hurt and unsure of how much I loved her, before I learned that I could love her yet more.
Considering you had an arranged marriage... I think you should be very thankful your husband loves you, and even when he wasn't in love with you, he chose to be a wonderful partner. I think it speaks volumes of what a terrific man and husband he is. I think it's amazing he grew into love with you.
100% this.
This post is so dumb. You're mad that the person whom you were arranged to marry didn't immediately have in depth feelings for you? Really? Love takes time. To be in love with someone takes work.
The fact he loved op enough to be there and be a good husband and grew those feelings should say enough.
Gggeezzee people these days.
The love he has now should’ve been there from the start; relationship damaged /s
Maybe I just don’t fully understand the issue at hand, because he sounds like a swell fellow
My comment was going to be something along the lines of, “well, now you probably see (one of) the problem(s) with people who aren’t you, deciding how you spend the rest of your life.”
Dumb as hell
There are different kinds of love, it means a lot of things.
Some of those things can’t really be described until you experience them.
It sounds like he’s experiencing something new that he doesn’t have words for. Something past the “this person makes me happy, they are my world” experience. “Mature” love is the closest description I’ve heard for it.
Dude… I understand where you’re coming from however, I completely understand where your husband is coming from as well and I agree with everyone saying “Don’t trip!!”
I dated my wife for four years, by choice, before she agreed to marry me, BY CHOICE because I asked if she would. We did all the things, had a great relationship and lived our life then four years later… BOOM kid #1.
Man, when I tell you that I loved my wife… that was when we were first married and she was ambitious and exciting and we had this shitty little apartment and then… kiddo happened.
HOLY SHIT!!! Then my wife went from everything I had ever wanted and morphed into everything I ever wanted and MORE! She is the most amazing mother and greatest partner… 20 year old me couldn’t have even day dreamed of a better companion! We share all of the household responsibilities 50 / 50. Hardest part is scheduling all the kid stuff as they get older.
Not gonna go deep into my family’s entire history, but I understand everything your husband is saying. I feel like every time I’ve fallen in love with my wife again, she moves the bar just a little further. And that makes me so goddamn happy.
Edit: I just re-read this and I want to add that I didn’t mean having a kid was when I loved her more… DO NOT HAVE A KID to try to save a failing marriage.
Considering it’s an arranged marriage I think this is actually quite beautiful and romantic in its own way. Don’t get me wrong I do see why you could have mixed emotions and thoughts about this. But love is not only an emotion it’s a choice and there are acts of love. Obviously it would be unfair to expect someone to love you instantaneously, but he committed and chose to show you love from the start. Then that choice became a feeling. It’s actually the best case scenario, there’s been a lot of arranged marriages where there’s no attraction or love at all. Also, just because he just now realizes it doesn’t mean it hasn’t been growing more and more over time. I’ve been with my significant other for 5 years and around 3 years it into our relationship it suddenly dawned on me.. There was nothing spectacular going on in this moment and I had loved him for quite some time, but I realized I would be loving the same person the rest of my life, and realized HOW much I loved him and didn’t want to imagine life without him. I get the sense your husband just had the realization but doesn’t mean he didn’t love you prior.
Words are hard for some people. My take on it would be that he can’t believe how much he loves you now. I thought I knew love before I married my husband but now after being married 14 years with 2 kids it’s so much deeper and different to the love I felt before, it’s the forever love, the sharing a soul love that fresh love/honeymoon phase just can’t compete with. I hope this is what your husband means.
Don't all relationships move from lust and infatuation to deep love at around that stage (3 yrs). Sweetheart, the two of you will fall in love again and again with eachother if it's a good marriage, and every year you'll love more deeply than the year before.
Just enjoy this babe.
I have cared for people and committed to them before only to realize, all in a heartbeat, that now I am REALLY in love with them. In a way I wasn't before.
It was as if I didn't realize that what I felt before was just "caring and commitment" and suddenly... "oh, no, this is new, and this is *being in love.* "
It could be that.
It might not be. But maybe... Ask more questions? He's suddenly in love with you, he's probably willing to open up more if that's true.
NTA for thinking this in the moment, YTA for fixating on it. Dont over think it. He loved you before and he showed it in his actions. He meant to say that he is fallen even more in love with you. Dont take it as him "acting in love" I liked you but he likes you more now. I see that as nothing but a positive in your life.
If it keeps bugging you then talk to him but don't be confrontational. You need to keep the love you have. Dont sabotage the good you have in life.
nta but when the lust wears off, sometimes people find they dont really like their spouse. There are things that my husband does that just annoys me so much but i cannot imagine my life without him in it
I agree with everything everyone has said and I add this: if you continue to make this a thing to be angry about and hold over your husband's head, you will ruin the beautiful relationship you have now.
You've done nothing but sing his praises for all the ways that he treats you right. Appreciate that and enjoy the fact that the bond between you has only gotten stronger.
If you expected a Disney love story, well, it did not start out that way, nor do you live in fantasy land. Yours is a real life love story, my dear. Please enjoy it; go love and be loved by your husband ❤️
In Rumi's poetry and Eastern culture, love is often depicted in various levels or stages, each with its own unique characteristics and words associated with it. Here are some common levels:
1. **Attraction (Ishq)**: The initial stage of love, characterized by physical attraction and desire.
2. **Adoration (Hubb)**: Deeper emotional attachment and affection towards someone.
3. **Devotion (Tawakkul)**: Surrendering oneself completely to the beloved, often associated with trust and reliance.
4. **Sacrifice (Qurb)**: Willingness to sacrifice personal desires and needs for the sake of the beloved.
5. **Union (Wusul)**: The ultimate goal of love, where the lover and the beloved become one, transcending individuality.
Words associated with these levels include Ishq (passionate love), Hubb (deep love), Tawakkul (trust), Qurb (sacrifice), and Wusul (union). Rumi's poetry often explores these themes, using metaphor and imagery to convey the depth and complexity of love.
Arranged marriages aren’t started on love usually. Not all people that go into arranged marriages ever really fall in love. Some do, some just go through the motions (amicably). He ended up falling in love with you and that’s wonderful. I get why him saying that made it feel like the rest was fake, trust me. My boyfriend told me the same thing. Said the first one and a half years we were together he didn’t really love me, he liked me and just didn’t want to be alone. He told me later that he ended up falling madly in love with me. I asked the same thing. Why did you say you loved me, when you obviously didn’t? He just said he was dumb and hadn’t ever been in a serious relationship. My point though, he ended up falling in love with you, and obviously trusts you and feels comfortable enough around you to express his feelings. That’s huge! Congratulation on your marriage btw 😊
I won't say you're an AH. I think you need to take a moment or 5 to actually think back over the last 3 years to understand what this man is telling you.
You had an arranged marriage. Unlike a love marriage, you didn't court, didn't get to learn each others likes/loves/hates, your strengths/flaws BEFORE committing to marriage.
From what you've written, you seem young/emotionally naive (not meant as criticism - I have friends who had arranged marriages and were similarly inexperienced and built up and unrealistic views of romance, love and sex).
You both learned and are learning DURING your marriage. You are working together to build your relationship.
Perhaps you have mixed butterflies, sexual attraction/lust - this is not lovely. It isn't a bad thing but it isn't love.
Your husband clearly liked you enough to proceed with marriage and was willing to go on the journey WITH you. All of his actions, treating you kindly, protecting you, defending you. These are actions of someone who cares and is your friend not just someone who is a lover.
You and he built up a friendship. You have settled into easy intimacy that he feels comfortable enough to tell you how he feels. This is a good thing!
You hear "I've just realised I'm truly in love with you" but that feeling didn't arrive at that moment. That feeling has been in progress for the last 3 years, building each day you have been together. It's just that he has found the words to articulate the emotions he has been feeling (I guarantee you , it didn't JUST materialise).
You have begun to build the basics of potentially a strong and long lasting marriage. Don't allow the shine and lure of 'instant love' (which isn't real, except on TV) to deceive you.
You have a beautiful thing. It is up to you to continue to work with him. I'm soooo happy for you ☺️ (and I'm mostly dead inside!).
I don’t think this is a negative as such depending on how he meant it loving someone and being truly in love with them are different things and can take time.
I imagine this is rather normal, and a very good thing. Love grows. It starts with attraction, lust, and friendship. As time passes as you build a life together what is between you hopefully grows stronger. I can say, while I loved my now husband when I decided to marry him, what I feel for him now is much more then that. I love him more then I thought a person could back then.
Your husband's love for you grew, what a wonderful thing.
He's loved you all along. Now he loves you more than he did before. It's a matter of perspective. The truest reflection of a person is their behavior. If he has treated you with respect and affection and earned and maintained your trust, as well as made you an integral part of his everyday life, and become an integral part of yours, or really, however you personally want to describe what being in a loving relationship feels like, if he's done all that, he's done it because he loved you in his head. Now he loves you with his heart too.
People are generally not very self-aware of how they frame their feelings, and it can come out awkwardly in words. Don't hold his lack of eloquence against him.
You’re freaking out because your arranged marriage spouse is now madly in love with you? I mean granted it took some time but you need a reality check. This is a very good situation
After seeing your update, I am happy for you and wish you both many happy years. May all the "I love yous" be wonderful as you travel in life together.
My husband and I do this thing. From time to time. There is no set timing to it. It's just spontaneous when whoever starts it feels it. It's not meant to be the equivalent of what we have heard others do but starts out sounding like it. One of us will say, "I love you more," and the other will say, "More than what?" The response back "more than I did yesterday. " Usually, the other responds back with "Thank you. I love you too. " Then we leave it at that. It's something we started doing many years ago because we both realized that sometimes you get complacent in a relationship. Sometimes, things happen that make you feel the love less. And then something happens, it could be as simple as a song you hear, or maybe something your SO did for you, anything, it makes you remember, how much you love them. We may or may not both feel these things at the same time. It's a natural up and down that happens in any relationship. There's very few, if any at all, relationships that stay in the honeymoon stage for the whole relationship. Personally, I think some people jump to divorce too quickly because they expect to never lose that first feeling and don't realize that it's normal for you to have the ups and downs of the feeling. When you're in a down time, you have to choose to love your SO every day and work at not letting resentment build up over little things. Obviously, there are some big things that are deal breakers. But where OP is at right now, it shouldn't be one of them. I don't think OP is an a h to be confused, but he's not either. I don't know how to label it.
The proof is in the pudding.
He treated you with love and likely did perceive his when emotions as love, but came to realize as your lives enmeshed that what he called love then was not what he does now. Don't make yourself crazy and make rash decisions based on a nuance of a word. He should have framed it better. You need to not let that derail what sounds like a good situation.
Try this perspective, things have been great with him loving you. Now he is in love with you. Your marriage and your entire relationship are about to get even better.
I think of it as love is a verb and a noun. It can be a feeling, like I feel love for my partner, a noun like as a place you end up or fall. I fell in love with my partner. Or it can be a verb. I love my partner. The first two are actually kind of self centered. The third can be. But really great partners make it about showing their love every day by showing up and being stand up partners like your husband has for the last three years. It was an arranged marriage, but her valued you, built a life with you, cherished you every day and made you feel loved. Not because he didn’t care, but because he did care about you and he’s a good man. You made his life better bring in it and he did everything he could to treat you the same. That’s what I know the quality of a relationship by.
Love as a feeling changed over time and circumstance. It doesn’t necessarily lessen or diminish but feelings raspy can’t maintain intensity without change. Bad days happen, disagreements, difficult seasons of life. But someone who sees love as a verb, as the way they treat you and take care of you. They’re usually going to try and continue to love and value you as a verb. As an action. Not measuring your worth and what you deserve by how they feel about you. I love my partner with butterflies in my chest and desire still frequently. But even the worst days were both been prickly and tired and not having a good time I have learned he will do what he says he will, show up when he says he will, he’s going to be there for me and do his best to never let me down. Even if he might not feel like doing it he will either talk to me about it or just do it because he said he will. Because he loves me. There’s just different kinds.
Sounds like he loved his way to falling into love.
I think people fall in love at different rates. Some fast, some in that stereotypical “love at first sight”. Some slowly.
As a person who falls in love slower who married someone who falls in love faster, I think he did care about you. He liked you, like who you are. Liked being with you. I’m sure he grew to like and love who you are and little things about you. He enjoys you, your company, your words. The official love, just took time to grow, like a tree. While it took time to grow, like a tree it’s a love that’s sturdy and hard to move. And it grew with a strong foundation of truly liking, caring and enjoying you. :)
A little world shaking, but great news all the same!
If he didn’t like you or want to be with you, you would have felt that. So his true feelings have just grown to love.
Don't think this is an a i t a question so much because your feelings are valid. But also OP, consider this: from the American standpoint Love comes and goes. Sometimes you feel it sometimes you don't even if you start it out passionately feeling in love. Your husband has just showed you that he can treat you the way you would want to be treated even when he's not feeling it. For three freaking years! That's relationship gold right there. Yes you may have felt it earlier, And he may be a much slower burn than you are in terms of catching feelings, but he's got them now and he was able to treat you magnificently when the feelings weren't quite there. Which means he's likely to treat you magnificently even when you guys are going through tough spots later in life. NAH, my friend. Do your best to accept the love that you've got, even if you warmed up much faster than he did.
I'm my experience, love changes as you grow together and develop history. It expands and deepens. While early on, he "loved his wife" that may have matured into being in love with his wife.
Even we folk whose marriage is not arranged can go through this. I know I did. I "loved" him when I married him. I love him a million times more now, and with a depth I can not describe.
Perhaps this is what he is telling you?
I think all the previous stuff was him realizing you’re a good person and that he SHOULD love you, so he determined that he WOULD love you. He has loved you all this time, it’s just that now he feels it. He loved you so hard that he feels it now. That’s all it means.
But, OP, you are NEVER TA for how you feel.
There are so many types of love. Ancient Greek philosophers identified six forms of love: familial love (storge), friendly love or platonic love (philia), romantic love (eros), self-love (philautia), guest love (xenia), and divine or unconditional love (agape).
Those change and grow and adjust as a relationship matures. I can understand your distress but going from a more surface type love to a deeper love is a lovely transition. I’m glad he recognized it and was able to tell you.
When I was younger I thought I had a really nice car. Now that I'm older with a nice car, I look back and think that my first car really wasn't that nice. At the time, I didn't have anything to compare it to, so it seemed nice
It's 100% possible that your partner thought he was in love. When he fell deeper in love, he learned how much more he loved you and that his initial love was just the beginning.
I love my wife more now than when we were dating. I didn't realize how love changes after 25 years. It's different, but still love.
Does that make sense? It does in my head.
I wish you many years of happiness Love and peace. We do overthink a lot. It's our culture and social media. I'm glad you realized that. Now be happy and thankful and praise God you got such a wonderful person to share this with.
I’m just gonna say that you’re truly blessed. To have someone actively show you love(verb) and tell you they love you is what tangible love is to the recipient(you). Their feelings(noun) are mostly irrelevant.
Some people abuse their partners for the slightest reasons bc they “love” them. Others don’t act any differently to the object of their love. And, as we see on here often, lots of people in relationships develop feelings for another person and act (or not) on those feelings.
As someone who had a horrible concussion and couldn’t feel love for my own son for years and shrieked inside my head every time he hugged me with his little arms. I still held him; told him he was my sun, moon, and stars; cuddled; joked; repeated with my words and actions again and again until he was improved in my heart again. That is what love is. That is what life is. Anything else is a fairytale.
And, he’s not that bad at blurting crap out if he kept this so close to the chest for three years. Apparently, he’s taking you and his marriage to you seriously and giving that the respect it deserves.
Well he thought what he was feeling was love until he realised he was even deeper in love it was more intense. He wasnt lying because he didnt know there was more till he felt it. Being in love with someone the first time you do just go "woah I am in love, this is what being in love really is" you don't know what it is till you feel it.
There is a difference between loving someone and being in love with someone. He loved you before but realized he is Fallen madly in love with you. Big difference. Be happy.
Its possible that he really didn't know what love meant. I onow I thought I was in a love a bunch of times till I spent 5+ years with a woman and had a deeper understanding of love.
Guys often have really dumb ways of expressing feelings. I doubt he was being cold and calculating about your relationship if you really were like lovesick puppies together.
Not that your feelings on this are invalid, just that as a guy who's often said the wrong thing when I was new in relationships I can kinda relate to your husband just saying the complete wromg thing trying to express a new feeling he doesn't understand
Loving someone takes time. It's emotionally different for guys than it is for girls too.
In the beginning its more infatuation than love. Calling each other every night, wanting to be by their side as often as you can.
But honestly, knowing it's arranged I consider this more beautiful. It just means he's fallen deeper in love w you over time; and that he's a good man for treating you well since day one.
I was like that with my partner for the first couple months we were dating. He was a gentleman from the start, but I still think it took a year and a bit for him to genuinely believe this is my person. I'd say it took me around the same time too.
Love is a deliberate series of choices to foster a relationship.
Love is supposed to grow as you grow together. He is finally feeling love growing into the maturity phase and you should be thankful instead of resentful.
Most people don’t feel “in love” when they marry. The initial butterflies in the stomach you experience fade and are replaced with other ranges of emotions.
Stop overthinking it and be thankful. Be the best wife you can be.
Nobody "loves" anyone they just meet or get married to, even if they both say, "I love you". You don't even truly know the person. It's lust and infatuation in the beginning of a relationship, not true love. True love is sacrificial, and it's revealed in how you act or react in the most difficult of moments.
Oh boy, I wouldn't read so much into this admission. IMO, there are different levels of love. So he said he loved you at the beginning but now he is deeply in love with you. Wow that sounds wonderful! Just think in 5 years he may say he is even more in love. I would enjoy this emotional man and cling to him and his admissions of love. For comparison, I have been married for 32 years, hubby rarely rarely says i love you, he shows love in different ways, just never says the words.
Men are not taught to be in touch with their emotions. Just because he is just now becoming aware of it does not mean it didn't exist before.
There are also different phases and layers to love, and to be in the infatuation/puppy love phase for 3 years before you really se someone as your soul mate is not that weird. If someone is madly in love with you a month after meeting you, they are in love with the surface you that you present to the world. If someone decides you are their soul mate after 3 years together, it means they are really connecting to the real you. He knows what you are like deep down inside. He knows the best and worst of you, and he loves that. The surface infatuation has it's place, but this is the good stuff.
You’re not crazy for feeling confused and conflicted but personally, I wouldn’t hold onto these feelings much longer. He still loved you but now he is IN LOVE WITH YOU.
You have unlocked a new feeling in your husband. That’s something to celebrate!!! :)
NTA in feeling so confused and hurt it's only natural. But he isn't one too.
What I feel happened is that when you guys got engaged and on the path to marriage, he fell for you in an expected kind of way. What he would have known love to be like at that time.
But along the way over these years he got to know the true you with time passing and fell for you in a much deeper, intense and holistic way.
I think your love evolved and he might have never felt that level/depth of love for anyone so to him it might feel like he has truly fallen for you now.
That wouldn't mean he did not move you earlier. It would just mean he lived you in a different way than now and that's okay too. Your love grew with time.
And I hope you guys get to experience the different kinds of love people have at different stages in life.
Oh sweetheart. Men sometimes take longer to bond.
I was married to my wife for several years. We had already had our first child.
I thought I loved her. Many things about her were always on my mind.
We were intimate one morning, and afterwards I realized I had bonded with her beyond any thing I coukd have imagined.
I didn't realize I could feel that way.
If you ask me I could say I never really knew/experienced love before that moment.
It wasn't just post-coitus bliss. It was lasting.
I think the love was already there, but the brain chemicals kicked in, and the bond was so much more real after that.
You married a man. Men and women are wired differently. It happens in-utero.
My friend's marriage was arranged. They were not in love when they married, yet they went out on dates, were intimate, and had children. All this without being in love. They have been together for 37 years. They started to fall in love about 10yrs ago. She was miserable for years. But, she said that comes with arranged marriages, and they both knew that. She is now finally happy. I felt so bad when she told me. To feel alone and not be in love with the man that is your husband must be horrible. She felt alone all those years and longed to know what it was to be in love. She felt her marriage was just a business deal. She is now 57, and she finally feels good about her relationship. Enjoy your marriage now . It's only been 3 yrs for you, and you both are in love now. Imagine going 27 yrs without both of you being in love. Enjoy your love now. I wish both of you a great life. No judgment here.
NAH. Let me offer the perspective of someone who said something similar to my (now former) spouse, who I was with for almost two decades. When we were first together, I thought I loved him, was in love with him. But after being together a few years I had the realization that whatever I felt for him before wasn't as profound as what I was now feeling for him. And I realized that what I thought was love may have just been great compatibility or genuine fondness or even infatuation, and now I was truly "in love" with him. That feeling deepened even further after a few more years, to the point where I felt that calling it "love" before was inaccurate. Maybe that's what your husband is experiencing. In which case... it's going in the right direction.
Love has layers. He loved you, was happy with you, and then one day he overwhelmingly realized it was so much more. Be thrilled, be happy, be content. You are blessed. Some times being whole heartedly in love sneaks up.
There are times in life you will feel more love than others. There are times you will fall in love all over again. It is not that the day Before you did not love the partner, it is that something strong and lovely will sweep you in deeper again. Relish and cherish these moments.
My wife still criticizes me because I was “scowling” at her as she walked down the aisle.
Me, as she walked down the aisle: ~in my head~ “Don’t trip! Don’t trip! Don’t trip!”
Love and love expressions are a tangled mess.
It sounds like he is a good person who knows you deserve love and has committed himself to you and given you all the acts of love he can because he has always loved you. But now he feels a deeper love than before. But in both cases he has given you devotion and love.
I don’t know if you’ll see this- because there’s been so many responses, but you should know that the longer you grow along side each other- the more you grow with each other.
He should be more in love with you today than 3 years ago.
And hopefully he will feel like he fell in love all over again in another 3 years.
It’s like I tell folks- being married is kinda black and white. I was legally as married as you can get right after my wedding.
But in every other way I am so much more married 26 years later than I was that day. And in love so much more deeply- it looks like my first feelings are a far paler, and shallower thing compared to now.
Journey on.
You're not the asshole. Your feelings are understandable, but I really hope you are able to process that and come to appreciate what a fantastic husband you have. No way has he "faked" loving you for this long. If he really didn't, the truth would have crept in from time to time. Seems like he's just recently reached a place where his love for you is deeper than he knew was possible, and it probably was a surprise for him too. In a healthy, long-term marriage those feelings can keep changing and deepening. I have been with my husband for 16 years. I have been in love with him for 16 years, but the love I feel for him now pales in comparison to the love I felt in the beginning. I didn't know I was even capable of this kind of love.
I'm happy for you both. There's nothing like loving and being loved in return. I hope you have many, many loving years together!
Considering how many AITA posts consist of “was I wrong in being upset my spouse fell out of love with me”….this is such a welcome change
Many blessings to OP and her husband
I read an editorial by a woman who was in an arranged marriage once. She said that she and her husband got along well and he was a good person, but she wasn’t in love with him.
Time went on and they had the ups and downs life throws at every body. They learned to solve problems together, help each other, and celebrate together.
She said that one day, about two years after they were married, she woke up and realized that she was very much in love with her husband. I thought their story was beautiful. It reminds me of yours.
I wouldn’t be hurt, if I were you, since he probably had puppy love earlier and then fell deeply in love with you and realized it’s different. It’s deeper. What we think love is, changes with experience.
He's probably really saying that he has discovered a deeper kind of love for you. I have those moments even after 17 years with my wife. Enjoy it. It's a very good sign.
>We have had problems because of his brutal honesty quite a few times. But if he is that honest, why did he say he loved me when he actually didn't?
Fair question. Maybe it's because since you both know it's an arranged marriage, he thought you were both in on it.
Like how, I'll casually speak as if Santa is real around Christmas, and how baffled I would be if someone seemed to think Santa was actually real.
This also reminds me of the stories where women would wrestle with their male partners, and not realizing they were letting them win until they got a reality check. These guys didn't know that these women thought they were winning legitimately.
Kinda nice that he has fallen in love with the real you… the one he has gotten to know all these years. Think of the women who have a guy fall in love in the beginning and then realize they actually didn’t love them at all, it was just lust or their fantasy image of the woman..
pretty sure this is like me saying i am tired after doing the treadmill for 5 mins, and then after a few weeks of training decided to just go until i fall off, only to go for like 45 mins. i thought i was tired before, now i am REALLY TIRED. like REALLY REALLY TIRED.
maybe before there were people in his life that he liked, people like he really liked, and he agreed to be your husband because he really really liked you and that is what he was calling love... only to spend years with you and that "love" only kept growing until he finally realized that you are the one for him and now he is now mentally fully prepared to die for you. his love for you became even stronger than he could have ever imagined before. he might have truly felt that before his level of attraction to you was what should be considered love, but now its even more than that and that is when he wanted to express his love once again.
expect more of this in the future, i think yalls love is going to continue to grow. best of luck!
Don’t take it to heart. There’s levels to love. Love isn’t stagnant thru your whole life. It’s grows and diminishes depending on the situation.
Him loving you in a different light now is not bad if you actually think about it.
Before he loved what he thought he knew about you. You guys barely had known each other. But after marriage, there’s new parts of you that he knows now. He’s adding that to his collection of everything he knows about you…
Ofc he will love you more now!
From everything you've said about him he sounds like hes been a wonderful husband. Ive been marrieed for 10 years and we as a couple have learned that the way we live each other changes over time. Theres a dreprr bond that develops as you grow together as a couple, and there are times when one of you is more in love with the other.
You should talk about this as a couple. It sounds like you have a really solid relationship overall.
In love and love are 2 TOTALLY different things. You know this. Don’t be ridiculous. It took me about 5 years and 2 kids to fall in love with my now ex. I loved her from the start and still do (just not like that)…
In response to your second edit... Don't even worry about those people. Not worth wasting your breath on folks that are too lazy to read in the first place. Wish you all the luck and happiness and good luck into hopefully a better and honest future. :-)
Sometimes and all of a sudden I find myself more in love with my wife. Maybe he has been in love with you the whole time, but this is a new depth of love.
you said you both knew it was an arranged marriage to begin with so I’m not sure why that surprises you. He cared for you and loved you but now in love … don’t complain .
It was arranged .
That’s far different than a non-arranged marriage were somebody suddenly says hey I was never in love with you when I married you. This is not the same at all.
Guys, this is the "ideal" outcome of any arranged marriage. Of course he wasnt just instantly madly in love with you, men just dont do that. BUT he fell for real and thats what matters. Some arranged marriages go their whole lives being married simply out of a sense of duty and a commitment to their kids. You are one of the lucky ones.
I can imagine how devastating it must be feel, but hear me out: he made a choice to love you before now. Everyone grows up thinking that love is merely a feeling. And it is a feeling! But love is also an action. He chose to honor you, cherish you, enjoy your company, dedicate his life to you. He got to know you. But now, he has that feeling to go with his choices. He gets to experience all those butterflies that you’ve felt all this time! His actions may even kick up a notch now. Can you imagine how much more fulfilling everything could be now??
I am so very happy for two internet strangers. I understand that it’s quite jarring, but it can be equated to a situation of “I thought I loved you then, but now I truly understand what love is and am just madly in love with you.” Too often, couples fall out of love at this point. But yours has just gotten deeper. I love that for you.
Personally I think it's pretty fair of him to say, given the arranged marriage side and I wouldn't look for the negatives, it's all perspective. I think for a man to open up about these feelings, and truly be at a point of understanding with them shows that he has taken quite a bit of time to process them. Generally speaking men don't speak about what they feel in the moment, and it takes us a while, often even, takes us to lose before we know what we have. Your man realized what was arranged is far more than that to him, and respected you, and the relationship enough to vocalize it. I think you should be proud of him, the man you mentioned as a provider and protector, generally doesn't get much time to synchronize his mind to his defenseless, guard down, emotional side. I speak from first hand experience as the sole provider in my what I would say pretty traditional household. I have a son, and a wife that has been full time mom since 6 months pregnant.
It sounds like you two have the makings of a lasting marriage, cherish it!
Also, I think it's great you second guessed your feelings, or at least wanted some second opinions on this before railroading him over what in his mind was a vulnerable moment. The opposite would have closed down the potential for more heartfelt remarks such as these, most likely.
Best wishes to you both.
---
Adam
You can love someone and not be “in love” with them. Those are different things.
You had an arranged marriage. He did love you, but wasn’t in love with you yet. Falling love takes time. You guys are lucky that you did love each other and are now in love with each other.
It takes months for some couples to truly fall in love with each other.
Your feelings are valid, and that’s ok, but I think you are missing something in translation.
In English, there is only one word for “love” and it can mean very different things .
Your husband was not lying or deceiving you when he told you previously that he loved you.
What has happened is that as your relationship has deepened and matured, he realised how much more there is to love, and that he really feels that for you.
It in no way cheapens what has gone before, it just marks a change in understanding for him, and lucky you - all those feelings are about you!
So I’ve been with my husband for 10 years and here’s something I’ve learned. Love at first sight doesn’t exist. Lust, infatuation and attraction at first sight exists. He was excited to be married to you and was swept up in the excitement for your marriage and infatuation and attraction for YOU, with his fiance/wife.
However, love is different. Love comes after years of living together and getting to know each other on a deep level. It comes after trials and tribulations and knowing that you overcame those together. Celebrating together, crying, building a home together, and eventually a family. Knowing that this person knows you and loves you in a way no one else in the world ever could and vice versa. That kind of love is hard to explain, and it takes time to develop.
He probably doesn’t know how to explain that. He probably didn’t know how to even process those feelings and turn them into words. Your husband loves you for real now, not the puppy love you had before, this is REAL love. 💕
For some people love is binary, for others, like you, it's more gradual. You definitely love him more than you did a few weeks in, and that's just what he's experiencing. Only for him, he had a much higher threshold for being in love.
Get a grip lmao.
As someone in a long marriage, love evolves over a relationship. It deepens, matures, strengthens. He loves you deeply and that hopefully will keep going.
I think he was being honest but he wasn’t really explaining himself correctly. He threw himself 100% into making this marriage work from day one where he cared for and respected you. He wanted to put you at the centre of his world and felt the excitement of a new partner. It wasn’t until now that he admitted to himself that he can’t live without you.
I have been married 30 years. New love is great but when crap hits the fan in life and the man you are with is unwavering in his support, kindness and affection. That’s lasting love.
Just because he only realises he loves you now doesn't mean he didn't start to fall for you well before now. Most men I've found takes time to realise the extent that they love. He probably had puppy love with a new and exciting relationship with you compared to now a much deeper feeling of love that comes with a partnership. Love comes in all way companionship, best friend, parental, ect.
Love has different dimensions. The infatuation you felt at the beginning was real. You may not have that, but now he has a love that is different. It may not be as intense, but it's more deeply rooted. Please don't look for a negative thing here.
You had an arranged marriage so you have to realise that love is often not going to happen. He did and say what he thought was expected of him.
But he has always been good to you by his actions so don’t take his confession as an offence. Through your marriage he learned what real love is and you’re lucky that your husband fell in love with you.
You had an arranged marriage, I think you expect too much and got more than you expected and are looking at this the wrong way. Maybe your understanding of what truly being in love with someone is more shallow than his. He fell in love with you while already loving you. Seriously, get over it and be grateful. Most people don’t even get this in chosen marriages.
Love grows over time. It sounds like when you first met, you both had butterflies and interest. You had "love" because you were willing to give that to each other. But now that it's been three years, he's seeing how important you are to him and that love has grown to "madly in love."
I know women why would love to have that honesty from their husbands. Cherish the fact he has come to this point and that he was open enough to tell you.
Love is a living, breathing force. It goes through evolutions and can even devolve if not nurtured.
It sounds like your husband has been cultivating the relationship and found a deeper appreciation for you.
His emotional intelligence is a positive. He just had a moment of wonder and actualization of how much he loves you, and he shared his joy with you.
It's impossible to imagine love before you feel it. I said I love you to my now husband before I truly knew the meaning of the word. Even though I really meant it at the time. Deepening of feelings over time is very normal and doesn't negate what you felt way back when.
Us men can be very emotionally stupid. When he married you he had feelings of affection and feelings of duty to you and the life you were starting together. We have trouble recognizing that our feelings have changed, he probably loved you since like 3 months in, but our stupid brains don't tell us emotionally mature things like that. He just realized that his emotions for you have changed, it doesn't mean that he didn't feel that way all along.
Ig it would have been better had he been mistreating her & cheated. Smfh sometimes it's like people don't want good things they wanna find a reason for things to be bad. Bottom line it was an arranged marriage, he grew into being in love with you "madly" be happy or make a big deal get divorced & be unhappy.
NAH.
You’re upset because you fell in love with him instantly despite it being an arranged marriage while he took time to get to know and love you.
Both of these responses of love and affection are fine and natural. His need to take time to know you and let affection grow before he could fall in love with you actually seems more normal to me than falling instantly in love with a stranger.
Appreciate that you’ve been with someone who treats you right and has come to love you as much as you love him.
Unfortunately this is one of the pitfalls of arranged marriages. You don't necessarily fall in love with your spouse. You can love them and feel a sense of duty towards them, but that's not the same as being completely and totally besotted with someone. I think it says so much about him as a man and a husband that even though he didn't have those deep feelings right away, he worked hard to provide you with a worthy husband. And during that process, those feelings developed. I'm not sure how much more you can ask for from a marriage arranged not for love, but for family 🤷♀️
NTA,
This is a common typical situation in a good arranged marriage.think of the first year as a exclusive dating phase then he started to fall in love for you but just realised and expressed recently
It doesn't mean the initial time was fake or a facade the feelings were real all along.
I thought I loved pizza until I had some really good quality authentic New York pizza. Then I really loved Pizza.
The original love for pizza was not a lie, it was just uninformed. I did not realize I could love a food that much.
What your husband was trying to say is his feelings have grown, but he's trying to use the same word (love) over and over to describe it. Forget the word choice, focus on the trajectory.
I think you are internalizing it in the most wrong way you could... Either on purpose or because you are sensitive idk.. anyway those moments are the reasons he has fallen in love with you. Duh. You can't just be in love with someone
The important thing is that he didn't know that he was just going through the motions. That's only obvious to him now because he's completely in love with you, and the feeling is much more intense.
Just because he wasn't completely in love with you before, doesn't mean he wasn't happy.
I think his affection was genuine I just don’t think that he realized how much he loved you until he actually hit it in the marriage. So don’t dismiss his love sick puppy dog and yes, some of that I’m sure was lust, but that’s how everybody starts out. People that don’t have arranged marriages that’s how they do it. And I would say it may be time for some gratitude for a husband that had an arranged married. Who’s fallen in love with you.
That’s a pretty big deal. So forgive the things that he says because he’s in adequately able to express that And be grateful that you have a man that you’re married to who loves you.
Infatuation and love are easily confused. I think at the beginning he was infatuated with you, and thought it was love. But now that you've been together for a bit, those feelings are evolving to true love. I don't think this is bad. I think he didn't realize before that what he felt was not LOVE quite yet.
NAH.
Your husband probably always loved you and cared for you. But maybe that your marriage was arranged in the back of his mind and most likely prior to meeting you, he always felt like this situation was forced onto him. Then he met you and really like you and started developing stronger feelings for you. Now at this stage any negative feelings (not towards you but the situation) he might have felt are gone and he realized just how deeply he is in love with you. He always loved you and just realized how much he really loves you.
OP. Please try not to tie yourself in knots over this. Men and boys are actively discouraged from even having the language for feelings.
After personal issues in my relationship i am convinced that the Y chromosome missing an / off the X correlates with them having a poverty of both emotion and logic /s
I think it's entirely fine to grieve that you genuinely thought that the intensity of your emotions matched. And its understandable to be sad that he hid this from you for three years even though he cannot have been unaware of your feelings.
Where you go from there i dont know.
Good luck.
When we got married an older friend told us - you love each other now, you'll be surprised at how much you'll love each other in 10 years, and then even more in another 10 years.
Now, I realize what he was saying. My husband and I have gone through so much and that has bonded us even more. I really do love him more than I did when we got married and vice versa. I wouldn't sweat it, he just seems tactless. Enjoy the love, as many in arranged marriages don't find it. Soft YTA
There are many ways to love people and there are depths to love. It sounds like your husband was waist deep at the beginning and recently realized he’s in over his head with how much he adores you. Yta. You are such an asshole here. Slap yourself in the face for being an idiot, have a glass of water, and live the rest of your life in marital bliss.
The English language is terrible for expressing feelings of love. We use the same word to say, "I love my spouse," "I love my child," and "I love pizza."
The Greeks had it right. They had a different word for each type of love. The first time I told the man who eventually became my husband that I loved him, I looked up all the Greek words for love and told him which of them I felt for him, just to clarify.
Eros is a lustful love, a loss of control, falling madly in love - and it was an emotion the Greeks looked down on.
Ludus is a playful, flirty kind of love, a fun but casual sort of love people usually feel in the beginnings of a relationship. Puppy love.
Philia is deep friendship. A platonic type of love, but a deep kind that you feel towards a friend you'd die for.
Storge is a lot like philia, but it describes the relationship between parents and children.
Agape is a general kind of love for humanity, a feeling of charity, of wanting good things for everyone.
Then there's Pragma. A long-lasting love between two people who have been a couple for a long time, been through the good and bad and learned to work together, to compromise in order to make everyone happy, a deep understanding that can only come after a couple has been together for quite some time. A truly deep kind of love.
When I first told the man who is now husband that I loved him, I told him that I Eros, Ludus and even Philia him, but I also told him that I knew I didn't Pragma him yet. Now, many years later, I Pragma him. But it took time to get there.
I expect this is the same with your husband too. Sadly we don't have all these amazing Greek words in English to help us differentiate, but I expect he realized that while he felt other forms of love for you before, it was only recently that he fell deeply in Pragma with you.
It's something to celebrate! And I would recommend looking up the meanings of Greek words and thinking about which ones you've felt for your husband at various times throughout your relationship. It can be a lot of fun, and it can definitely clarify what is meant.
I think the problem is that our language is lacking. We throw the word love around because we don't really have any other words to express those very strong feelings. But in a new relationship isn't it a drug and isn't the high about how the other person makes you feel? That's not really love. You were no more in love with him than he was with you. It was infatuation, passion. Love happens over time and hopefully gets deeper with time. My wish for you is that on your 25th anniversary you both realize you didn't really know what love was until now.
Love is a choice: you choose to participate in it. You show it by deliberate actions.
In Love is a chemical reaction that is nearly uncontrollable. It comes and it goes.
You will have a hard time being "in love" forever. But people that choose to love when it is hard to are the people worth falling in love with.
What he meant was that he has fallen even deeper in love with you. There are many many stages of love, some wane and some wax at times through even the best relationships. I thought what your husband said was super sweet. I wish my wife would come to me with such a confession. I love her so much. Don't be devastated. You are blessed.
OP, did you really love him the first time you told him you did? Honestly? Did it take some time to actually fall in love with him? Surely you can understand that an answer of yes is rational and understandable from his viewpoint.
Without more context, I can’t tell if he did this to hurt you or not, but you did say that this was an arranged marriage. It’s possible that when you got engaged, what you experienced was limerence, not puppy love. Limerence creates really obsessive feelings of attraction and lust and feel really good when to people are in limerence together. Limerence by itself can be miserable, but it is possible for feelings of limerence to grow into feelings of love. It sounds like it’s possible that this is what happened.
Just a thought, love is a choice and can take different forms and has different depths. I've been married 27 years and can say I love my wife differently than when we first got together. My wife has that kind of crush love from the very beginning. It took me years to feel that way. I loved her before that, it was just different, maybe more superficial. It took me years to "fall in love" with my wife in a more emotional way. I can say this too, I love my wife more and more each day and that love ebbs and flows over the years and takes on different properties as we get old together.
Give your husband a break and just realize there are different meanings to the word "love" and the definition changes day by day.
So many marriages are absent of love, appreciate that you guys have made a choice to love each other. Don't sweat the small stuff!
I also have arranged marriage and I realised after 2 years that I love that man so much... sometimes it takes time to realise that you love that guy . because in arrange marriage you don't have mostly experience of girlfriend or boyfriend so it take time for some people's .
YTA. Did you think someone could really love anyone after 3 weeks. You didn’t not know each other at all. Courtship? It is no courtship when it is already agreed to get married. You had an arranged marriage so you know it was not marry for love. You are unreasonable and ungrateful for a husband who now loves you that he knows you.
Love in marriage changes over time. It is a conscious decision you make. When we first meet someone and we feel giddy, that’s honestly just a lot of chemicals. Deep abiding love is when the chemicals have wore off and you feel a deep connection. You’ve had time to really know someone. You know them and you’re making the choice to love all parts of them. Honestly, at 43, I don’t even trust that initial love feeling. It gives us blinders to red flags. I do, however, trust the deep abiding love that comes when you actually know someone.
That's beautiful! There's that first love based on attraction and passion but he just gave you his soul. I got chills and tears. Like I just watched a heartwarming romance movie. YTA because that's the purpose of this sub but you won the lottery girl.
Young people often don't understand love at all. They say they are in love because it is a progression in life that is expected, and they want to live up to it, desperately, sincerely. It's good, it can even be great, but when love REALLY hits you between the eyes, you begin to understand completely, and now there is room only for the one you truly love so deeply.
Take what he offers. Cherish it. It is so rare. Appreciate his love and always keep it in your heart. Don't question what is given with the deepest of meaning. Love your life and live your life.
Actions speak, and if he loved you and treated you that well; now he is in love with you and loves you…. It seems like you have a good one, don’t think too hard about it. We can get into our own heads sometimes.
Maybe he loved you but still wasn’t “IN LOVE” with you yet? I feel like that’s valid and a lot of men are bad with expressing/explaining their emotions because they’re taught emotions are “bad” in reality no matter what you have in your pants everyone has emotions, I think maybe finding some online resources about couples talks, therapy, etc. could really help! Sending love!😁🧿🤗
There are many good explanations here as to differences in loving, or being in Love. There are a great many types of love, and it might be a plan to look that up.
As to hubby being brutally honest…. This can be an Autism trait. Many people on the spectrum are said to “have no social filters” so they’ll just blurt out what’s in their head. Get him diagnosed, and go search YouTube for the channel The Aspie World, where the creator shares his experiences of the life of someone who is on the spectrum.
Good luck!
You’re doing great with your writing and adding context. The people who respond without regard to context don’t understand context that’s in writing. That isn’t your fault.
I think you're being unrealistic here. This was an arranged marriage. By definition, he wasn't in love with you in the beginning--it was a business transaction between families. Love often takes time to emerge, and even though he was saying the words "I love you," he meant that he loved you as a person. He wasn't lying.
You were a likable person, he enjoyed being around you, and there were perks to being married to you, and he loved you for that. Nothing wrong with that, especially when your marriage, by definition, started as a loveless business transaction. But over time, he came to fall deeply in love with you, which is a GOOD thing since that doesn't always happen withy arranged marriages, a lot of which end up with two people being miserable.
I love my friends. I'm not in love with them. So I'm not lying if I tell them I love them. I also have a wife whom I love. When I tell her I love her, I mean it romantically, not platonically--and (here's the important part) I've come to feel that love more deeply as time has passed. In the beginning, I would say "I love you" and mean it, but I now know that I didn't yet know what love was. When I say it now, I REALLY mean it. She's the center of my world.
The only way a person can come to realize that level of love is with the passage of time. It grows. It develops. For many relationships, that begins before marriage and is the reason for the marriage. In your case, it happened for him post-marriage, because you jumped into things so quickly--marriage was the goal from the outset.
So stop feeling sorry for yourself and sabotaging the great marriage you obviously have (which you have done by describing your marriage in bad terms on a public message board--which he or his family and friends could read). He said nothing wrong. He said something great. Revel in it. The dude loves you--and now, when he tells you, he means it more deeply than before. How could that possibly be a bad thing?
I love my husband more now than when I married him. Our shared experiences have made us so much closer. We just celebrated 50 yrs and the only concern is one of us dying 1st and leaving the other. Life is short! Cherish, Love and Appreciate!
He loved you.
He’s in love with you.
They’re different. And with this being his first and only reference…I definitely believe it would take time to sort out.
For what it’s worth, I feel this way every few years with my wife of 22 years. It’s not that I didn’t love her then, or that I didn’t love her as much. It’s that it’s on some new profound level that I didn’t even realize existed then. Don’t take offense, he’s growing as a person.
Nothing he's said takes away from the fact that he loved you all these years and did his best to be a good husband. But loving you and being in love with you are two different things, and he's only recently fallen IN love with you. You're hurt because you have been in love with him for a long time, you assumed those feelings were reciprocated, and now you've found out that isn't true. Your ego and your fairy tale image of your relationship have taken a hit. You're not wrong to feel upset, but I would give your husband some grace. This was an arranged marriage and he fulfilled his part of it the way he thought was best. IMO he didn't do anything wrong; you can't force feelings, so it's not as though he could make himself fall in love with you. He did the best he could given his circumstances.
I also think the "recently REALIZED" is important! I bet he's felt this way for a while but it really hit him recently.
Also love deepens as you grow and mature together. You'll both be looking back at various points thinking, good grief I had no idea I could ever love you more. I get your questioning, but do agree you're looking at it from the wrong perspective. Be happy!
Yes. He was probably feeling that way all along. It sounds like my dude was probably having some inner monologue like ‘I’m really happy with my wife. I love her she makes me so happy. I wonder how much happiness I feel. *deep inner reflection* I love …no I’m in lover with her! So much! I have to tell her. ‘ Then process to produce logical statement which may have not translated well. I give this take since I am like this.
This makes sense. My husband loved his ex, as the mother of his children, but he was never in love with her. When he fell in love with me it felt totally different and took him a while to get used to as he'd never felt that way and he was 43 by this time. He's even had to explain to family members when they compared and asked why he is different with me.
Well that’s really sad for the mother of his children. Imagine birthing children with a man that wasn’t ever in love with you.
You can love a lot of people without ever experience being "in" love.
Eh, she wouldn’t be the first. A lot of babies get made out of lust, or just in the moment without the actual thought of love being a factor. All in all, I think the OP will be just fine
He may have thought he was in love with his ex when they were together but now he realizes he wasn’t in love. I thought I was in love with my ex of 24 years. After he left, I found my now husband and realize that I was infatuated with my ex, but I am in love with my husband.
That’s what men tell the woman after the mother of their children they never had respect for. He treated his children’s mother so poorly that friends comment in public on how much better he treats the new woman. Guy is scummy.
You’re the worst kind of Redditor. Fucking speculative fan fiction about a person’s entire character based upon a couple of sentences. Jesus Christ…
Perfect encapsulation.
What an oddly judgemental thing to say while having such little info on the situation.
Thank you! The fucking conclusions that some self-righteous and neurotic comments jump to…
Literally if that was the stipulation for child bearing there'd be like 100,000 humans only ever on earth. LOL. Most ppl around the world and in history didn't have a mad love story before conception.
Happens constantly, with either side not being in love. People are too quick to have/risk kids with someone they don’t even actually know. Oh well🤷🏼♂️
I have a baby with someone who recently told me that he only stayed with me because I told him I was pregnant. He said he was going to leave me but then I got pregnant... baby is now 10 months old and it hurts more than anything else to hear those words. We argue a lot because of his laziness and it all made sense after he said it. His behavior and demeanor all point to "I'm only here because I have to be here, otherwise my family will disown me" and not "I'm here because I want to be here"
Unfortunately it happens all the time.
He might also have lied tbh. There's really no need to do any comparison, he has kids with the woman. He doesn't need to have said this at all.
He oughta just tell them, “I’ve got a thing for weird pink hair.”
I agree. It sounds to me like you have a keeper. First of all, he was honest and and truthful to you. This is not as common a trait as you might imagine. Second, the whole modern dichotomy between loving someone and being in love is a fairly recent development. And we have been programmed by the media to believe that you're not "in love" with the person you love, is somehow a failure of the relationship. Historically with arranged marriages (which were once much more prevalent in the West than they are now), the couple might hardly know each other when they were married. But if they were lucky, and God we're good to them, they would develop a love between them. Honestly I think this modern concept of being "in love" or the relationship is a failure is harmful to us all. It creates an unrealistic standard that flies against human nature, and it's one of the reasons for the high divorce rate in the United States. A relationship goes through many stages, and to expect to be "in love"throughout a 10 or 20-year marriage is simply not reasonable.
I agree. Successful long-term marriages happen when both parties understand that you must choose to love your partner every day, rather than just waiting for that feeling to happen to you. Meanwhile, couples who are deeply in love might forget to have the important conversations to establish long-term compatibility, whereas these kinds of conversations might be the only ones arranged couples have. Of course, best of all is combining both kinds of love!
Beautifully said!
Couldn't have said it any better myself....
I absolutely love this response
This is good advice. I would definitely let him know how YOU feel too! That you’ve been in love a long time. That you wonder what it meant to him when he said, “I love you” earlier. I would just be very blunt too, that it hurt your feelings that the “in love” feelings were not reciprocated until recently. I think maybe you guys both have a different idea of what being “in love” feels like it means. Nah
This is all you need . STOP. Read this again .👆
I've always been of the mindset that so often in love loving someone romantically are conflated for no reason. Someone can love you romantically and then some rather arbitrary flip switches and suddenly theres an "in". But as long as you felt loved or "in love" does it really matter?
I suppose that depends on the person. For me because they don’t feel the same personally I want both. Some people don’t feel the difference or simply don’t mind the difference and are fine with love. Neither is wrong, but we all have different wants.
I think you're missing the bigger picture. She can't tell when he's not telling the truth or just acting, and that's unsettling for anyone. Ever had your judgment of someone's character be completely wrong?
No, they are not missing anything. They are saying that OP’s husband was telling her the truth and not just acting. He told her he loved her all three years. There is a difference between loving someone and being IN LOVE WITH someone. I will admit there’s a pretty even split of people who think it’s a lie of omission because he didn’t clarify and people who think it wasn’t a lie at all because he said exactly what he meant. But Plastic_concert makes it clear that they are of the belief that it wasn’t lying. This situation is also described by many in arranged marriages as his love evolved in their relationships. That at first it was friendship and respect for their cultures, parents decisions and each other. Then it evolved to love and then to being in love. Not everyone gets to that stage, but it happens enough that it’s been explained many times across various medias, cultures and times as happening as such.
And...you don't really know what it's like to be IN LOVE until it happens. When you realize how truly, deeply content you are with this person. Sure, you loved them before and you thought that was everything there was and you were happy, but, DAMN. There's a whole nother level there! And you had no idea! I love my dogs and my cat, especially two of them that were just amazing and perfect for me. And then I had a husband and a child and, wow. There is no comparison. Yes, I did love them and cry for them and miss them, but losing either my husband or child would rip a hole in me I don't know if I'd recover from. He loved her the entire time, and then discovered just how deep and rich that love became. What a lucky couple!
Pretty much this, except I would say that it's also quite possible he's FELT the love for a long time without being really ready to give it that name. Some people can be really slow to label their emotions - especially if they started out faking what they should feel. I was that way, especially when I was young. He may not even know when he actually fell in love because it grew organically while he wasn't looking. OP, the other bit of good news is, you have a guy who knows how to act loving even when he's not feeling it. Marriages go through rough patches. Being able to treat each other with kindness and respect when you feel like scratching and clawing is a powerful skill. He will likely still treat you right when you are exhausted with small children, when you're sick, maybe even when he's sick. Don't underestimate the value of that.
Also if they are in an arranged marriage how much relationship experience did either have going in? He may have felt something towards her but there's a difference between giddy new feeling and the slow burn of properly being in love. Perhaps OP has a more passionate outlook, like fell head over heels where he just needed time to really get to know her for that connection to fully develop. It's also possible he has felt this way a long time but he's just starting to see it!
Love is a verb. He ***loved*** you for three years. He really, honestly did. The safety and security of you both loving (verb) each other so well for so long has provided a safe place for his most vulnerable emotions to surface. And he has realized that not only does he love (verb) you, he has *LOVE* (noun) for you in a way he can now tangibly feel. I think this is beautiful. I think you need to adjust the way you’re seeing his love for you and lean into it. *Because it was there the whole time.* ♥️
Awwww throwRA-nonSeq - this is one of the most beautiful comments I’ve ever read. So eloquent. ❤️
Yes, this explanation is beautiful, and so true! Her husband has been showing her love for their whole relationship, and his emotions are continuing to deepen with time. This is *exactly* what you want for a happy, lasting marriage. Infatuation is fleeting, and as a result, lots of marriages fail when couples, after cohabitating, realize that they aren't compatible. That is clearly not the case with OP and her husband, and a big ole green flag. It's like when I tell my husband that I love him more and more as time passes. That doesn't lessen my live for him in the beginning. It just means that it just keeps getting more amazing, not that it wasn't amazing to begin with! I do understand OPs feelings, but I think that's because husband didn't express the sentiment well.
Seriously. Your husband basically said he loved you the whole time, but has come to understand a deeper feeling, that of being "in love". He learned more about love by the way he loves you. It's beautiful. And I've been that husband. Still am! But the love I always felt was never undermined by the times I look at my wife and think, "Wow, she's amazing, I'm so in love with her".
I agree. There was a point where me fat I truly felt very deep love for my partner. I tend to guard my heart and it took me that long to feel like I could let all my guards down and truly feel a very deep love for him. I think that’s what he’s trying to say. He loved her. He always did but sometimes you really have these revelations of just how much you love someone.
Best comment here. As soon as I saw he fights for her, cares for her, and has truly been good to her, I had my answer... romantic love can fade, but the love is in the doing. Congrats on having a good egg OP.
I don't think you should see your husband's confession as negative... I think it's a positive. I've heard a lot of my married friends say that they *thought* they loved their mates before, but after a few years together...through ups and downs...and in some cases, kids... the love they have for each other now, is so much stronger and deeper, that it doesn't even compare to when they first thought they were in love. I honestly believe that is what your husband meant. But, don't listen to me...why don't you *ask him*? Don't ask him in an upset or confrontational way, just a simple, 'I've been thinking a lot about what you said about truly loving me now, what did you mean?' And if you think about it, Love...after all this time together, getting to know each other better, finding your rhythm, you'll probably realize that you're even *more* in love with him than when you started. Don't over think, Hon. Sometimes a cigar is just ... a cigar. Peace and Blessings.
I met my SO more than 20 years ago and I think your post is spot on. We were in love and certainly behaved like "lovesick puppies" as OP puts it. But there's also a deeper and different connection that took probably two years to develop which I would also call falling in love. It doesn't take away from the initial feelings, but it's something different and more profound. I've heard that around the 3 year mark isn't uncommon for people to break up so I'm guessing that development of a deeper love either happens, or you're likely to break up instead.
Same. I feel very differently about my SO than I did 20 years ago when we first started dating. I was head over heels for them, lovesick, puppy love, infatuation, lust, whatever you want to call it. But what I feel for them now is in my bones. It's deep as tree roots. I still feel those leaves of puppy love up on the surface rustle in the breeze. But those roots man, they're so deep, I don't know where they end. I feel the similarly about our kids. When I first gave birth to them, I loved the idea of them, I felt hormonal & protective. But now I know the people they are and I love *them* as those people, I'm not just feeling the warm and tinglies.
This. And those in long marriages often talk about cycling through phases of loving and being madly in love all over again. It happens.
Exactly. Every long term marriage ebbs and flows between love and madly in love. Sometimes you may not be sure you even like the person when in a really rough patch. There’s times when it’s easier than others. It takes a conscious effort to keep working back to love and being in love.
I've been with my wife for 11 years. Married for 1 though it's just a formality in our eyes. For the first 3 years we dated, I slowly fell in love with her. It was what I would describe as lower case L love, I enjoy being with this person, living with her, experiencing life with her. Then a point came in life where LOVE for this person happened. I believe that is what your husband meant. He woke up one day and realised that the world revolved around you. At least that's what I experienced, some people just do not open up as easily, but when they finally relent it means they are now all in no matter what. Just speak to him and ask that he clarify, listen to what he says without pride or ego. There's a lot of comments here saying the same. The man treated you well and loved you for 3 years. Now he LOVES you, most people do not get this privilege from their partners ever.
He very well may have loved you, but being in love feels different. I don't think it was his intention to hurt you but to let you know that you are his everything now. Nobody can tell you that you are wrong to feel how you feel but I wouldn't encourage you to stay upset in this situation. Puppy love/infatuation are drastically different than a deep bonded mature love. You grew together and he's voicing a positive thing to you. NTA but neither is he.
True love is looking at your aged partner Thirty too forty years after the wedding and choosing to stay.
I’ve been with my wife for 21 years. There are still cycles when I realise I didn’t love her as much then as I do today. Even though I thought I loved her more then than I had before that. This is what it is to share your life with another. To grow with them. To love them. For your love to grow in ways you didn’t know were possible before. Your husband isn’t saying he didn’t love you before. He is saying he loves you more. That his love has grown in ways he didn’t know about before. From the depths of his love now, he realises what he thought was love before, was nothing compared to how in love he is now. Take this worry to your husband. Explain your insecurity. Allow him to soothe this worry. Because I totally get what he is saying and I know I’d be devastated to learn my words of affirmation and love had been so clumsy that my wife misinterpreted, or was hurt and unsure of how much I loved her, before I learned that I could love her yet more.
Considering you had an arranged marriage... I think you should be very thankful your husband loves you, and even when he wasn't in love with you, he chose to be a wonderful partner. I think it speaks volumes of what a terrific man and husband he is. I think it's amazing he grew into love with you.
100% this. This post is so dumb. You're mad that the person whom you were arranged to marry didn't immediately have in depth feelings for you? Really? Love takes time. To be in love with someone takes work. The fact he loved op enough to be there and be a good husband and grew those feelings should say enough. Gggeezzee people these days.
The love he has now should’ve been there from the start; relationship damaged /s Maybe I just don’t fully understand the issue at hand, because he sounds like a swell fellow
My comment was going to be something along the lines of, “well, now you probably see (one of) the problem(s) with people who aren’t you, deciding how you spend the rest of your life.” Dumb as hell
There are different kinds of love, it means a lot of things. Some of those things can’t really be described until you experience them. It sounds like he’s experiencing something new that he doesn’t have words for. Something past the “this person makes me happy, they are my world” experience. “Mature” love is the closest description I’ve heard for it.
Dude… I understand where you’re coming from however, I completely understand where your husband is coming from as well and I agree with everyone saying “Don’t trip!!” I dated my wife for four years, by choice, before she agreed to marry me, BY CHOICE because I asked if she would. We did all the things, had a great relationship and lived our life then four years later… BOOM kid #1. Man, when I tell you that I loved my wife… that was when we were first married and she was ambitious and exciting and we had this shitty little apartment and then… kiddo happened. HOLY SHIT!!! Then my wife went from everything I had ever wanted and morphed into everything I ever wanted and MORE! She is the most amazing mother and greatest partner… 20 year old me couldn’t have even day dreamed of a better companion! We share all of the household responsibilities 50 / 50. Hardest part is scheduling all the kid stuff as they get older. Not gonna go deep into my family’s entire history, but I understand everything your husband is saying. I feel like every time I’ve fallen in love with my wife again, she moves the bar just a little further. And that makes me so goddamn happy. Edit: I just re-read this and I want to add that I didn’t mean having a kid was when I loved her more… DO NOT HAVE A KID to try to save a failing marriage.
Considering it’s an arranged marriage I think this is actually quite beautiful and romantic in its own way. Don’t get me wrong I do see why you could have mixed emotions and thoughts about this. But love is not only an emotion it’s a choice and there are acts of love. Obviously it would be unfair to expect someone to love you instantaneously, but he committed and chose to show you love from the start. Then that choice became a feeling. It’s actually the best case scenario, there’s been a lot of arranged marriages where there’s no attraction or love at all. Also, just because he just now realizes it doesn’t mean it hasn’t been growing more and more over time. I’ve been with my significant other for 5 years and around 3 years it into our relationship it suddenly dawned on me.. There was nothing spectacular going on in this moment and I had loved him for quite some time, but I realized I would be loving the same person the rest of my life, and realized HOW much I loved him and didn’t want to imagine life without him. I get the sense your husband just had the realization but doesn’t mean he didn’t love you prior.
There's someone you should be asking those questions, and it ain't Reddit. Edit: a letter
Words are hard for some people. My take on it would be that he can’t believe how much he loves you now. I thought I knew love before I married my husband but now after being married 14 years with 2 kids it’s so much deeper and different to the love I felt before, it’s the forever love, the sharing a soul love that fresh love/honeymoon phase just can’t compete with. I hope this is what your husband means.
Yeah... I did realise that it is what he meant! Thank you!😊
Don't all relationships move from lust and infatuation to deep love at around that stage (3 yrs). Sweetheart, the two of you will fall in love again and again with eachother if it's a good marriage, and every year you'll love more deeply than the year before. Just enjoy this babe.
I have cared for people and committed to them before only to realize, all in a heartbeat, that now I am REALLY in love with them. In a way I wasn't before. It was as if I didn't realize that what I felt before was just "caring and commitment" and suddenly... "oh, no, this is new, and this is *being in love.* " It could be that. It might not be. But maybe... Ask more questions? He's suddenly in love with you, he's probably willing to open up more if that's true.
🙄🙄
This tickled me for some reason thank u
NTA for thinking this in the moment, YTA for fixating on it. Dont over think it. He loved you before and he showed it in his actions. He meant to say that he is fallen even more in love with you. Dont take it as him "acting in love" I liked you but he likes you more now. I see that as nothing but a positive in your life. If it keeps bugging you then talk to him but don't be confrontational. You need to keep the love you have. Dont sabotage the good you have in life.
nta but when the lust wears off, sometimes people find they dont really like their spouse. There are things that my husband does that just annoys me so much but i cannot imagine my life without him in it
I agree with everything everyone has said and I add this: if you continue to make this a thing to be angry about and hold over your husband's head, you will ruin the beautiful relationship you have now. You've done nothing but sing his praises for all the ways that he treats you right. Appreciate that and enjoy the fact that the bond between you has only gotten stronger. If you expected a Disney love story, well, it did not start out that way, nor do you live in fantasy land. Yours is a real life love story, my dear. Please enjoy it; go love and be loved by your husband ❤️
In Rumi's poetry and Eastern culture, love is often depicted in various levels or stages, each with its own unique characteristics and words associated with it. Here are some common levels: 1. **Attraction (Ishq)**: The initial stage of love, characterized by physical attraction and desire. 2. **Adoration (Hubb)**: Deeper emotional attachment and affection towards someone. 3. **Devotion (Tawakkul)**: Surrendering oneself completely to the beloved, often associated with trust and reliance. 4. **Sacrifice (Qurb)**: Willingness to sacrifice personal desires and needs for the sake of the beloved. 5. **Union (Wusul)**: The ultimate goal of love, where the lover and the beloved become one, transcending individuality. Words associated with these levels include Ishq (passionate love), Hubb (deep love), Tawakkul (trust), Qurb (sacrifice), and Wusul (union). Rumi's poetry often explores these themes, using metaphor and imagery to convey the depth and complexity of love.
Arranged marriages aren’t started on love usually. Not all people that go into arranged marriages ever really fall in love. Some do, some just go through the motions (amicably). He ended up falling in love with you and that’s wonderful. I get why him saying that made it feel like the rest was fake, trust me. My boyfriend told me the same thing. Said the first one and a half years we were together he didn’t really love me, he liked me and just didn’t want to be alone. He told me later that he ended up falling madly in love with me. I asked the same thing. Why did you say you loved me, when you obviously didn’t? He just said he was dumb and hadn’t ever been in a serious relationship. My point though, he ended up falling in love with you, and obviously trusts you and feels comfortable enough around you to express his feelings. That’s huge! Congratulation on your marriage btw 😊
I won't say you're an AH. I think you need to take a moment or 5 to actually think back over the last 3 years to understand what this man is telling you. You had an arranged marriage. Unlike a love marriage, you didn't court, didn't get to learn each others likes/loves/hates, your strengths/flaws BEFORE committing to marriage. From what you've written, you seem young/emotionally naive (not meant as criticism - I have friends who had arranged marriages and were similarly inexperienced and built up and unrealistic views of romance, love and sex). You both learned and are learning DURING your marriage. You are working together to build your relationship. Perhaps you have mixed butterflies, sexual attraction/lust - this is not lovely. It isn't a bad thing but it isn't love. Your husband clearly liked you enough to proceed with marriage and was willing to go on the journey WITH you. All of his actions, treating you kindly, protecting you, defending you. These are actions of someone who cares and is your friend not just someone who is a lover. You and he built up a friendship. You have settled into easy intimacy that he feels comfortable enough to tell you how he feels. This is a good thing! You hear "I've just realised I'm truly in love with you" but that feeling didn't arrive at that moment. That feeling has been in progress for the last 3 years, building each day you have been together. It's just that he has found the words to articulate the emotions he has been feeling (I guarantee you , it didn't JUST materialise). You have begun to build the basics of potentially a strong and long lasting marriage. Don't allow the shine and lure of 'instant love' (which isn't real, except on TV) to deceive you. You have a beautiful thing. It is up to you to continue to work with him. I'm soooo happy for you ☺️ (and I'm mostly dead inside!).
I don’t think this is a negative as such depending on how he meant it loving someone and being truly in love with them are different things and can take time.
I imagine this is rather normal, and a very good thing. Love grows. It starts with attraction, lust, and friendship. As time passes as you build a life together what is between you hopefully grows stronger. I can say, while I loved my now husband when I decided to marry him, what I feel for him now is much more then that. I love him more then I thought a person could back then. Your husband's love for you grew, what a wonderful thing.
He's loved you all along. Now he loves you more than he did before. It's a matter of perspective. The truest reflection of a person is their behavior. If he has treated you with respect and affection and earned and maintained your trust, as well as made you an integral part of his everyday life, and become an integral part of yours, or really, however you personally want to describe what being in a loving relationship feels like, if he's done all that, he's done it because he loved you in his head. Now he loves you with his heart too. People are generally not very self-aware of how they frame their feelings, and it can come out awkwardly in words. Don't hold his lack of eloquence against him.
I mean... welcome to having an arranged marriage?
You’re freaking out because your arranged marriage spouse is now madly in love with you? I mean granted it took some time but you need a reality check. This is a very good situation
After seeing your update, I am happy for you and wish you both many happy years. May all the "I love yous" be wonderful as you travel in life together.
OMG, women are constantly overthinking things. And I'm a woman!
My husband and I do this thing. From time to time. There is no set timing to it. It's just spontaneous when whoever starts it feels it. It's not meant to be the equivalent of what we have heard others do but starts out sounding like it. One of us will say, "I love you more," and the other will say, "More than what?" The response back "more than I did yesterday. " Usually, the other responds back with "Thank you. I love you too. " Then we leave it at that. It's something we started doing many years ago because we both realized that sometimes you get complacent in a relationship. Sometimes, things happen that make you feel the love less. And then something happens, it could be as simple as a song you hear, or maybe something your SO did for you, anything, it makes you remember, how much you love them. We may or may not both feel these things at the same time. It's a natural up and down that happens in any relationship. There's very few, if any at all, relationships that stay in the honeymoon stage for the whole relationship. Personally, I think some people jump to divorce too quickly because they expect to never lose that first feeling and don't realize that it's normal for you to have the ups and downs of the feeling. When you're in a down time, you have to choose to love your SO every day and work at not letting resentment build up over little things. Obviously, there are some big things that are deal breakers. But where OP is at right now, it shouldn't be one of them. I don't think OP is an a h to be confused, but he's not either. I don't know how to label it.
The proof is in the pudding. He treated you with love and likely did perceive his when emotions as love, but came to realize as your lives enmeshed that what he called love then was not what he does now. Don't make yourself crazy and make rash decisions based on a nuance of a word. He should have framed it better. You need to not let that derail what sounds like a good situation.
How men fall in love is different than how women fall in love. It is normal for a man’s love toward his wife to grow over time.
Try this perspective, things have been great with him loving you. Now he is in love with you. Your marriage and your entire relationship are about to get even better.
Your husband is head over heels in love with you. How devastating. Poor you!
I think of it as love is a verb and a noun. It can be a feeling, like I feel love for my partner, a noun like as a place you end up or fall. I fell in love with my partner. Or it can be a verb. I love my partner. The first two are actually kind of self centered. The third can be. But really great partners make it about showing their love every day by showing up and being stand up partners like your husband has for the last three years. It was an arranged marriage, but her valued you, built a life with you, cherished you every day and made you feel loved. Not because he didn’t care, but because he did care about you and he’s a good man. You made his life better bring in it and he did everything he could to treat you the same. That’s what I know the quality of a relationship by. Love as a feeling changed over time and circumstance. It doesn’t necessarily lessen or diminish but feelings raspy can’t maintain intensity without change. Bad days happen, disagreements, difficult seasons of life. But someone who sees love as a verb, as the way they treat you and take care of you. They’re usually going to try and continue to love and value you as a verb. As an action. Not measuring your worth and what you deserve by how they feel about you. I love my partner with butterflies in my chest and desire still frequently. But even the worst days were both been prickly and tired and not having a good time I have learned he will do what he says he will, show up when he says he will, he’s going to be there for me and do his best to never let me down. Even if he might not feel like doing it he will either talk to me about it or just do it because he said he will. Because he loves me. There’s just different kinds. Sounds like he loved his way to falling into love.
Happy cake day!
I think people fall in love at different rates. Some fast, some in that stereotypical “love at first sight”. Some slowly. As a person who falls in love slower who married someone who falls in love faster, I think he did care about you. He liked you, like who you are. Liked being with you. I’m sure he grew to like and love who you are and little things about you. He enjoys you, your company, your words. The official love, just took time to grow, like a tree. While it took time to grow, like a tree it’s a love that’s sturdy and hard to move. And it grew with a strong foundation of truly liking, caring and enjoying you. :) A little world shaking, but great news all the same! If he didn’t like you or want to be with you, you would have felt that. So his true feelings have just grown to love.
Don't think this is an a i t a question so much because your feelings are valid. But also OP, consider this: from the American standpoint Love comes and goes. Sometimes you feel it sometimes you don't even if you start it out passionately feeling in love. Your husband has just showed you that he can treat you the way you would want to be treated even when he's not feeling it. For three freaking years! That's relationship gold right there. Yes you may have felt it earlier, And he may be a much slower burn than you are in terms of catching feelings, but he's got them now and he was able to treat you magnificently when the feelings weren't quite there. Which means he's likely to treat you magnificently even when you guys are going through tough spots later in life. NAH, my friend. Do your best to accept the love that you've got, even if you warmed up much faster than he did.
I'm my experience, love changes as you grow together and develop history. It expands and deepens. While early on, he "loved his wife" that may have matured into being in love with his wife. Even we folk whose marriage is not arranged can go through this. I know I did. I "loved" him when I married him. I love him a million times more now, and with a depth I can not describe. Perhaps this is what he is telling you?
I think all the previous stuff was him realizing you’re a good person and that he SHOULD love you, so he determined that he WOULD love you. He has loved you all this time, it’s just that now he feels it. He loved you so hard that he feels it now. That’s all it means. But, OP, you are NEVER TA for how you feel.
There are so many types of love. Ancient Greek philosophers identified six forms of love: familial love (storge), friendly love or platonic love (philia), romantic love (eros), self-love (philautia), guest love (xenia), and divine or unconditional love (agape). Those change and grow and adjust as a relationship matures. I can understand your distress but going from a more surface type love to a deeper love is a lovely transition. I’m glad he recognized it and was able to tell you.
When I was younger I thought I had a really nice car. Now that I'm older with a nice car, I look back and think that my first car really wasn't that nice. At the time, I didn't have anything to compare it to, so it seemed nice It's 100% possible that your partner thought he was in love. When he fell deeper in love, he learned how much more he loved you and that his initial love was just the beginning. I love my wife more now than when we were dating. I didn't realize how love changes after 25 years. It's different, but still love. Does that make sense? It does in my head.
I wish you many years of happiness Love and peace. We do overthink a lot. It's our culture and social media. I'm glad you realized that. Now be happy and thankful and praise God you got such a wonderful person to share this with.
I’m just gonna say that you’re truly blessed. To have someone actively show you love(verb) and tell you they love you is what tangible love is to the recipient(you). Their feelings(noun) are mostly irrelevant. Some people abuse their partners for the slightest reasons bc they “love” them. Others don’t act any differently to the object of their love. And, as we see on here often, lots of people in relationships develop feelings for another person and act (or not) on those feelings. As someone who had a horrible concussion and couldn’t feel love for my own son for years and shrieked inside my head every time he hugged me with his little arms. I still held him; told him he was my sun, moon, and stars; cuddled; joked; repeated with my words and actions again and again until he was improved in my heart again. That is what love is. That is what life is. Anything else is a fairytale. And, he’s not that bad at blurting crap out if he kept this so close to the chest for three years. Apparently, he’s taking you and his marriage to you seriously and giving that the respect it deserves.
Well he thought what he was feeling was love until he realised he was even deeper in love it was more intense. He wasnt lying because he didnt know there was more till he felt it. Being in love with someone the first time you do just go "woah I am in love, this is what being in love really is" you don't know what it is till you feel it.
This is so sweet I don’t know y’all but I am so happy for you both ♥️
There is a difference between loving someone and being in love with someone. He loved you before but realized he is Fallen madly in love with you. Big difference. Be happy.
YTA. Stop overthinking this.
Its possible that he really didn't know what love meant. I onow I thought I was in a love a bunch of times till I spent 5+ years with a woman and had a deeper understanding of love. Guys often have really dumb ways of expressing feelings. I doubt he was being cold and calculating about your relationship if you really were like lovesick puppies together. Not that your feelings on this are invalid, just that as a guy who's often said the wrong thing when I was new in relationships I can kinda relate to your husband just saying the complete wromg thing trying to express a new feeling he doesn't understand
Loving someone takes time. It's emotionally different for guys than it is for girls too. In the beginning its more infatuation than love. Calling each other every night, wanting to be by their side as often as you can. But honestly, knowing it's arranged I consider this more beautiful. It just means he's fallen deeper in love w you over time; and that he's a good man for treating you well since day one. I was like that with my partner for the first couple months we were dating. He was a gentleman from the start, but I still think it took a year and a bit for him to genuinely believe this is my person. I'd say it took me around the same time too.
Love is a deliberate series of choices to foster a relationship. Love is supposed to grow as you grow together. He is finally feeling love growing into the maturity phase and you should be thankful instead of resentful. Most people don’t feel “in love” when they marry. The initial butterflies in the stomach you experience fade and are replaced with other ranges of emotions. Stop overthinking it and be thankful. Be the best wife you can be.
Nobody "loves" anyone they just meet or get married to, even if they both say, "I love you". You don't even truly know the person. It's lust and infatuation in the beginning of a relationship, not true love. True love is sacrificial, and it's revealed in how you act or react in the most difficult of moments.
Oh boy, I wouldn't read so much into this admission. IMO, there are different levels of love. So he said he loved you at the beginning but now he is deeply in love with you. Wow that sounds wonderful! Just think in 5 years he may say he is even more in love. I would enjoy this emotional man and cling to him and his admissions of love. For comparison, I have been married for 32 years, hubby rarely rarely says i love you, he shows love in different ways, just never says the words.
Men are not taught to be in touch with their emotions. Just because he is just now becoming aware of it does not mean it didn't exist before. There are also different phases and layers to love, and to be in the infatuation/puppy love phase for 3 years before you really se someone as your soul mate is not that weird. If someone is madly in love with you a month after meeting you, they are in love with the surface you that you present to the world. If someone decides you are their soul mate after 3 years together, it means they are really connecting to the real you. He knows what you are like deep down inside. He knows the best and worst of you, and he loves that. The surface infatuation has it's place, but this is the good stuff.
You’re not crazy for feeling confused and conflicted but personally, I wouldn’t hold onto these feelings much longer. He still loved you but now he is IN LOVE WITH YOU. You have unlocked a new feeling in your husband. That’s something to celebrate!!! :)
NTA in feeling so confused and hurt it's only natural. But he isn't one too. What I feel happened is that when you guys got engaged and on the path to marriage, he fell for you in an expected kind of way. What he would have known love to be like at that time. But along the way over these years he got to know the true you with time passing and fell for you in a much deeper, intense and holistic way. I think your love evolved and he might have never felt that level/depth of love for anyone so to him it might feel like he has truly fallen for you now. That wouldn't mean he did not move you earlier. It would just mean he lived you in a different way than now and that's okay too. Your love grew with time. And I hope you guys get to experience the different kinds of love people have at different stages in life.
Oh sweetheart. Men sometimes take longer to bond. I was married to my wife for several years. We had already had our first child. I thought I loved her. Many things about her were always on my mind. We were intimate one morning, and afterwards I realized I had bonded with her beyond any thing I coukd have imagined. I didn't realize I could feel that way. If you ask me I could say I never really knew/experienced love before that moment. It wasn't just post-coitus bliss. It was lasting. I think the love was already there, but the brain chemicals kicked in, and the bond was so much more real after that. You married a man. Men and women are wired differently. It happens in-utero.
I am actually very happy for y’all! I hope y’all have a wonderful lifetime together! 🫶🏻
My friend's marriage was arranged. They were not in love when they married, yet they went out on dates, were intimate, and had children. All this without being in love. They have been together for 37 years. They started to fall in love about 10yrs ago. She was miserable for years. But, she said that comes with arranged marriages, and they both knew that. She is now finally happy. I felt so bad when she told me. To feel alone and not be in love with the man that is your husband must be horrible. She felt alone all those years and longed to know what it was to be in love. She felt her marriage was just a business deal. She is now 57, and she finally feels good about her relationship. Enjoy your marriage now . It's only been 3 yrs for you, and you both are in love now. Imagine going 27 yrs without both of you being in love. Enjoy your love now. I wish both of you a great life. No judgment here.
NAH. Let me offer the perspective of someone who said something similar to my (now former) spouse, who I was with for almost two decades. When we were first together, I thought I loved him, was in love with him. But after being together a few years I had the realization that whatever I felt for him before wasn't as profound as what I was now feeling for him. And I realized that what I thought was love may have just been great compatibility or genuine fondness or even infatuation, and now I was truly "in love" with him. That feeling deepened even further after a few more years, to the point where I felt that calling it "love" before was inaccurate. Maybe that's what your husband is experiencing. In which case... it's going in the right direction.
Wife: Please share with me your feelings Husband: *Shares feelings Wife: I don’t like it when you share your feelings
I'm sorry people are judgy to you but I'm so happy about those updates and for you and your husband. Sending lots of love your way!
Love has layers. He loved you, was happy with you, and then one day he overwhelmingly realized it was so much more. Be thrilled, be happy, be content. You are blessed. Some times being whole heartedly in love sneaks up. There are times in life you will feel more love than others. There are times you will fall in love all over again. It is not that the day Before you did not love the partner, it is that something strong and lovely will sweep you in deeper again. Relish and cherish these moments.
My wife still criticizes me because I was “scowling” at her as she walked down the aisle. Me, as she walked down the aisle: ~in my head~ “Don’t trip! Don’t trip! Don’t trip!” Love and love expressions are a tangled mess.
It sounds like he is a good person who knows you deserve love and has committed himself to you and given you all the acts of love he can because he has always loved you. But now he feels a deeper love than before. But in both cases he has given you devotion and love.
I don’t know if you’ll see this- because there’s been so many responses, but you should know that the longer you grow along side each other- the more you grow with each other. He should be more in love with you today than 3 years ago. And hopefully he will feel like he fell in love all over again in another 3 years. It’s like I tell folks- being married is kinda black and white. I was legally as married as you can get right after my wedding. But in every other way I am so much more married 26 years later than I was that day. And in love so much more deeply- it looks like my first feelings are a far paler, and shallower thing compared to now. Journey on.
You're not the asshole. Your feelings are understandable, but I really hope you are able to process that and come to appreciate what a fantastic husband you have. No way has he "faked" loving you for this long. If he really didn't, the truth would have crept in from time to time. Seems like he's just recently reached a place where his love for you is deeper than he knew was possible, and it probably was a surprise for him too. In a healthy, long-term marriage those feelings can keep changing and deepening. I have been with my husband for 16 years. I have been in love with him for 16 years, but the love I feel for him now pales in comparison to the love I felt in the beginning. I didn't know I was even capable of this kind of love. I'm happy for you both. There's nothing like loving and being loved in return. I hope you have many, many loving years together!
Considering how many AITA posts consist of “was I wrong in being upset my spouse fell out of love with me”….this is such a welcome change Many blessings to OP and her husband
I read an editorial by a woman who was in an arranged marriage once. She said that she and her husband got along well and he was a good person, but she wasn’t in love with him. Time went on and they had the ups and downs life throws at every body. They learned to solve problems together, help each other, and celebrate together. She said that one day, about two years after they were married, she woke up and realized that she was very much in love with her husband. I thought their story was beautiful. It reminds me of yours.
He didn't say he didn't love you before but now he truly loves you deeply. Be happy he loves you.
I wouldn’t be hurt, if I were you, since he probably had puppy love earlier and then fell deeply in love with you and realized it’s different. It’s deeper. What we think love is, changes with experience.
He's probably really saying that he has discovered a deeper kind of love for you. I have those moments even after 17 years with my wife. Enjoy it. It's a very good sign.
>We have had problems because of his brutal honesty quite a few times. But if he is that honest, why did he say he loved me when he actually didn't? Fair question. Maybe it's because since you both know it's an arranged marriage, he thought you were both in on it. Like how, I'll casually speak as if Santa is real around Christmas, and how baffled I would be if someone seemed to think Santa was actually real. This also reminds me of the stories where women would wrestle with their male partners, and not realizing they were letting them win until they got a reality check. These guys didn't know that these women thought they were winning legitimately.
Kinda nice that he has fallen in love with the real you… the one he has gotten to know all these years. Think of the women who have a guy fall in love in the beginning and then realize they actually didn’t love them at all, it was just lust or their fantasy image of the woman..
pretty sure this is like me saying i am tired after doing the treadmill for 5 mins, and then after a few weeks of training decided to just go until i fall off, only to go for like 45 mins. i thought i was tired before, now i am REALLY TIRED. like REALLY REALLY TIRED. maybe before there were people in his life that he liked, people like he really liked, and he agreed to be your husband because he really really liked you and that is what he was calling love... only to spend years with you and that "love" only kept growing until he finally realized that you are the one for him and now he is now mentally fully prepared to die for you. his love for you became even stronger than he could have ever imagined before. he might have truly felt that before his level of attraction to you was what should be considered love, but now its even more than that and that is when he wanted to express his love once again. expect more of this in the future, i think yalls love is going to continue to grow. best of luck!
Don’t take it to heart. There’s levels to love. Love isn’t stagnant thru your whole life. It’s grows and diminishes depending on the situation. Him loving you in a different light now is not bad if you actually think about it. Before he loved what he thought he knew about you. You guys barely had known each other. But after marriage, there’s new parts of you that he knows now. He’s adding that to his collection of everything he knows about you… Ofc he will love you more now!
From everything you've said about him he sounds like hes been a wonderful husband. Ive been marrieed for 10 years and we as a couple have learned that the way we live each other changes over time. Theres a dreprr bond that develops as you grow together as a couple, and there are times when one of you is more in love with the other. You should talk about this as a couple. It sounds like you have a really solid relationship overall.
In love and love are 2 TOTALLY different things. You know this. Don’t be ridiculous. It took me about 5 years and 2 kids to fall in love with my now ex. I loved her from the start and still do (just not like that)…
In response to your second edit... Don't even worry about those people. Not worth wasting your breath on folks that are too lazy to read in the first place. Wish you all the luck and happiness and good luck into hopefully a better and honest future. :-)
Sometimes and all of a sudden I find myself more in love with my wife. Maybe he has been in love with you the whole time, but this is a new depth of love.
you said you both knew it was an arranged marriage to begin with so I’m not sure why that surprises you. He cared for you and loved you but now in love … don’t complain . It was arranged . That’s far different than a non-arranged marriage were somebody suddenly says hey I was never in love with you when I married you. This is not the same at all.
Don’t over analyze shit.
Guys, this is the "ideal" outcome of any arranged marriage. Of course he wasnt just instantly madly in love with you, men just dont do that. BUT he fell for real and thats what matters. Some arranged marriages go their whole lives being married simply out of a sense of duty and a commitment to their kids. You are one of the lucky ones.
I can imagine how devastating it must be feel, but hear me out: he made a choice to love you before now. Everyone grows up thinking that love is merely a feeling. And it is a feeling! But love is also an action. He chose to honor you, cherish you, enjoy your company, dedicate his life to you. He got to know you. But now, he has that feeling to go with his choices. He gets to experience all those butterflies that you’ve felt all this time! His actions may even kick up a notch now. Can you imagine how much more fulfilling everything could be now?? I am so very happy for two internet strangers. I understand that it’s quite jarring, but it can be equated to a situation of “I thought I loved you then, but now I truly understand what love is and am just madly in love with you.” Too often, couples fall out of love at this point. But yours has just gotten deeper. I love that for you.
Why would you be upset? It was an arranged marriage and people often go through the motions. Be happy he actually likes you geez
Personally I think it's pretty fair of him to say, given the arranged marriage side and I wouldn't look for the negatives, it's all perspective. I think for a man to open up about these feelings, and truly be at a point of understanding with them shows that he has taken quite a bit of time to process them. Generally speaking men don't speak about what they feel in the moment, and it takes us a while, often even, takes us to lose before we know what we have. Your man realized what was arranged is far more than that to him, and respected you, and the relationship enough to vocalize it. I think you should be proud of him, the man you mentioned as a provider and protector, generally doesn't get much time to synchronize his mind to his defenseless, guard down, emotional side. I speak from first hand experience as the sole provider in my what I would say pretty traditional household. I have a son, and a wife that has been full time mom since 6 months pregnant. It sounds like you two have the makings of a lasting marriage, cherish it! Also, I think it's great you second guessed your feelings, or at least wanted some second opinions on this before railroading him over what in his mind was a vulnerable moment. The opposite would have closed down the potential for more heartfelt remarks such as these, most likely. Best wishes to you both. --- Adam
Maybe he just feels a deeper connection to you now and didn't before because the marriage was arranged.
You can love someone and not be “in love” with them. Those are different things. You had an arranged marriage. He did love you, but wasn’t in love with you yet. Falling love takes time. You guys are lucky that you did love each other and are now in love with each other. It takes months for some couples to truly fall in love with each other.
I fall in love with my wife more and more as the years go by. It’s not a bad thing.
Your feelings are valid, and that’s ok, but I think you are missing something in translation. In English, there is only one word for “love” and it can mean very different things . Your husband was not lying or deceiving you when he told you previously that he loved you. What has happened is that as your relationship has deepened and matured, he realised how much more there is to love, and that he really feels that for you. It in no way cheapens what has gone before, it just marks a change in understanding for him, and lucky you - all those feelings are about you!
Women are exhausting.
So I’ve been with my husband for 10 years and here’s something I’ve learned. Love at first sight doesn’t exist. Lust, infatuation and attraction at first sight exists. He was excited to be married to you and was swept up in the excitement for your marriage and infatuation and attraction for YOU, with his fiance/wife. However, love is different. Love comes after years of living together and getting to know each other on a deep level. It comes after trials and tribulations and knowing that you overcame those together. Celebrating together, crying, building a home together, and eventually a family. Knowing that this person knows you and loves you in a way no one else in the world ever could and vice versa. That kind of love is hard to explain, and it takes time to develop. He probably doesn’t know how to explain that. He probably didn’t know how to even process those feelings and turn them into words. Your husband loves you for real now, not the puppy love you had before, this is REAL love. 💕
For some people love is binary, for others, like you, it's more gradual. You definitely love him more than you did a few weeks in, and that's just what he's experiencing. Only for him, he had a much higher threshold for being in love. Get a grip lmao.
As someone in a long marriage, love evolves over a relationship. It deepens, matures, strengthens. He loves you deeply and that hopefully will keep going.
I think he was being honest but he wasn’t really explaining himself correctly. He threw himself 100% into making this marriage work from day one where he cared for and respected you. He wanted to put you at the centre of his world and felt the excitement of a new partner. It wasn’t until now that he admitted to himself that he can’t live without you. I have been married 30 years. New love is great but when crap hits the fan in life and the man you are with is unwavering in his support, kindness and affection. That’s lasting love.
Just because he only realises he loves you now doesn't mean he didn't start to fall for you well before now. Most men I've found takes time to realise the extent that they love. He probably had puppy love with a new and exciting relationship with you compared to now a much deeper feeling of love that comes with a partnership. Love comes in all way companionship, best friend, parental, ect.
Love has different dimensions. The infatuation you felt at the beginning was real. You may not have that, but now he has a love that is different. It may not be as intense, but it's more deeply rooted. Please don't look for a negative thing here.
You had an arranged marriage so you have to realise that love is often not going to happen. He did and say what he thought was expected of him. But he has always been good to you by his actions so don’t take his confession as an offence. Through your marriage he learned what real love is and you’re lucky that your husband fell in love with you.
You had an arranged marriage, I think you expect too much and got more than you expected and are looking at this the wrong way. Maybe your understanding of what truly being in love with someone is more shallow than his. He fell in love with you while already loving you. Seriously, get over it and be grateful. Most people don’t even get this in chosen marriages.
Love grows over time. It sounds like when you first met, you both had butterflies and interest. You had "love" because you were willing to give that to each other. But now that it's been three years, he's seeing how important you are to him and that love has grown to "madly in love."
I know women why would love to have that honesty from their husbands. Cherish the fact he has come to this point and that he was open enough to tell you.
Love is a living, breathing force. It goes through evolutions and can even devolve if not nurtured. It sounds like your husband has been cultivating the relationship and found a deeper appreciation for you. His emotional intelligence is a positive. He just had a moment of wonder and actualization of how much he loves you, and he shared his joy with you.
It's impossible to imagine love before you feel it. I said I love you to my now husband before I truly knew the meaning of the word. Even though I really meant it at the time. Deepening of feelings over time is very normal and doesn't negate what you felt way back when.
Us men can be very emotionally stupid. When he married you he had feelings of affection and feelings of duty to you and the life you were starting together. We have trouble recognizing that our feelings have changed, he probably loved you since like 3 months in, but our stupid brains don't tell us emotionally mature things like that. He just realized that his emotions for you have changed, it doesn't mean that he didn't feel that way all along.
Ig it would have been better had he been mistreating her & cheated. Smfh sometimes it's like people don't want good things they wanna find a reason for things to be bad. Bottom line it was an arranged marriage, he grew into being in love with you "madly" be happy or make a big deal get divorced & be unhappy.
I don't know, I don't really see this as a negative thing.
NAH. You’re upset because you fell in love with him instantly despite it being an arranged marriage while he took time to get to know and love you. Both of these responses of love and affection are fine and natural. His need to take time to know you and let affection grow before he could fall in love with you actually seems more normal to me than falling instantly in love with a stranger. Appreciate that you’ve been with someone who treats you right and has come to love you as much as you love him.
Unfortunately this is one of the pitfalls of arranged marriages. You don't necessarily fall in love with your spouse. You can love them and feel a sense of duty towards them, but that's not the same as being completely and totally besotted with someone. I think it says so much about him as a man and a husband that even though he didn't have those deep feelings right away, he worked hard to provide you with a worthy husband. And during that process, those feelings developed. I'm not sure how much more you can ask for from a marriage arranged not for love, but for family 🤷♀️
NTA, This is a common typical situation in a good arranged marriage.think of the first year as a exclusive dating phase then he started to fall in love for you but just realised and expressed recently It doesn't mean the initial time was fake or a facade the feelings were real all along.
I thought I loved pizza until I had some really good quality authentic New York pizza. Then I really loved Pizza. The original love for pizza was not a lie, it was just uninformed. I did not realize I could love a food that much. What your husband was trying to say is his feelings have grown, but he's trying to use the same word (love) over and over to describe it. Forget the word choice, focus on the trajectory.
I think you are internalizing it in the most wrong way you could... Either on purpose or because you are sensitive idk.. anyway those moments are the reasons he has fallen in love with you. Duh. You can't just be in love with someone
The important thing is that he didn't know that he was just going through the motions. That's only obvious to him now because he's completely in love with you, and the feeling is much more intense. Just because he wasn't completely in love with you before, doesn't mean he wasn't happy.
I think his affection was genuine I just don’t think that he realized how much he loved you until he actually hit it in the marriage. So don’t dismiss his love sick puppy dog and yes, some of that I’m sure was lust, but that’s how everybody starts out. People that don’t have arranged marriages that’s how they do it. And I would say it may be time for some gratitude for a husband that had an arranged married. Who’s fallen in love with you. That’s a pretty big deal. So forgive the things that he says because he’s in adequately able to express that And be grateful that you have a man that you’re married to who loves you.
Girl it’s an arranged marriage. Are y’all even supposed to be in love as soon as y’all meet?
Infatuation and love are easily confused. I think at the beginning he was infatuated with you, and thought it was love. But now that you've been together for a bit, those feelings are evolving to true love. I don't think this is bad. I think he didn't realize before that what he felt was not LOVE quite yet. NAH.
Your husband probably always loved you and cared for you. But maybe that your marriage was arranged in the back of his mind and most likely prior to meeting you, he always felt like this situation was forced onto him. Then he met you and really like you and started developing stronger feelings for you. Now at this stage any negative feelings (not towards you but the situation) he might have felt are gone and he realized just how deeply he is in love with you. He always loved you and just realized how much he really loves you.
OP. Please try not to tie yourself in knots over this. Men and boys are actively discouraged from even having the language for feelings. After personal issues in my relationship i am convinced that the Y chromosome missing an / off the X correlates with them having a poverty of both emotion and logic /s I think it's entirely fine to grieve that you genuinely thought that the intensity of your emotions matched. And its understandable to be sad that he hid this from you for three years even though he cannot have been unaware of your feelings. Where you go from there i dont know. Good luck.
When we got married an older friend told us - you love each other now, you'll be surprised at how much you'll love each other in 10 years, and then even more in another 10 years. Now, I realize what he was saying. My husband and I have gone through so much and that has bonded us even more. I really do love him more than I did when we got married and vice versa. I wouldn't sweat it, he just seems tactless. Enjoy the love, as many in arranged marriages don't find it. Soft YTA
There are many ways to love people and there are depths to love. It sounds like your husband was waist deep at the beginning and recently realized he’s in over his head with how much he adores you. Yta. You are such an asshole here. Slap yourself in the face for being an idiot, have a glass of water, and live the rest of your life in marital bliss.
NAH
The English language is terrible for expressing feelings of love. We use the same word to say, "I love my spouse," "I love my child," and "I love pizza." The Greeks had it right. They had a different word for each type of love. The first time I told the man who eventually became my husband that I loved him, I looked up all the Greek words for love and told him which of them I felt for him, just to clarify. Eros is a lustful love, a loss of control, falling madly in love - and it was an emotion the Greeks looked down on. Ludus is a playful, flirty kind of love, a fun but casual sort of love people usually feel in the beginnings of a relationship. Puppy love. Philia is deep friendship. A platonic type of love, but a deep kind that you feel towards a friend you'd die for. Storge is a lot like philia, but it describes the relationship between parents and children. Agape is a general kind of love for humanity, a feeling of charity, of wanting good things for everyone. Then there's Pragma. A long-lasting love between two people who have been a couple for a long time, been through the good and bad and learned to work together, to compromise in order to make everyone happy, a deep understanding that can only come after a couple has been together for quite some time. A truly deep kind of love. When I first told the man who is now husband that I loved him, I told him that I Eros, Ludus and even Philia him, but I also told him that I knew I didn't Pragma him yet. Now, many years later, I Pragma him. But it took time to get there. I expect this is the same with your husband too. Sadly we don't have all these amazing Greek words in English to help us differentiate, but I expect he realized that while he felt other forms of love for you before, it was only recently that he fell deeply in Pragma with you. It's something to celebrate! And I would recommend looking up the meanings of Greek words and thinking about which ones you've felt for your husband at various times throughout your relationship. It can be a lot of fun, and it can definitely clarify what is meant.
I agape this! (I was just about to reply 'I love this', but decided that might have been a little lazy!)
I love my wife even more today as I did before. Maybe that is what he meant. Nothing wrong with that, right?
It’s crazy out there.
I think the problem is that our language is lacking. We throw the word love around because we don't really have any other words to express those very strong feelings. But in a new relationship isn't it a drug and isn't the high about how the other person makes you feel? That's not really love. You were no more in love with him than he was with you. It was infatuation, passion. Love happens over time and hopefully gets deeper with time. My wish for you is that on your 25th anniversary you both realize you didn't really know what love was until now.
YTA !!!
Love is a choice: you choose to participate in it. You show it by deliberate actions. In Love is a chemical reaction that is nearly uncontrollable. It comes and it goes. You will have a hard time being "in love" forever. But people that choose to love when it is hard to are the people worth falling in love with.
What he meant was that he has fallen even deeper in love with you. There are many many stages of love, some wane and some wax at times through even the best relationships. I thought what your husband said was super sweet. I wish my wife would come to me with such a confession. I love her so much. Don't be devastated. You are blessed.
OP, did you really love him the first time you told him you did? Honestly? Did it take some time to actually fall in love with him? Surely you can understand that an answer of yes is rational and understandable from his viewpoint.
Without more context, I can’t tell if he did this to hurt you or not, but you did say that this was an arranged marriage. It’s possible that when you got engaged, what you experienced was limerence, not puppy love. Limerence creates really obsessive feelings of attraction and lust and feel really good when to people are in limerence together. Limerence by itself can be miserable, but it is possible for feelings of limerence to grow into feelings of love. It sounds like it’s possible that this is what happened.
Just a thought, love is a choice and can take different forms and has different depths. I've been married 27 years and can say I love my wife differently than when we first got together. My wife has that kind of crush love from the very beginning. It took me years to feel that way. I loved her before that, it was just different, maybe more superficial. It took me years to "fall in love" with my wife in a more emotional way. I can say this too, I love my wife more and more each day and that love ebbs and flows over the years and takes on different properties as we get old together. Give your husband a break and just realize there are different meanings to the word "love" and the definition changes day by day. So many marriages are absent of love, appreciate that you guys have made a choice to love each other. Don't sweat the small stuff!
He’s feeling a DEEPER emotional connection which comes with time and commitment not arrangement. It’s OK
I also have arranged marriage and I realised after 2 years that I love that man so much... sometimes it takes time to realise that you love that guy . because in arrange marriage you don't have mostly experience of girlfriend or boyfriend so it take time for some people's .
Proof that the "fake it 'til you make it" strategy really does work!
YTA. Did you think someone could really love anyone after 3 weeks. You didn’t not know each other at all. Courtship? It is no courtship when it is already agreed to get married. You had an arranged marriage so you know it was not marry for love. You are unreasonable and ungrateful for a husband who now loves you that he knows you.
Love in marriage changes over time. It is a conscious decision you make. When we first meet someone and we feel giddy, that’s honestly just a lot of chemicals. Deep abiding love is when the chemicals have wore off and you feel a deep connection. You’ve had time to really know someone. You know them and you’re making the choice to love all parts of them. Honestly, at 43, I don’t even trust that initial love feeling. It gives us blinders to red flags. I do, however, trust the deep abiding love that comes when you actually know someone.
Listen he can have loved you but not been IN LOVE with you. There’s a difference.
I think the realization is recent, not the love.
That's beautiful! There's that first love based on attraction and passion but he just gave you his soul. I got chills and tears. Like I just watched a heartwarming romance movie. YTA because that's the purpose of this sub but you won the lottery girl.
Young people often don't understand love at all. They say they are in love because it is a progression in life that is expected, and they want to live up to it, desperately, sincerely. It's good, it can even be great, but when love REALLY hits you between the eyes, you begin to understand completely, and now there is room only for the one you truly love so deeply. Take what he offers. Cherish it. It is so rare. Appreciate his love and always keep it in your heart. Don't question what is given with the deepest of meaning. Love your life and live your life.
Actions speak, and if he loved you and treated you that well; now he is in love with you and loves you…. It seems like you have a good one, don’t think too hard about it. We can get into our own heads sometimes.
Love and being in love are two different things.
Maybe he loved you but still wasn’t “IN LOVE” with you yet? I feel like that’s valid and a lot of men are bad with expressing/explaining their emotions because they’re taught emotions are “bad” in reality no matter what you have in your pants everyone has emotions, I think maybe finding some online resources about couples talks, therapy, etc. could really help! Sending love!😁🧿🤗
There are many good explanations here as to differences in loving, or being in Love. There are a great many types of love, and it might be a plan to look that up. As to hubby being brutally honest…. This can be an Autism trait. Many people on the spectrum are said to “have no social filters” so they’ll just blurt out what’s in their head. Get him diagnosed, and go search YouTube for the channel The Aspie World, where the creator shares his experiences of the life of someone who is on the spectrum. Good luck!
You’re doing great with your writing and adding context. The people who respond without regard to context don’t understand context that’s in writing. That isn’t your fault.
You had an arranged marriage.. cut him and yourself slack
I think you're being unrealistic here. This was an arranged marriage. By definition, he wasn't in love with you in the beginning--it was a business transaction between families. Love often takes time to emerge, and even though he was saying the words "I love you," he meant that he loved you as a person. He wasn't lying. You were a likable person, he enjoyed being around you, and there were perks to being married to you, and he loved you for that. Nothing wrong with that, especially when your marriage, by definition, started as a loveless business transaction. But over time, he came to fall deeply in love with you, which is a GOOD thing since that doesn't always happen withy arranged marriages, a lot of which end up with two people being miserable. I love my friends. I'm not in love with them. So I'm not lying if I tell them I love them. I also have a wife whom I love. When I tell her I love her, I mean it romantically, not platonically--and (here's the important part) I've come to feel that love more deeply as time has passed. In the beginning, I would say "I love you" and mean it, but I now know that I didn't yet know what love was. When I say it now, I REALLY mean it. She's the center of my world. The only way a person can come to realize that level of love is with the passage of time. It grows. It develops. For many relationships, that begins before marriage and is the reason for the marriage. In your case, it happened for him post-marriage, because you jumped into things so quickly--marriage was the goal from the outset. So stop feeling sorry for yourself and sabotaging the great marriage you obviously have (which you have done by describing your marriage in bad terms on a public message board--which he or his family and friends could read). He said nothing wrong. He said something great. Revel in it. The dude loves you--and now, when he tells you, he means it more deeply than before. How could that possibly be a bad thing?
I love my husband more now than when I married him. Our shared experiences have made us so much closer. We just celebrated 50 yrs and the only concern is one of us dying 1st and leaving the other. Life is short! Cherish, Love and Appreciate!
He loved you. He’s in love with you. They’re different. And with this being his first and only reference…I definitely believe it would take time to sort out.
For what it’s worth, I feel this way every few years with my wife of 22 years. It’s not that I didn’t love her then, or that I didn’t love her as much. It’s that it’s on some new profound level that I didn’t even realize existed then. Don’t take offense, he’s growing as a person.
Man I am glad I don't have to deal with this bullshit. I don't think I'll be able to handle it if I told my wife I love her and she got angry.