Q:  Please share with me how I can learn to love my husband again. The kids have grown and left home, and I feel like I am married to a stranger. I feel like he doesn’t listen to me – actually, I’m certain of it by the questions he asks – I can tell he doesn’t listen. I feel dead inside for him.

A: I’m so sorry that your marriage has deteriorated to this state, yet you are not unique by any means. Many couples realize after the last child has grown and gone that the bond holding them together was not love for each other but love for their children.

Over time the focus a couple had for each other gets blurred by life. Early romance gradually fades as work, health, finances, children, and other matters beg for attention. When that happens love fades but often isn’t noticed because one’s emotions are so diverted from the spouse and filled by other people (such as children) and desires (such as success). Apparently, that has happened to you.

The good news is that if you loved each other once, you can love each other again. (To be more accurate, even if you never loved each other before, you can learn to love each other now.) Love doesn’t just happen; it is a process. When one follows that process she falls in love whether she means to or not. When she vacates or violates that process, she falls out of love whether she wants to or not.

It took an entire book for me to explain this process adequately (you can find Your LovePath here), so please allow me to speak to only one of the steps on that path at this moment. It is acceptance. Acceptance that creates and sustains love is that which allows each person to be who s/he really is rather than having to paint a picture that the other person prefers. Your statement that your husband doesn’t listen in essence says that he doesn’t pay attention to who you really are. You feel empty because you are. Living as a housemate is quite different than living as a lover.

So who do we fix? Him? You? Both?

Of course, the answer is nearly always both. However, if he isn’t listening to what you say, you likely think that he isn’t going to change and there is nothing you can do to change him. In one sense that is true, no one can make me be anything and can only “make” me do something if the only other choice is to be hurt in some way. (Hold the gun on me and I’ll give you my money. However, I am NOT going to love you.) In another sense, it is true. My behaviors can have a powerful effect on a person that lives with me.

This will sound too simple, and it is, but it is the place to start. Begin the process of falling in love again by listening to him. I know you are thinking that he doesn’t talk or doesn’t talk about anything of interest to you. Here’s the secret. Everyone has stories from various points of their lives that make them who they are. When we learn the stories of another, we learn more about them than in nearly any other way. Even if you have heard all his stories, ask for them again, but this time key in on what he feels as he tells them. Listen without censuring or judging. Ask questions about those feelings. Ask how that story affected who he is today. Gradually start telling your own stories (but never interrupting his).

My guess is that if you really do this, not giving up if it doesn’t start out well, you will begin to see again why you first fell in love with him years ago. You will also find him listening to you, if not a request to take out the trash, at least to the stories of who you are.

Try it and tell me if it works.