Dear Amy: I feel so alone. My relationship with my fiancée is at the brink of disaster. She no longer wants to be with me. She doesn’t feel the spark and says that no matter what I do, it cannot be reclaimed.
I love this woman more than life itself. I have a great relationship with her mom, family and her friends.
My own family hasn’t been supportive, and I have let their lack of support infect our relationship. But, it’s more than that.
I am not neat and have habits that have caused her to go crazy to the point of wanting to be alone.
I have made many changes during our relationship to be a better man for her. She refuses to go to counseling with me and is dead set on being by herself. I believe that we should be together and will do anything to make that happen. What more can I do?
– Tracy
Dear Tracy: We live in a society in which the prevailing message is that if we just try hard enough, we can get what we want in life.
That’s what makes romantic breakups so hard. Romantic relationships often defy all of our better instincts about self-determination.
No one knows how to make love stay. Sometimes the harder you try, the faster things seem to fall apart.
I hope that you take your desire to try counseling seriously. Go to see a counselor yourself – not necessarily to try to breathe life into this relationship but to process and understand what happened, what you’re going through now and what you can do next. You may be anxious and depressed; a counselor should be able to assess your state and offer recommendations for treatment, if necessary.
The fact that you don’t have a supportive family makes me think that you are clinging to your fiancée and her family for all you are worth. You are going to have to do the very hard work of trying to develop new relationships.
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