“We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly”
—Sam Keen

I think sometimes when you’ve been with someone for a while, complacency sets in and that crazy flame of passion turns to a flickering candle. Many couples I know are more like good friends than husband and wife!

Do you still get that funny (nice) feeling in your stomach when you see him?

@barumonkey Amen to that..

Loving somebody isn’t just about feeling attracted to them, it’s about making sure that you feel attracted to them. You don’t go out to feel love. You go out to make that love come to life. Tis an active verb. A very, very, very active verb.

And soon enough you can transit from making that love to just making love (toldja it was an active verb)

Sounds like you are discovering the difference between perfection and reality. Perfection only exists in the mind, reality is a different thing.

For example, you can imagine a perfect circle, but there are no perfect circles in real life.

Similarly, you have a concept of perfect love, but are finding that reality isn’t perfect. It isn’t your husband’s fault he isn’t perfect. None of the real world is perfect. I must gently assume you are not perfect either.

Use your concept of the perfect husband to focus on all the attributes your husband HAS that match your ideas, and find fulfillment from that.

Well, it sounds like he doesn’t satisfy you in all the ways you want – wanting to be satisfied is not expecting perfection – sometimes, one’s fairy tale is what another would consider their minimum standard – I have these discussions often with my friends, they say that I have high standards and want everything at once – and they’re right, I do and so should you because while they or your relationship will never be perfect, you have to at the very least be excited about the real husband of yours, not the imagined one

It can be dangerous to live more with a fantasy than with a real person. I think it’s called projection—placing your ideas of what a husband should be onto a man whose real qualities you have a hard time seeing. From the way you wrote your question, it seems like you either know this, or are beginning to suspect it.

If this is true, then it could help to reconnect with the reality of the man who is your husband. Communication is the key to this—continuing to know each other as you are, as you have become. I don’t know if you are no longer doing things together that you used to do, or if you have stopped talking so much, or if one or the other of you seems to prefer to spend time doing something else rather than being in the other’s company. Maybe it’s something else. However something is missing that used to connect you to each other.

Of course, they do say that after a few years, the rose-colored glasses come off, and you have to find a way to build a different kind of love than the passionate love that drew you together. Maybe that’s the thing you are heading into. Many couples have young children at this point, and working on bringing up the kids keeps them so busy that they don’t have time to think about connecting with each other. I don’t know if this is a good or bad thing. However, when it’s just the two of you, then that’s all you have to focus on, and if you’re finding excuses to not be together, it’s a sign that rebuilding the relationship is important.

Life isn’t a fairy tale and trying to make it into one is only deluding yourself.
Ask yourself why your husband is insufficient for you.

Very, very complicated situation and I’m not even sure I want to risk making certain assumptions. Instead, I’ll talk about my experiences with love and hopefully provide a not-too-vague reference.

When I was next to the person I loved I’ve always felt relieved. Sometimes I wasn’t always confident of this but I tend to think that was just other emotions (tension, anger, frustrations, confusions and complications) instilling some doubt. Deep down within though, I’ve always felt complete and solid – almost as if reality itself was the fairy tales that would surf through my mind. Now, there are many, many other variables that play into the situation I’m recalling so what I’m describing here isn’t exactly a conventional, successful Disney romance story(otherwise we’d probably still be together, lol).

@The_Compassionate_Heretic I agree, you need to ask yourself some questions – ask yourself what exactly is missing. Does it feel like something is missing and do you REALLY feel the way you’ve described this to us? Think hard but not too hard.

I remember having a boyfriend who seemed to be dissatisfied with me in the same way you’re describing. I remember saying to him once in anger, “You love me best when I’m not around to interfere with your idea of me.”

There’s no perfect love between ordinary human beings, and there can be a lot of pain in the gap between expectation and reality. But there’s plenty of room for happiness between two people once we learn to let the unrealistic expectations go and work at building something together. Not all attempts are going to work out, of course, but when we’re in a committed relationship, it has to be worth some effort. If we sit passively and wait for someone else to magically turn into a charming prince who lives to please us, we are going to be disappointed.

If you write the scenario that you hope he’ll play out, and you hold onto the script, and he hasn’t seen it, he is going to have a hard time living up to your expectations no matter how much he might want to.