I Love you, but I am not in love

I Love you, but I am not in love. I often get asked when taking calls, what their partners mean when they say “I Love you, but I am not in love”. Being on the recieving end of these words can cause confusion and devastation. However, in my opinion they are only code words for ” I am not sure that I am ready to have a relationship with you at this moment in time.”

As a relationship matures it will move through different stages and the feelings of excitement of the past when the relationship began, often get confused with how they are feeling now. In essence the feelings of love, in all probability are deepening rather than fading as the relationship moves into a different phase.

Major life changes which may provoke high levels of stress in a person may make them confused about how they feel.

A very effective way to deal with this situation is to step back out of their space, while they work their feelings out. It could be that their real problem was that they are unhappy at work, but are confusing that with the relationship. In the cliche “absence makes the heart grow fonder”, by having a short time apart from each other and not communicating for say two days or a week can be really healthy on the relationship and the feelings of true love can be renewed.

It will give the both of you time for reflection and gives time out to see how you or they feel about one another. If the “absence makes the heart forget” then at least you both can move forwards from each other and have a mutual respect for each other before it leads to any kind of resentment. You can then remember the positive memories you both shared. However, you may have just become incompatible in some key areas. It may then be worth going to Relate and getting counselling on the relationship together.

In our New-Age Shop we have several books available that can help with this topic. See Self-Help books.

Paul Perris, Healing Light