Have you been hit with the phrase “I love you, but I’m not in love with you”? It’s a tough one to decipher and it can have a lot of different meanings. After all, certainly this guy wouldn’t be with you if he didn’t care about you, right? But what it is that keeps him from crossing that line from general care to all-consuming passion? Here’s what it means when a guy tells you he loves you but that the buck stops there.
- He may want to leave the relationship. A lot of men may want to be “nice” about ending a relationship. Saying they want to break up is too harsh to them, so they assure you that they love you, but that love is from familiarity and comfort rather than from passionate romance.
- He may feel depressed. Depression can often cause people to lose “sparks” as their emotions dull. What does this mean? Depression can make people feel like they don’t love anything or anyone. He may have lost his passion for you without understanding why. If you think this is what’s happening with the man in your life, you may want to help him find professional help, especially if he’s previously told you he’s in love with you and nothing else has changed in your relationship.
- He’s met someone new. This really hurts, but he may have found someone new who has made him fall in love in ways he no longer feels in his current relationship. He’s drawing a distinction – the new person is someone he’s head over heels for, but with you, it’s just simple love.
- You may be more like family to him. After a while of spending time together, whether romantically or platonically, a man may realize that his feelings for you aren’t actually romantic. He loves you, but in the same way he’d love a sibling or perhaps a close best friend. This doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Close, loving platonic relationships are valuable and hard to find. Still, you may need some time to process this and adjust to the change before you can happily be one of the guys.
- He doesn’t feel like he’s growing in the relationship. A partner for life is someone who inspires you to grow and who you can grow with. If he says he is no longer in love with you, he may have realized that he doesn’t feel he can continue to evolve with you. He does love you and he certainly values what you’ve built together, but in his opinion, it’s time to move on. Chances are, he’d like to part on good terms and possibly maintain an amicable friendship over time.
- He no longer feels a deeper intimate connection in the bedroom. Bedroom intimacy isn’t important for all relationships, but if he values that aspect in partnerships, he may no longer feel a spark like that with you beneath the sheets. It may be because your activities feel very routine-like and are boring and predictable for him, or it may be that his personal desires have changed. His love for you on a non-intimate level remains, but he needs more than that to be happy in a romantic relationship.
- He feels trapped and is second-guessing things. A guy who hasn’t fully committed to you yet or is on the corner of a milestone of commitment may begin to rethink his choices. He might be second-guessing his situation and might feel trapped in the relationship. He definitely loved you enough to be with you to begin with, but he’s not in love with you on a deeper level, so it’s not enough for him to want to commit.
- He feels emotionally closed off from you. If fights have been increasing in your relationship, he may begin to back away from you to protect himself. He may be unwilling to continue working through problems and might have lost his feelings of connection to you. Love can keep people together through tough times, but sometimes it makes people stay together longer than they should. He may be realizing that this isn’t what he wants and he wants to stop it before it all falls apart in a worse way.
- He feels that the spark has died. Love is a bunch of chemicals that send sparks flying. In early relationship stages, that spark is powerful, but as time goes on, it often dies down to a simmer. For some, the spark goes out altogether and interest dies. It’s possible to stay together without a spark, but many men will want more than that out of their relationship. They love you, yes, but they’re not “in love,” so they don’t feel the passion they once felt and aren’t happy without it.
