Hello,I just have to clear my heart. You see, I’ll be 19 in a few months and 6 months ago my 25 yr. old boyfriend (who was 24 at the time) and I got engaged. We weren’t together very long at all before we became engaged but we both just knew that it was right. That we loved each other and wanted to spend the rest of our lives together.We now live together and have a truly wonderful life but one thing troubles me. . . I love him, with all my heart, but I don’t feel as though I’m in love with him. I don’t really know what to do. When we met I was fresh out of high school and working part time as a waitress and full time as a 3rd shift nurse.He’s English, therefore I quit my job and moved to England so he and I could be together. He now supports me (happily) and I stay at home. It’s ok with me now but I will be attending school in the not so distant future.The thing is, he provides me with a wonderful life and we’re greatly blessed, I love being with him and being around him, he’s so much fun and such a great person, he’s hilariously funny, successful, intelligent and he’s even gorgeous. He always says the right thing and looks at me the right ways to make me feel so special.I know that he will never love anyone more than he loves me and that I am the most important thing in his life. He truly truly loves me. And I him.Therefore, I can’t understand why I don’t feel as though I’m in love with him. And this is making me doubt the marriage that he and I will someday have. I don’t feel as though I’m having wedding jitters, I guess I have been feeling this way for awhile.I just can’t put my finger on what is going on with me! Can you please offer me some advice?I love him more than anything and I don’t want to be apart from him. . . but I want the butterflies, the feeling that nothing else in the world matters when he and I are together. . . why am I not having that?Thanks for your time. . .Grace
It sounds to me as though you are confusing lust and love. In the early days of a relationship a person feels obsessed by overwhelming passion for the object of his or her affection. He thinks of nothing else and feels the butterflies that you describe. These sensations fade over time and when this happens many people mistakenly assume that they are no longer ‘in love,’ which simply isn’t true.You love this man and he loves you. You have been blessed with a kind of love that lasts a lifetime. You have a wonderful relationship. Don’t blow it.