AOL

My partner and I have been together ten years and have children together. A few months ago we got married - and since then it's all been going so wrong. I love him, but now I don't think I'm in love with him. I've started dreaming about other men and no longer want to be intimate with my husband. Have we made a terrible mistake in getting married?

Susan advises

We tend nowadays to think that getting married is just the icing on the cake, that it simply makes legal an existing relationship and that nothing much will change.

But sometimes everything changes. If you have expectations of what it means to be married, then sometimes you start behaving differently to each other. If other people around you have expectations of what a married couples do, they sometimes start behaving differently to you. You start feeling trapped, or resentful, or perhaps confused that you are not blissfully happy, because in our society we tend to think that marriage is the answer to everything. It isn't, of course, it's just a whole new set of questions.

Sit down with your partner and talk about your expectations. What does 'being married' mean? How do you think a 'wife' and a 'husband' should act - and how is that different from the ways unmarried partners should act? How did you expect things to change, or to stay the same? And - biggest question - how have your differing expectations impacted on your marriage?

If this doesn't get you anywhere, then Relate can help. But it could be that simply talking these issues through will help you both understand what's happening - and what you need in order to get back into balance again.