Why Can’t I Feel Love For My Partner?

Have you ever found yourself thinking “I know my partner is a great person and our relationship is healthy…but I just don’t FEEL in love…”?

Feeling this way can lead to the brain jumping in and dumping meaning allllllll over your emotional experience:

This must mean this isn’t the right relationship.

This must mean I don’t actually love my partner.

This must mean there’s something wrong with me and that I’m incapable of love.

But guess what… There are several reasons you might not be feeling the emotion of love that actually have nothing to do with your partner or your relationship. In this article, we’re exploring the possible reasons behind why you don’t feel connected to your partner (and why this doesn’t necessarily mean your relationship is doomed).

4 Potential Reasons You Don’t Feel Connected to Your Partner

1) You’re forcing meaning onto a normal emotional experience.

Anxiety makes meaning out of our emotional experiences. Feeling or not feeling a certain emotion is a neutral experience. What trips us up is the meaning we place on it.

The anxious brain perceives everything through the lens of fear: “If I’m not feeling a certain way about my partner, that must mean something is wrong.” 

If your biggest fear is needing to leave your partner or being in the wrong relationship - if this is one of your core wounds - then your mind is going to interpret every potential “sign” and every little uncomfortable sensation as proof you need to leave your partner.

The emotional experience of love is so subjective, yet we place so many “shoulds” on our experiences - what we SHOULD and SHOULD NOT feel and experience in our relationship.

All emotional experiences are neutral. They are neither good nor bad (regardless of whether they’re pleasant or unpleasant). No emotion is static or permanent - they all ebb and flow. Layering fear-based meaning on top of our emotional experiences triggers alarm in the body and may send you into fight, flight, or freeze. And when your nervous system is activated, you can’t feel calm and connected in your relationship. 

2) Your nervous system is dysregulated.

When your body is in a fear response, you lose access to the body’s “social engagement system.” This is a system within your nervous system that allows you to experience connection, bonding, intimacy, and attraction. We can only access the social engagement system when the body is in a state of safety. 

The more we worry about not feeling a certain way, the less we’re able to feel calm, connective, loving emotions. The more we worry about feeling connected to our partners (and the more we place meaning on our emotional experiences), the less we’re able to actually feel connected.

3) You’re holding onto a limited definition of love.

Love is multifaceted and ever evolving. We need to give love the opportunity to morph, grow, shift, evolve, and change. Just because you’re not used to feeling the sensations that come with a certain phase of love, doesn’t mean these feelings aren’t part of your love story.

Sometimes when we transition into a quieter phase of love, the anxious mind assumes we’re no longer in love - when in reality, we’ve simply entered into a different version of love.

So, we must broaden our definition of what love is by embodying love as an action and a choice - not just a feeling.

The action of love is what sustains the relationship - the feelings of love are just the bonus.

4) You’re waiting for your partner to make you feel something you can only cultivate within yourself.

Ask yourself… What are the feelings you’re searching for in your relationship giving you? How are they serving you? Why do you want to feel those feelings?

Often, we crave these feelings (connection, attraction, love, zest) because we want to feel alive. But it’s no one else’s responsibility to enliven us if we aren’t doing the work of stepping fully into our own lives. We look to our partners and our relationships to make us feel what is OUR responsibility to cultivate within ourselves. 

We must take radical responsibility for our own emotional wellbeing. We embody within ourselves that which we want to cultivate within our relationships. 

Your relationship is a mirror. Whatever you feel within yourself, your relationship will mirror that back to you.

Overcome Relationship Anxiety and Reconnect to Your Partner

If you’re interested in learning more about how to heal your barriers to accessing love and connection, check out our $17 mini course The Science of Healing Relationship Anxiety!