When he says, "I don't love you anymore."

In a recent article in the New York Times, Laura Munson, discussed her feelings and her strategy when her husband told her he wanted to move out and he 'no longer loved her, anymore.'

When she questioned him he said, "I don't like what you've become." Mrs. Munson, instead of handing her husband his luggage, demanding the house keys back and demanding that he leave within the hour said, "How can we have a responsible distance." The husband, annoyed and confused by her response remained in the home.

Mrs. Muson gave her husband the distance he wanted, even though he came home late, didn't show up to family parties and was emotionally distant. She felt at the end of his 'crisis' he would come back. And that is the key. She believed it was his crisis and not hers. Bravely, she weathered the storm stoically for six months until Thanksgiving dinner, when at the family prayer, he said, "I'm thankful for my family."

Munson seems to believe that she ducked his bid to leave a good marriage during a midlife crisis. That he suddenly realized that his childhood dreams and myths of grandeur had come home to roost, and he had failed himself, and she wisely, let him ride out his pain (although she acknowledges he tried to dump this 'disgrace' on her. In the end they're still together, and she considers this an achievement.

What do you think of this story? I would like to think that if a man tells me he "doesn't like what I've become" and that he "doesn't love me anymore" that it's time to move on. How long can a woman replay those words in her heard and not have feelings of marital 'worthlessness' set in.

I mean, wouldn't you always question why he said it? Why in the end he stayed? Where he was all of those lonely nights (and what he was doing)? Is it courage or is it fear that made Mrs. Munson stay? I would like to believe it is courage, but I would only hope that Mr. Munson has the same integrity, thoughtfulness as she. Obviously, he doesn't. Because if he did, he wouldn't have said those hurtful things to begin with.

Being a life partner, must entail being a friend, if nothing else. Mr. Munson is no man I would want in my fox hole, much less my home. What do you think?