If you feel like you are no longer attracted to your husband,
then for the love of all things good, do not tell him.
At least not like that. And don't bow out,
listen to this video because every single bit of it is going to be important.
And then at the end,
I'm going to share with you how you can get access to a complimentary
freebie that we have for you that will help respark the attraction and
love that you feel like you're missing in your marriage right now.
So I'll tell you about that at the end of the video, but for now,
what do you do when you feel like you're no longer attracted to your husband?
My name is Kimberly Holmes. I'm the CEO at Marriage Helper,
and I also have done a lot of research about
attraction.
I've also worked with thousands of couples over the past several years in my
role at Marriage Helper and some other things that I have done to help couples
really work through things like this,
become attracted and attractive to each other again,
and have a better marriage than ever before.
There are two worst things that you can do when you no longer feel
attracted to your husband. The first thing is to tell them.
And the second worst thing that you can do is not tell them.
What do I mean? What are you supposed to do if you're not supposed to tell them,
but you're not supposed to not tell them.
Let me explain what you're supposed to do.
You're supposed to think about how you tell them.
Let me explain it to you with a story.
Several years ago,
I had a friend who was dating this guy and they had started dating in winter.
Summer came around and it was time for them to start going to the pool with each
other. So they did. And the first time they went to the pool together,
he said to her, you know,
you would look so much better in that bathing suit if you lost 15 pounds.
Every woman watching this video just wanted to drop an elbow on that guy, right?
Like you don't say that. You don't say that to someone!
But how many times have you may be inadvertently said something
similar like that to your husband,
which automatically made him feel like he wasn't attractive,
he wasn't good enough, and he wasn't loved. You see,
we do need to address when we no longer feel attracted to our spouse.
In this instance, we're talking about being attracted to our husbands.
We need to address it, but not like that.
Not in a way that's going to make them feel like they need to change how they
look, how they act or what they do in order for us to love them.
There's a different way to approach it that I promise you is going to lead to
much better end results.
There are four ways that we are attracted to other people: physically,
intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually.
You have probably heard us talk about that before if you've watched any other
Marriage Helper videos or resources. And if not,
then there will be links to some other videos that talk about those four areas
of attraction below.
But the key for this video is to realize that when you become unattracted to
someone, you can typically become unattracted in any of those four ways.
You can become unattracted, physically, intellectually, emotionally,
spiritually. What does that mean?
It means that when you first started dating,
you were probably attracted to your husband because of something about how he
looked. Intellectually, there was something you connected about.
Maybe you thought he was super smart in one area,
or you had shared hobbies or interests. Emotionally,
you loved the way that he made you feel. Spiritually,
you really believed he was a good person and he had beliefs and values that
aligned with yours.
And the more that you were attracted in each of these four areas,
then the larger your overall attraction was towards your husband. Now,
when we become unattracted it can be because someone's looks change,
because intellectually they disconnect from us and we stop having the shared
interest or shared hobbies,
or maybe because we began to continue learning intellectually and
growing our minds and doing those things and we feel like our husband doesn't.
That can cause unattraction. Spiritually,
it could be because of beliefs and values begin to change and you feel like
the husband that you married isn't the same husband with the beliefs and values
you shared together.
Or emotionally because the things that your husband used to do that
really made you feel loved and cherished and valued he's either no longer doing,
or now he's doing things that are making you feel unloved, unwanted,
and uncherished: pushing you away, not listening to you,
being controlling to you.
And it's interesting when we look at the research because the
research evaluates attraction mostly based
on the physical. Are you no longer physically attracted to your spouse?
I plan to redo a lot of this research once I get done with my PhD,
because you're not talking about physical attraction.
Once emotional attraction goes away,
then you can physically begin to become repelled by someone. But guess what?
Your husband could look exactly the same, and if he was treating you well,
you would find him more physically attractive. If he's treating you like crap,
then you don't find him as physically attractive.
The physical attraction can change in our minds based on the way the
person makes us feel.
So, when you say that you're no longer attracted to your spouse,
I want you to ask yourself why. There's something that's driving that.
It may be just physical. It may be something intellectual.
It may be something spiritual, but more than likely,
it's going to be that he's doing something that is evoking emotions you don't
like feeling about yourself. Now it could be any of these four,
but I would place a bet that it's going to be in that area of emotional
So what do you do? Well, first of all,
it really helps to understand where the core issue is coming from.
Because if you go to him and say, you just need to lose some weight,
which again, you shouldn't do like that,
but if that is what you are going to try and ask him to do,
then you're really missing the mark.
Because if he ends up looking like a bodybuilder and then he
still treats you like crap, it doesn't fix any issue.
So you need to get clear on what you're wanting from your husband.
What are you going to ask your husband to do for you,
because that's how we're going to approach this.
The goal is for you to then go to your husband and tell him what
you need. Not what he needs to do differently,
but what you need.
So maybe you approach him and you say, Hey,
we haven't been spending as much time together as we used to.
Date nights have fallen by the wayside.
I would really appreciate if we could have date night, just the two of us,
at least once a month. That's what I need. Or maybe you go to him and you say,
I need for us to just have more time talking at the end of each day,
listening to each other. When I have things that I need to bring to you,
I would really appreciate if you would get off your phone and pay attention to
me because it starting to feel like you're too busy for me.
That is so much better to approach your husband and ask it that way than
going to him and saying, you never spend time with me anymore.
You never listened to me and you need to lose 20 pounds.
That's not going to be met with sunshine and rainbows.
If that's how you approach it with your husband,
it's going to be met with defensiveness.
He's going to feel like you're attacking him, which you are,
and it's not going to end well. Instead,
we really want to approach that conversation with here's what I need.
Here's how I feel. And here's the key,
how can we solve this together?
That is the best thing that you can do. So to recap,
here is the best thing that you can do. First,
identify what it is you actually need.
What is it that has begun pushing you away, that your husband is doing,
that has led you to feel unattracted.
The second thing is for you to chill a minute.
Take that information and just process and simmer.
Don't go to your husband immediately and unload all of this on him,
because you need to really be sure that when you talk to him about it,
you do it even headed,
even keeled and not out of resentment or anger out of the feelings that you have
just processed within yourself. So just take some time. Take a day or two,
think about it. And then three,
you really want to think about how you want to address the issue and open up the
conversation. Using feeling statements: I feel this way, here's what I need.
How can we solve this together are the best things that you can do.
And realize it's not going to be solved in that one instance.
This is going to be something that you continue to work on forever.
So don't try and solve everything in one instance;
focus on just one thing. Start there. Don't overwhelm.
Please do not overwhelm your husband with 80 different things you're going to
ask him to do. Pick one and go from there.
You need to build relational trust in how you approach your husband and how he
responds to you and how you move forward from there. So that is what you can do.
Remember this though, you cannot control your husband.
Ultimately you can ask for him to do things,
you can share with him why it's important to you,
but you can't force him to do anything he doesn't want to do.
But how you approach the situation can make all the difference.
If you want to go deeper in to what you can do to have a better
marriage,
to ultimately be more attracted to each other and what you can start doing now
to work on yourself in order to attract your husband toward you,
and ultimately that will inspire him to become more attractive as well is to get
our free mini-course that we have.
It's all about what you can do to rebuild that attraction in your marriage,
talk to each other better and have better communication and ultimately
move toward having a better marriage than ever before.
Be sure that you click in either the link below this video or the link that
comes up on the screen and just a minute,
and you can get immediate access to that free three-part mini-course,
which you do not want to miss.
We've had over 36,000 people go through this
mini-course. You definitely want to be one of them as well.
It's helped 36,000 and counting people.
We would love to see you in the course.
We would love to see you have a better marriage.