Marriage Builders has specific recommendations for a woman whose husband won't do the program.

I did not say that happiness is not the purpose of marriage. I said that each person should be happy on their own in the marriage and his/her spouse should enrich and add to their individual happiness. However, if a person is not happy with who they are and what they have achieved in life, they will associate it with their marriage. This is my case. My husband has no passion, no interests, no direction in life. Because of this he feels unaccomplished. Is this my fault? No. Because he is not happy with who he is and where he is in life and does not know what he wants to do with his life, he associates it with our marriage and me when in reality I have always being supportive of him and telling him he needs to try different things and figure out what he likes. That is why he tells me that he thinks that he will be more productive being singe. Now, by divorcing me he automatically takes a different step and taking action to him means that he is making a change. Because he associates his unhappiness with out marriage he believes that getting out of the marriage is a positive step and will make him happy. But he will soon realize that the problem was with him and not our marriage.

What does that mean, Melody? That basically I should not marry a serviceman in the future?

Markos, where can I read about all this?

The problem with your marriage is really much simpler than you realize. Your husband has fallen out of love with you and as such, no longer realizes any happiness in his marriage. He fell out of love because you did not live together. The romantic love in a marriage cannot be sustained if the couple does not live together. It really is that simple.

People who are in love do not get divorced.

I strongly recommend that you take the time to educate yourself about the dynamics of marriage so you don't make the same mistakes in your next marriage. You are not very objective about your own situation, and that is understandable.

It means that you should not marry anyone in the future with whom you cannot live 100% of the time. That is just ONE of many criteria, but it is a key one. It is what wrecked your marriage.

Right here on the forum posters like MelodyLane, SugarCane, and my wife Prisca and many others will be happy to help you learn and implement those recommendations. You can also get them from Dr. Harley on his radio show.

1. You argue that if a person gets married to make themselves happy, their marriage will end in divorce.
2. You support your argument with your own experience -- you did not get married to make yourself happy.
3. Your experience does not actually support your argument. Your marriage is ending in divorce.

The problem is not that people get married for the wrong reasons. It is not because of some culture that supports divorce. The problem is marriages that are not integrated, where each spouse lives their own lives, and have very poor boundaries. We know what the problem is. It's very solvable.

I understand this. Then how do I still love my husband? Why did I not fall out of love? All I can say is I was planning my future with him and looking forward to him coming back from the deployment while I kept busy with school and work. So basically I thought about him every day and that was enough to sustain my love for him. He could have done the same. He introduced a third person who met all his needs - that's why he fell out of love. I did not introduce another person and that's why I did not fall out of love because I was thinking about my husband the whole time.

Do I need to point out that he does not love you? You are getting divorced. Your living situation did not support a marriage. So, your theory of marriage did not work for you. I don't think you are looking at this logically. You can't argue that your way works when you are getting divorced and your husband has told you very clearly that he is not in love with you.

He probably did a good enough job meeting your needs in the past that your lovebank was very full. Typically people who fall in love, stay in love around 5 years and then the lovebank goes dry if it is not continually filled. This is why most long distance relationships don't last. You would have eventually fallen out of love because your lovebank was not filled.

His lovebank just went dry faster than yours. And here you are today. Getting divorced.

No, I do not argue point 1. I am saying that if a person is inherently unhappy and thinks that marriage will solve whatever problems that cause their unhappiness, then the person will not solve their problems when they are married. For example, if a person feels unaccomplished, it is because of an external factor (may be no desire to study to get education and get a better paying job rather than working as a waiter/waitress, etc.) and the marriage is not going to fix that problem nor the spouse will. Point number 3 does confirm what I say because I do not ask for a divorce. My husband does want a divorce because apparently he is not happy with the marriage because in reality he is not happy with himself. Finally, I really do think that because divorce is more acceptable in a society then one would not think twice before doing it. I agree with the boundaries. I think this is the main point in my case - husband had poor boundaries.

Actually, not. There was a period of five years in which he did not do anything with himself and he actually did not work for a couple of years and also I was supporting us financially for some time. He was not even looking for a job actively. He was very depressed and clingy and insecure - he had a couple of low paying jobs, went back to school, tried different programs, wasted money on school, dropped again out of school, refused to work while in school. There is no way I would have had kids back then. We were so unstable financially. During this time he did not do a good job meeting most of my emotional needs. I felt I was the man of the family and his mom. I did not feel like a wife equal to him. People were wondering why I was still married to him. I just believed that that was a period during which he was depressed and had faith that it would go away when he finds a job and it did. I also felt empathy for him. There was a period during which I felt resentment but later things improved. But I never really considered I would divorce him. So yes, there was nothing left in my love bank but I stuck to our marriage and then things improved, he got back in the military, that gave him a sense of direction, he stopped being depressed and I felt better because he was happier.

But that doesn't make any sense. If he were unhappy with himself he would have no reason to leave the marriage. People who are simply unhappy don't get divorced. But people who fall out of love do get divorced. Your husband does not want the marriage because he is not happy in your marriage because he is not in love.

A romantic passionate relationship obviously brings great happiness to the participants. If your H were in love with you, he would not be leaving the marriage.

Does this count when we already started the divorce process?

Actually he DID if you are still in love with him as you claim. Otherwise you couldn't be in love with him. So either you are not being honest about being in love or he did a good job somehow filling your lovebank. The proof is in the pudding.

Ok so he told me that he does not want to be married because he wants to be single and not have responsibility towards anyone as this makes his life simpler but also because he does not love me. I asked him what if he still loved me, he said still he would probably divorce me because he does not want to be married. He probably does not know the real reason he is divorcing me. He just gives me the answer "I want to be single."

He is not in love with you. If he was in love he wouldn't "want to be single."

I thought your husband left?

I guess I just try to see the good things in him and make myself love him and imagine our future together. I don't know. I guess I am not a high maintenance woman so he does not have to make many deposits for me to be happy. He may not do anything for me but give me freedom to be who I am and follow my interests and passions which is easy for him to do because we are separated, I am fine. This is what I need. Of course, I do not like the fact that we are separated but I understand I have to do this sacrifice as a military spouse.

With regard to the emotional needs: financial support - I support myself financially and I am not dependent on him, he does not really show admiration or appreciation to me often, affection and attention - whatever he was getting is whatever I was getting; in the past few years, however, I have been the one who was putting in a lot more effort into our relationship compared to him, conversation - again this is mutual, family commitment - mutual, honesty and openness - mutual, sexual fulfillment - mutual, physical attraction and recreational companionship - both mutual. The only difference is he had poor boundaries while deployed and let the bar girl most of these needs and he fell in love with her. I asked him why he thinks I cannot meet his emotional needs and he told me that I can meet them; he told me that he has told the bar girl that we have a great marriage and it would be stupid of him to divorce me. However, he said that once the AP tried to get pregnant from him, that is when he detached from me emotionally because he felt that the affair was real at that point and at that point he stopped seeing future with me. Just the idea that she could be pregnant at this point would have changed his life. It is after this when he started actively trying to get her pregnant. And it is around this time when I observed a complete change in his behavior and when I felt him completely detached. He tells me he is not with her anymore, that he is heartbroken, and that he still loves her. He was so cold towards me and had such animosity towards me this week that honestly I do not think that he stopped communicating with her. I thought he would stay two weeks here and I asked him if he would like to do some recreational activities together as I was trying to meet some emotional needs but he did not give me any time. He even stayed locked in one of the rooms and interacted with me only about divorce. If he thought that I was trying to do something that would make him question his decision to divorce me he would prevent it intentionally. So there was no way for me to do anything to meet his emotional needs.