There's a Difference Between Being Loved and Being Accommodated

It took me 18 years before I learned which one I had

I spent 18 years in a marriage that looked perfect, and the day it ended was the day I started to learn the difference between being loved and being accommodated.

From the outside, we had it all figured out. Nice house. Stable careers. The kind of partnership that made other couples say, “You two are so good together.” And we were. We were good together in the way that roommates who respect each other’s space are good together.

What I didn’t realize until much later is that I’d become an expert at being easy to live with.

I was accommodated. Tolerated with kindness. Managed with affection. But I wasn’t loved in the way that makes you feel like someone actually sees you and still wants more.

What accommodation actually looks like

Accommodation is when someone makes space for you in their life without making you central to it.

It’s the difference between “I adjusted my plans because I wanted to be with you” and “I’ll make room for you if it doesn’t disrupt what I was already doing.”

In my marriage, accommodation looked like pleasant conversation. Conversations about what the kids did that day. Polite inquiries about my day that never went deeper than surface level. Physical affection that felt more like a scheduled maintenance check than actual desire.

I was accommodated when my ex-husband listened to my work frustrations with the same energy he gave to someone describing their commute. Present, but not engaged. There, but not interested.

John Gottman talks about “bids for connection.” Those small moments where one partner reaches out emotionally, and the other either turns toward them or away. In accommodating relationships, people turn toward each other just enough to maintain the peace. Not enough to maintain the passion.

Why we stay

Here’s what I know now from both personal experience and many years of clinical work: accommodation feels like enough when you’ve been taught that wanting more is selfish.

Women over 40 grew up in a generation where we learned to be grateful for partnerships that were “good enough.” We were told that passion fades, that companionship is what matters, and that expecting someone to still be interested in you after 18 years is naive.

So we mistake accommodation for mature love.

But it’s not.

There’s this concept in schema therapy about early experiences shaping what we believe we deserve. Many of us internalized what’s called a “subjugation schema,” basically, the belief that our needs matter less than keeping the peace. When you’ve spent decades making yourself smaller to fit into someone else’s comfortable life, accommodation starts to feel like care.

What actually happened when he left

The day he left the marriage wasn’t dramatic. No screaming match. No final betrayal. Just a quiet moment when I realized I was 48 years old and couldn’t remember the last time someone looked at me like they were genuinely curious about what I was thinking.

I had been accommodated into invisibility.

What surprised me most in the aftermath: real love demands your attention. It wants to know not just what you did today, but how it made you feel and why it matters to you.

The difference between being loved and being accommodated is the difference between “You seem upset” and “Tell me what’s going on because when you hurt, I feel it too.”

Questions that change everything

If you’re reading this and something in your chest just tightened, ask yourself:

Does your partner ask follow-up questions about things that matter to you, or do they wait for you to finish talking so they can return to their own thoughts?

When you’re struggling emotionally, do they move toward you or wait for you to handle it and come back “normal”?

Do they know what you’re worried about right now? Not the surface worries about schedules and logistics, but the deeper ones about who you’re becoming and what you want?

If your answer to most of these is no, you’re probably being accommodated.

What love actually requires

Real love is inconvenient.

It means someone prioritizes understanding you over maintaining their comfort. It means they notice when you’re quieter than usual, and they won’t let you brush it off with “I’m fine.” It means they remember what you said three weeks ago about something that mattered to you, because they were actually listening.

Accommodation is very efficient. It keeps everything running smoothly. It just doesn’t keep you feeling alive.

Sue Johnson, who developed Emotionally Focused Therapy, describes love as “being there” for someone in moments of vulnerability. Not tolerating their vulnerability. Not managing around it. Actually being present for it.

That’s what I didn’t have. And once I finally recognized this, the healing began.

Starting over at 48

Leaving that marriage felt like stepping off a cliff. I’d built my entire adult identity around being the woman who made it work, who didn’t ask for too much, and who was grateful for stability.

The first few months were terrifying. But somewhere around month six, something shifted.

I started noticing that when I talked, people actually responded to what I said. I started having conversations that lasted two hours because both people were genuinely interested. I started feeling like I had a self again that wasn’t constantly being edited down to fit someone else’s comfort zone.

The grief was real. But so was the relief.

What nobody tells you

Accommodation isn’t the same as kindness.

You can be accommodated by someone who never raises their voice, never criticizes, and never makes waves. They can be perfectly pleasant and still never truly see you.

Accommodation often feels like kindness because there’s no overt conflict. No one’s doing anything wrong. They’re just not doing anything particularly right either.

The relationship becomes a well-managed partnership where both people are somewhat satisfied and completely unfulfilled.

And the cruelest part? You often don’t realize it until you’ve spent years, sometimes decades, wondering why you feel so lonely next to someone who’s technically there.

You don’t need permission

Please, I’m not telling you to leave your marriage.

But I am telling you that if you’re over 40 and you’ve been feeling a quiet, persistent sense that something fundamental is missing from your partnership, you’re probably not imagining it.

And you don’t need anyone’s permission to want more than accommodation.

You don’t need to wait until something dramatic happens to acknowledge that being in a relationship where you’re managed instead of loved is slowly killing something vital in you.

The women who thrive after 40 aren’t the ones who settled for “good enough.” They’re the ones who finally got honest about what good enough was costing them.

What I wish I’d known

If I could go back and tell my 30-year-old self anything, it would be this: Don’t mistake someone’s willingness to make space for you with someone’s desire to know you deeply.

Accommodation is what you do for a houseguest. Love is what you do for someone whose inner world matters to you as much as your own.

I’ve finally learned what it feels like to be with people who are genuinely interested in me. And the difference is everything.

You deserve more than being accommodated. You deserve to be loved in a way that makes you feel like yourself, not a well-managed version of yourself.

That’s not asking for too much. That’s asking for what love actually is.

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What’s something you stopped talking about because you got tired of the polite-but-disengaged response?

I’m reading every word here. I can’t get to everyone, but thank you for sharing.

I’m building a space for women who are done performing. If this resonated with you, stick around. There’s more where this came from, and we’re just getting started.