How to Fall Back in Love with Your Husband

By

Laura Doyle

By Laura Doyle

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Laura Doyle is a New York Times Bestselling Author, Relationship Expert, Host of The Empowered Wife Podcast at Laura Doyle Connect.

| Updated: 03/05/2024

First, a disclaimer: A coach recently shared with me that she decided to become a coach, even though she didn’t love her husband and believed she never would, because she just wanted to be kinder.

She believed Relationship Coach Training would help her become kind, which was her goal—not to fall in love with him. She was actually kind of guarded against that.

Then she spent a year becoming an expert on the 6 Intimacy Skills™, practicing them at the highest level with her classmates. She surprised herself and did start to notice what a great man she had married decades ago.

She came to a coach’s call recently to admit that despite her best efforts to just leave him out of this, she was in love with her husband.

So, like the pirate says in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, “You be fairly warned, sez I.”

If you don’t want to fall back in love with your husband, do not, I repeat, DO NOT practice the 6 Intimacy Skills with a supportive community and structure or you’ll end up feeling excited and happy to be with your husband.

You’ll end up with a romance instead of a roommate and co-parent in my experience, even if you never fell in love with your husband to begin with.

He’ll seem sexy to you again.

It’s crazy! I know.

Let’s talk about how that happens, especially if you’re kind of repulsed by your husband now. Or if you’re just bored or feeling so rejected and hurt by him now.

In that case, it might seem impossible and like I don’t know your husband, which is true.

I probably don’t, unless he’s one of the husbands I’ve interviewed on The Empowered Wife Podcast during the Man Panel series. Even then, I know those husbands only a very little bit.

But here’s what I do know: My husband is not like me. The things that make me feel loved and in love are not the same as the things that make him feel loved and in love.

While they’re completely different, they go together so well, like peanut butter and honey.

Let’s talk about the 3 ways you can be like honey to your man’s peanut butter—and fall in love while you’re at it.

1) Being Receptive

John gets up early most weekends to put up my pop-up for me so I’ll have shade between beach volleyball games. Then he goes back home.

He could just sleep in, but he likes putting up the pop-up for me because he likes getting all those husband points. When I thank him, he beams because he knows he is my hero.

I love that, and he loves it just as much. I receive that graciously and we both feel good.

I have the key in this exchange and so many similar interactions because I am the one who does the receiving. Imagine if I didn’t receive this. If I said, “I’m a strong, independent woman and therefore I’ll put up the pop-up myself while you stay here and sleep” or even, “I don’t need a pop-up. Don’t worry about it. I’ve got my visor.”

First of all, he would not get to feel like my hero. He would just be the guy who sleeps in while his wife struggles to put up the pop-up herself.

That is not nearly as exciting or fun for him. And it’s certainly not as nice for my pigment-challenged self to be in the sun between games.

Even worse, I would miss the part where I feel like a Disney princess. Lose-lose!

So I have to be willing to receive for this virtual cycle to happen. In the bad old days, I thought it was so great to always be independent and strong.

Now I like being interdependent and having the sparks fly between us when I’m receptive to his strength. It’s pretty sexy!

So being receptive is one way to fall in love again. It can be harder than it sounds because to be receptive, you also have to be willing to do the second thing…

2) Being Vulnerable

It’s pretty easy for John to put up the pop-up because he’s taller and stronger. I put it up one time, and I hate to admit this, but I struggled!

So in this instance, there’s a physical vulnerability that contributes to this dance we’re doing where he’s providing shade for me.

Sometimes I have an emotional vulnerability or I just don’t feel up to doing some grown-up things, like figuring out how much I’m supposed to put in my individual retirement account, or how to put end cards on my YouTube videos.

These days I lean into that instead of trying to suck it up and be independent when I’m just not feeling it.

It’s always a little uncomfortable to be vulnerable. But vulnerability is what causes the fascination that leads to lifelong commitment. I just love that.

So I’ll say it again: This vulnerability in needing his help creates a fascination for both of us. That’s what led to the lifelong commitment we have now: mutual fascination.

In other words, choosing vulnerability helps you fall back in love with your husband.

That leads to part 3 of how to fall back in love with your husband…

3) Being Your Best Self

What does that even mean?! Let’s tick off a few ways you can tell whether you’re being your best self.

One is you’re wearing a smile instead of a frowny face. You’re finding ways to delight yourself with frivolous fun, of course, but also you’re not suffering from Needless Emotional Turmoil or trying to punish him.

You’re happy, which is attractive, which makes you exude confidence, which is where flirting comes from.

It’s like an ad that said, “You flirt not because he looks good, but because you do.” Isn’t that so true?

When you’re feeling good, your mojo precedes you.

This reminds everyone, including you, that you’re an irresistible magnet and that it’s your birthright to be adored, to feel desired and taken care of.

And I’m not giving up until you get your birthright of a marriage that not only survives, it thrives, because you realize that despite being defended, hopeless or afraid, you have fallen back IN love with your husband.

What’s one action you can take today to fall back in love with your man? You might even surprise yourself, like that coach did.

By Laura Doyle

Hi! I'm Laura.

New York Times Bestselling Author

I was the perfect wife--until I actually got married. When I tried to tell my husband how to be more romantic, more ambitious, and tidier, he avoided me. I dragged him to marriage counseling and nearly divorced him. I then started talking to women who had what I wanted in their marriages and that’s when I got my miracle. The man who wooed me returned.

I wrote a few books about what I learned and accidentally started a worldwide movement of women who practice The Six Intimacy Skills™ that lead to having amazing, vibrant relationships. The thing I’m most proud of is my playful, passionate relationship with my hilarious husband John–who has been dressing himself since before I was born.

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