How to Love Your Husband When You Don’t Feel Loved in Return

Life moves in seasons within each year and over the course of our lives. For women, those seasons are often tied to our biology, and those shifts can affect how we experience love.

In my own seasons, I have struggled with feeling loved by my husband. Sometimes, I am blissful and unconcerned, and all is well. At other times, I doubt his love and my worthiness and am sensitive to his behavior.

When I feel unloved, my reaction can be to withdraw my own love. I might even feel irritated or impatient.

While it is natural to respond to love with love, that can’t be the only time we love. As Elisabeth Elliot used to counsel newlyweds, “You married him because you loved him, now you must love him because you married him.”

This frames love and patience toward our spouse as a decision and an action. It is something that can go from us point to point, rather than needing to circle around and around between us.

Once I realized that I could not control my husband’s emotions or actions, but I could control my own, I was able to extend love.

By definition, to extend means to make something longer, wider, or last longer. Even when the gap between my spouse and me felt greater, I had to reach further. Even when his love felt small, mine could remain big, and even when my moments of feeling loved felt brief, my own love must not cease.

So I acted: I added a note of encouragement to the lunch box. I made a favorite meal. I kissed him goodbye heartily rather than conveying my hurt through a cold demeanor.

I talked with him, but even more, I listened to his stories and concerns, no matter how uninteresting they were to me. I sent out the love I had.

Another important truth I knew, even when I didn’t feel it or want to accept it, was that I wasn’t actually empty of love, even when my husband seemed unloving. I had Christ.

His love never fails. His love is eternal. His love is not conditional. I could choose to pour out His love on my husband. I could love him like Christ and for Christ’s sake. I had the power of the Holy Spirit and a God who sees.

Many women in the Bible suffered in relationships where they did not feel loved, and God saw their lack and provided for them in unique ways. He did this for me. He will do it for you.

A Season of Putting On

Scripture extols many virtues but clarifies the preeminence of love when it says, “And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity” (Colossians 3:14, NIV).

What stands out to me here is the idea of putting on. Putting on is an action, so it is a form of choosing.

When we wake up in our warm beds on a cold morning, we must change out of our cozy pajamas and into everyday clothes. Isn’t it interesting how often women who work from home are encouraged to get dressed in order to feel more positive and effective? Isn’t it interesting that a common adage says, “Dress for the job you want, not the job you have”? What we put on matters. It changes how we act.

We must put love on in order to extend love. This love is the agape form, so it doesn’t depend on who the other person is. It is an all-encompassing love of kindness and generosity.

The first step is to know what love is, or more accurately, who love is. Love is a person. God is love.

Meet with Him. Put Him on. Fill yourself up with the Word and meditate on it in prayer. Recognize and remember His love, and then step into that covering. Clothe yourself with it.

When you are in a season of waiting to feel loved by your spouse, seek the love of Christ. Write out Scriptures about His love. Read them throughout the day, and then act outwardly toward your spouse in a similar manner.

Study 1 Corinthians 13 and write a card for each attribute of love, or write them on popsicle sticks. Then pull one out throughout the day and find a practical way to extend love in that way.

Patience? Don’t send that passive-aggressive text asking your husband when he will be home. Kindness? Pick up his socks off the floor without a huff. No record of wrongs? Pray for the grace to forgive.

A Season of Trusting

Use God’s Word as a guide or a checklist if you must. True love requires no emotions, only actions. Pray for a change in your spouse, but don’t let your own behavior depend upon it. Trust the God who sees and provides and seek to love through Him.