leeanne
I would like to ask about the difference between loving someone and being in love with someone - and can a marriage work with one but not the other
We use the word love to describe how we feel about our partner, our children, our sister and chocolate. These are all very different relationships.In effect, there are three kinds of love: limerence, loving attachment and affectionate regard, mixing them up causes a lot of heartache.
I explain these in depth in I Love You But I'm Not In Love With You, but here goes.
Limerence is the crazy part of falling in love when you can think of nothing else but writing your beloved's initials on the back of your exercise books and it seems you are permanently walking five feet above the ground. At the time we think it's going to last forever, but scanning our brain chemicals shows it normally lasts somewhere between 18 months and 3 years (when people have affairs and say they've found the love of their life, what they mean is they've got a big dose of limerence).
Hopefully, limerence will give you enough courage to commit and put down roots with someone, and that's when loving attachment begins to grow. While limerence is not impacted by how someone behaves (you can have limerence for someone who doesn't even know you exist!) loving attachment needs to be fed by talking, listening, compliments, making the other person feel appreciated. Unfortunately we take loving attachment for granted and don't feed it because we're too busy collecting the kids from school, tinkering with the car, or wiping down the kitchen surfaces. We think that because our partner loves us they will understand. BUt if you don't feed something it withers and dies. That's when it turns into affectionate regard.Affectionate regard is what we have for our parents or children because we love them even if they do drive us up the wall! Unfortunately, if you focus on family intimacy, rather than couple intimacy, you can mistake affectionate regard for loving attachment, and that's why you can wake up one morning and think "I love you but I'm not in love with you".
Fear not! This can be turned round and affectionate regard can become full on love again.