💔 Can I Choose You Again?
When Loneliness in Marriage Meets the Power of Conscious Love
Marriage isn’t just about staying together — it’s about choosing each other again and again, even when the feelings fade, the distance grows, and the silence gets louder. It’s about doing the hard, heart-deep work of showing up as your stronger self, just like Tony Robbins and Cloe Madanes teach in their transformational relationship coaching.
They remind us: Love isn’t about convenience, or safety, or simply getting your needs met (it's more). It’s about growth. Contribution. Courage. It’s about standing in front of your partner — even when the spark is gone — and asking the soul-piercing question inside your heart:
“Can I choose you again?”
In the song lyrics I wrote recently, inspired by the work of Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife, Tony Robbins, and Cloe Madanes, this question becomes the emotional heartbeat of a relationship at a crossroads:
🎵 I sleep beside you, but the space is wide
I reach again—but you just hide
I learned to soothe the storms alone
Pretending peace while craving home
We all feel this in marriage at some point — the ache of being alone together. Maybe one partner has become the “low-desire” spouse, emotionally distant, protective, quietly disengaged. As Cloe Madanes puts it, we often create “strategies” to avoid vulnerability — avoiding intimacy, dismissing needs, or keeping connection surface-level so we don’t have to feel too much.
But this only fuels the loneliness. This is what Robbins calls the "death of polarity" — when fear and resentment replace the fire.
Yet there is another way. A braver, richer way. The way of deliberate love.
🎵 Can I still choose you—when it hurts this deep?
When the nights get long and we barely speak
If I bring my best, will you break through too?
난 오늘도 너를 선택해 – I still choose you.
Tony Robbins says: “The quality of your life is the quality of your relationships.”
And the quality of our relationships is directly tied to our willingness to grow.
Choosing your partner again means:
- Letting go of fantasies about what could’ve been
- Releasing blame
- Facing your own barriers to intimacy
- Becoming strong enough to love without needing control
- Seeing your partner as a full person — not a projection or a fixer-upper
- And risking honesty and emotional exposure
In Madanes' framework, this is where true transformation begins — when you shift from manipulation and avoidance to authenticity and contribution. When love becomes less about getting and more about giving.
🎵 No more pretending we’re okay
Can we begin again today?
If you're in a place in your marriage where you're feeling disconnected or disillusioned, start here:
- Ask: What am I contributing to this dynamic?
- Reflect: Am I still growing, or am I stuck in resentment?
- Decide: Can I choose this person, not just endure them?
- Act: Bring your best self — not your wounded self — to the relationship.
You may not control your partner’s response, but you can always choose to love deliberately. And sometimes, that courageous shift evokes change in the other person too.
As the lyrics say:
🎵 I don’t need perfect, I need real
Not something staged, just what we feel
I gave my heart with all its flaws
Will you stand or let it pause?
This is the soul of conscious partnership — the kind Tony Robbins and Cloe Madanes have championed for decades. It’s not about waiting for the other person to change. It’s about becoming someone who loves well — and, in doing so, creating the space where real connection can return.
Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife brings a profound and compassionate lens to the topic of loneliness in marriage. She emphasizes that emotional distance isn’t always about cruelty or rejection—it often stems from fear, shame, or underdeveloped capacity for intimacy. In her work, especially around “low-desire” partners, she reveals how one person may maintain control by withholding emotional or sexual investment, avoiding vulnerability as a way to manage their own internal discomfort. This protective strategy, while often unconscious, creates profound disconnection—leaving the other partner feeling unseen, undesired, and painfully alone.
Yet Dr. Finlayson-Fife doesn’t promote blame—she invites growth. Her approach challenges both partners to step into deeper self-awareness: to see how resentment, caretaking, or avoidance of hard truths can keep love stuck on the surface.
She teaches that true intimacy begins when we stop trying to manage our partner's emotions and instead learn to regulate ourselves, confront our own limitations, and choose to love deliberately. Her question, “Can I choose this person?” becomes not just a reflection on our partner, but a courageous invitation to bring our best self forward and invest fully in a relationship grounded in authenticity, friendship, and mutual desire.
“Can I choose this person?”
R.L.
So today, ask yourself:
❤️ Can I choose them again?
❤️ Can I choose myself again?
❤️ Can we choose to love — not perfectly, but bravely?
Because that’s where the healing begins.
And maybe… that’s where the fire begins again too.
“Still Choose You (다시 너를)”
Resources
- Podcast Referenced : https://www.finlayson-fife.com/podcasts/conversations-with-dr-jennifer/post/loneliness-marriage-q-discussion
More
- I wrote another article on The Lord's love for us and his example in dealing with heartache and betrayal, based on Isaiah 54 and wrote a song to go with it.
Ben Cassani
AI tools were used to generate this blog content and best efforts were made to keep the message and intention of my heart intact.
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