Are you eager to be linked in a loving relationship with a man who cares about you deeply, but it’s just not happening? Are you willing to encourage him on the deepest emotional levels, but you can’t chip through the ice? Do you feel that despite your relatively lax expectations, you are being taken advantage of? In other words, does a void exist for you because you have an emotionally distant husband?
In my counseling practice I specialize in treating common emotional stresses. if left unattended, They can turn into major debilitating problems. The hurting people who come to see me are trying to cope with anger, depression, anxiety in their marriage. These issues are usually played out in the home. I often face the task of helping people understand how their emotions relate to their unsolved marriage problems.
The Emotionally Eager Wife VS Emotionally Distant Husband Who Will Not Engage
Over twenty-five thousand counseling sessions have shown me that the most common marital problem I encounter is the case of an emotionally eager wife whose husband will not engage with her on a deep, meaningful, and personal level. These phrases are indicators of the problem of being emotionally distant and disconnected:
- “Just when I think we’ve really connected, he does something to prove he never understood a thing I said.”
- “I think the guy is oblivious to my feelings.”
- “What does it take to get through to him?”
- “He cares more about his work [or sports or hobbies] than he does about me.”
As the relationship fails to progress, feelings of disillusionment become entrenched. And then faulty patterns of communication yield increasing frustration. Failure to progress is not for lack of trying.
Good Reason to Be Disappointed
As I consult in case after case, I see that many emotionally eager women have good reason to feel disappointed. Most women need strong, growing relationships that are openly expressed. Unfortunately, their husbands fail to supply that need. They are emotionally distant. These wives are living with men who have unconsciously committed themselves to an evasive way of life.
The wives aren’t the only ones hurt by this evasiveness. These men are unwilling to seriously explore the depths of their own emotional needs. As a result, they perch securely atop their own little time bombs. As frustration and confusion mount, something will eventually blow.
If at all possible, I include husbands in my counseling sessions. You’d be surprised how often these emotionally distant, undemonstrative men are looking, deep inside, for a way to jump-start their marriages. I can show spouses the best method to address their unique relational needs, and the lessons will probably “take.”
Options are Available in Dealing with the Emotionally Distant Spouse.
When the husband, however, is unwilling to participate in counseling, the wife still has some excellent options. Her emotionally distant spouse may cling to stubborn, evasive patterns of relating. But she can make improvements in two general areas:
1. Have you noticed that in our culture, the burden of a relationship often falls on the woman? The woman is expected to “make it work.” If a man remains faithful, he gets the credit. If he strays, it’s somehow her fault, at least in part. When a relationship unravels, the greater share of the blame ends on her doorstep.
Counseling, however, can help a woman learn what lies behind the scenes of her husband’s personality, what makes him do what he does. With that knowledge in hand, she can come to realize that her husband’s behavior is not her fault after all.
2. The woman can examine the ways in which she reacts to her husband. From there she can figure out better ways of relating that will cause her less stress and personal frustration. Then, even if he never improves his behavior, she can still enjoy improved personal stability. She can be happier.
The Emotionally Distant Identifying Pattern
The first step toward improving one’s relationship is to understand what constitutes patterns in marriages that can be emotionally abusive. It sounds so far as if I’ve been painting the husbands as villains. That’s not true in the least. Most of these men have perfectly honorable intentions. They would never try to hurt their wives. But even though they usually do not set out to harm, it happens all the same.
The problem lies in the way most (not all by any means!) men approach life. As a general rule, men are less naturally inclined than women to address personal or sensitive subjects. This isn’t simply fear of pain. They really aren’t as interested. They have a natural tendency to bypass the lengthy processing that is so necessary to intimate personal interchanges and skip straight to the solution.
When the wife seeks greater depth than simply problem-options-solution and presses to explore the emotional side of an issue or its ramifications, the man’s frustration kicks in. “We’ve already handled the problem. Therefore, it doesn’t exist anymore. So what is it with this woman?” To him, detailed processing is useless, perhaps even inane. He doesn’t see himself as being emotionally distant.
Ways He Evades Processing
He then —and this is a key —begins looking for ways to end his participation in his wife’s processing. He may withdraw or try to put her back onto a path of logic or perhaps even explode. The explosion, you see, is a diversion. It’s a distraction —in essence, a change of subject. Changing the subject is another often-used way out of processing. He is guided by the dread of having to spend any more time than is necessary to dwell on her emotional needs, for he almost never sees them as needs.
Women generally experience feelings and emotions more intensely than do men, mostly because they allow themselves to. A wife lets emotions run their course even as the husband is trying to stuff them, and to get rid of them. That is because he sees them as anti-productive. Let me emphasize that there is no right-and-wrong about having strong emotions. It is not wrong to even, to some extent, downplay them. But because she recognizes and even nurtures her emotional side, the wife can enjoy life in its richest, fullest dimension.
Insistent Anger and Resistant Anger
Relationship and family connections are the most important ingredients in most wives’ lives. By their very nature, close relationships generate strong emotions. The wife can inadvertently create problems. This happens when she so craves emotional connections that she loses the ability to respond with reason or calm. She may become anxious. She certainly becomes angry. Not to put too fine a point on it, but hers is an insistent anger whereas his is a resistant anger.
The woman locked into these patterns can cry and complain that she feels unloved. She has such a powerful need to feel understood and cherished at an emotional level. So she becomes greatly disillusioned when external signs of that understanding are nonexistent.
Evasive Behavior
Evasive husbands invent a broad range of behaviors for avoiding the in-depth discussions they see as useless and potentially harmful. There is the silent treatment, pretended agreement, and constant forgetfulness. There is also procrastination, laziness, and temper outbursts. Plus, there is work-a-holism, undue attention to a hobby or sport, and in general merely being unavailable. The emotionally distant, evasive man may tune out. He might say whatever he thinks his wife wants to hear at that moment. He does this to prevent the boat from rocking, and harbors no intention of actually following through.
To counter evasiveness, the emotionally eager wife will be prone toward responses such as crying. They try to be persuading, calling friends for support, acting moody, repeating the same requests, accusing, and giving up. Once the cycle gets going it can be difficult to break this emotionally distant interplay.
Factors Behind the Pattern
In my practice, I see seven factors that are very common in marriages affected by the evasive and the emotionally eager relationship patterns. As we examine them, you will see that this tug-of-war is not confined to a few households. It is widespread. I find this tension in the homes of driven, success-oriented people and in laid-back, take-it-easy relationships. Some of the participants have a history of poor relations with others, while some can point to great popularity with others.
If your emotionally distant husband will join you in the awareness process, that’s great! Use the information provided as a springboard for healthy, honest discussion. If he will not, and many won’t, choose to make yourself aware of what’s happening and grow anyway. One person working toward a healthy style of relating is better than no one at all taking steps.
Let’s look at the seven indicators:
1. Communication is reduced to power plays.
If nothing else, evasive behavior creates a feeling of power. This concept of control and power-wielding can take some strange twists. And the people involved usually do not see it for what it is.
If the emotionally eager wife responds with her own overbearing style instead of understanding his fear of being controlled, she does the very thing that makes matters worse. She speaks coercively to her emotionally distant husband.
Perversely, even a caring husband derives a certain subconscious satisfaction when he witnesses his wife in great emotional distress. The underlying thought: You see? I do have power! I can control her emotions, and that’s not an easy thing to do. My tactics worked.
The more the wife registers anger or futility, the more likely the emotionally distant, evasive husband will continue to respond with power tactics. His urgent, compelling need to keep the upper hand is satisfied. And I repeat, this is not necessarily deliberate. Usually, it is all going on in the darkest caverns of the mind.
2. The emotionally distant husband avoids commitment and personal accountability.
A common complaint I hear from emotionally eager wives is that they cannot get a solid commitment to anything. Their man is hard to pin down.
Remember that evasive husbands unconsciously lust for power. They must maintain control. So it isn’t hard to see why they don’t want to be held accountable to specific plans. They have confused commitment with enslavement or coercion and wrongly assume the words mean much the same thing. They see simple requests, then, as attempts at coercion, and they circumvent them by remaining vague.
These emotionally distant men realize that accountability requires a certain amount of vulnerability. And that scares them. Clear communication, self-revelation, and openness: These qualities could boomerang on them, they fear. The evasive person also fears that his good nature will be taken advantage of. So he plays it safe by revealing the least amount that he can about his plans, his preferences, his feelings.
Although these emotionally distant men would never admit it even to themselves, they have made a commitment to dishonesty. Sometimes blatant lying is involved, as when a man says he will do something, knowing full well that he will not. But usually this dishonesty is more subtle. Without openly lying, these men try to create an illusion of cooperation when in fact they inwardly hope to blaze their own trails independently of their mates’ plans.
The Emotionally Distant Fear of Accountability
With this fear of accountability, these men fuel the wives’ worst fears of marital isolation. The men do whatever they must to keep a safe distance. This is exactly the opposite of what the emotionally eager wives are seeking. The men keep their feelings well hidden. But their wives want feelings brought into view. The men think they dare not expose their preferences lest they be denied. (In other words, the woman controls the situation through the power of choice.) The women want more than anything else to know what their men want.
Needless to say, this factor of poor accountability works against the success of any relationship. A thriving marriage needs sharing and openness in order to be truly fused into a unit.
3. Leadership roles are confused.
With all this control jockeying and poor accountability, the third factor in these conflicted marriages isn’t hard to see: badly defined leadership roles. The evasive husband prefers to hold back and sidestep situations that will bring his wife’s criticism to bear. And that includes certain situations where his leadership would be expected. He may even coyly set her up to take the heat. That, you see, is real control!
Have either of these scenarios happened in your home?
• A child makes a request that Dad knows should be turned down. So he says, “Why don’t you ask your mother?” Let her be the ogre who denies the child’s wants.
• The husband hears someone reprimand his wife. This might be a stranger in public or his own mother in private. Instead of standing up for his wife, he remains silent even though he knows his wife feels abandoned.
These husbands know that the more leadership they exert, the more controversy they may encounter. It works that way in politics. It must work that way in marriage. Notice that the power plays are still going on.
Has Emotionally Distant Preference to Lie Low
But here we’re talking about open, visible leadership. Being chronic conflict avoiders, these men prefer to lie low and stay out of the fray. In the battle of the sexes, it’s a good way to keep your head from being shot off. They falsely assume that openness invites problems.
It’s that don’t-rock-the-boat thing again. Unfortunately, by backing away from the leadership role, these men are sacrificing the family’s long-term needs —a stable leader —for the short-term goal of peace-for-the-moment.
Interestingly, in many cases, men who back out of the leadership role in personal and family matters are anything but weak in business pursuits or civic projects.
1. Relationship is secondary to performance.
Human beings err, make occasional wrong choices, and are occasionally selfish. In healthy marriages, the partners recognize this fact and allow plenty of room for open conflict resolution. Emotionally eager wives would welcome the chance to discuss problems. But because the evasive husband prefers to minimize his own emotional vulnerability, he customarily runs from the threat of having to struggle with emotions. Logic tells us that if a man is running away from something, he is also running toward something else. What is it that men run toward to avoid personal interactions? Performance.
Now, as a very general rule, men are performance-oriented anyway. Whereas women enjoy the process of doing something, men want to reach the goal as quickly and efficiently as possible and go on to something else. (Again, I remind you, there are plenty of exceptions to this.)
Commonly, evasive men will not mind giving time to an activity such as yard work, fishing, a project at the church. It’s familiar turf. They already know how to do those things. They’ll see a nice, neat, trimmed-up yard, the new church fence, perhaps a fish or two as something. But relationships require being not doing, an unsettling concept for many men.
2. Sexual relating is out of sync.
Happy, growing marriages are typified by reasonable sexual communication. Although frequency is not the chief concern (some couples are satisfied with twice monthly sex, some enjoy it several times a week), union occurs frequently enough to remind the spouses of their love and commitment to each other. Sex is a means of maintaining secure bonding.
For evasive men, however, sex is intended not for bonding but for physical satisfaction and—here it is again—control. Who’s in the driver’s seat?
At one extreme, the evasive man abstains for long periods of time, showing virtually no interest at all in his wife sexually. He knows sex can bring out tender sharing. That is something he prefers to avoid. He determines that it is easier to deny the pleasures of sexual relating in order to avoid emotional intimacy. I have heard numerous accounts from women who are eager to be sexually involved with their husbands. But they are rebuffed for six months at a time, a year, or longer.
Slipping into an Emotionally Distant Comfortable Shell
The more common extreme has the evasive man showing little tenderness during waking hours. When bedtime comes, his engine turns on, and he gets his satisfaction from his wife. Then he slips back into his comfortable shell. He may even turn on at two o’clock in the morning, make his move, then go back to sleep. This approach to sex neatly minimizes emotional intimacy without minimizing the feel-good experience. The wife’s emotions are hardly considered.
The emotionally eager wife, then, develops conflicting feelings about marital sex. Part of her wants it and sees it as a wonderful communication time. But she is afraid of the hurt that comes as she senses her husband is merely after physical relief.
Often, if this conflict goes on long enough, one spouse or the other may opt for an outside form of sexual satisfaction. This is in the way of an affair, pornography, or flirtations outside marriage. Either spouse can feel such strong disappointment as to be abnormally vulnerable to temptation.
3. Personal insights are unequal.
Healthy people not only admit the need for improvement, they welcome the challenge. Growing people are willing to absorb insights and information. They actively seek out truth. Evasive people are not inclined toward insight and awareness. Apart from the fact that it’s too much trouble for what you get out of it, the evasive husband really isn’t interested in being challenged on the personal, philosophical level. That makes him too vulnerable. He wants the comfortable routine, the level keel, putting little or no thought into the whys of life.
The emotionally eager wives are usually the type who devour self-help books. They enjoy stimulating philosophical discussions, flock to seminars, and invite growth. They like being challenged about what can be done to create a fuller life. Result: They grow and expand intellectually as their husbands tune in still another football game.
This eagerness does not always translate into significant change.
Because of the wife’s tendency to play off her husband’s behavior —reacting instead of pro-acting —this woman eventually loses heart. She realizes that her efforts are not being matched by his. She begins to perceive that she’s outgrowing him. I’ve see many of these wives become increasingly agitated or collapse in despair or depression. Either way, the woman ought to press forward, gaining insight, regardless of her mate’s lack of interest.
4. Both sides feel victimized.
Evasive husbands subconsciously live with a philosophy of “You leave me alone, I’ll leave you alone, and we’ll get along just fine.” The fewer challenges they encounter, the less conflict they experience. And then, the better they feel. The problem is that their spouses by nature yearn for a far more intimate pattern of relating.
The wife launches her various attempts to get the intimacy and depth she craves. She does this by protesting, cajoling or simply acting unhappy. The husband, turned off by his wife’s prodding, sulks and wonders, “Why do I have to live with this kind of stuff? She’s crabby for no good reason.”
Either unwilling or unable to grasp that he is contributing to the problem, he sees himself as a victim of unreasonableness. Victims are not cheerful people. The feel, if you will —of the household nose-dives as anger and sadness feed on each other.
The emotionally eager wife feels just as victimized by her emotionally distant husband.
“When is all this misery going to end? Look what he’s doing to my life. It’s sterile! Going nowhere. Emotionally zip. When will he ever wake up, or is it always going to be this miserable?” In a sense, there is truth to each mate’s feeling of victimization. Both spouses can point to evidence that this marriage has become something of a raw deal. Both can show legitimate ways in which the other spouse is contributing to the problem. Neither sees the whole picture. When either of them places all blame on the other partner, the “I’m a victim” attitude has gone too far.
Once this evasive pattern has become entrenched in a marriage, it is tempting to place full blame onto the shoulders of the husband who resists deep relating. Let’s say that, in certain instances, it’s true. He does need to change his ways of relating to his wife. His evasiveness damages and even destroys his position of influence in his own home. After all, God did not place us here on earth to avoid each other. We were made to relate first to God, then with family and friends.
Evasive behaviors are damaging not just to the wife but to the husband as well, preventing him from knowing the satisfaction God intended for him.
Beginning the Journey Toward Improvement
If you are the mate of someone who is non-communicative, realize that to some degree, the relational problems you’ve encountered are predictable. They show up in a lot of marriages. Also, there are some things of a general nature that you can do to ease them. For starters:
- Quit assuming responsibility for your spouse’s imperfections. He may well say, “You make me this way with your constant [nagging, whining, whatever].” That’s not true, even though he may think it is. He would be acting the same way if he were married to someone else.
- Ease up on your persuasive efforts to convince your mate to fit your mold. Coercion will only make the problem worse. This is hard to do when you desperately want change.
Down deep, you probably realize that no person is going to change, at least not effectively, based on someone else’s forceful persuasion. An evasive husband will amend his ways only if given the room to do so in his own will. That leaves the ugly prospect that he will choose not to. For now, it is wise to back off.
Don’t Quit
That does not mean that you quit doing anything. If you believe that your husband is ducking away from topics you are sure must be discussed, that he is becoming evasive in the midst of emotional exchanges, can you tell him about the frustration this creates without overworking the point or becoming confrontational? Everything will be working against you.
The heat of the moment makes a person say things she would not say at a less emotional time. And most of all, old habits die hard. You are accustomed to addressing an issue in a particular way now. It is exceptionally hard to change your approach. But it will pay dividends if you can do it. Personal soul-searching will help you turn things around and give positive traits to your marriage.
To get a good idea about how ready you are to do the soul-searching necessary for real growth, be aware of your use of one simple word. You. How often is that word spoken as you are trying to make sense of the tensions with your mate? I’m not suggesting that you should never be spoken. I am saying, though, that its overuse indicates that you are not looking inward.
Work on Your Happiness
In short, a major step is to put your own house in order to improve your own satisfaction and happiness. You may find that the improvement in your life is just the catalyst your spouse needs. You will still be a more stable and content individual, even if you do not experience adjustment you have hoped for in your mate. Are you willing to start with your own hard, inward search?
The emotionally eager wife will say, “Yes! Of course.” But then she amends that with a but. “I’m willing to adjust, but my husband needs to change.” Whether or not you are correct to say this, you are basing your happiness and responses on someone else’s behavior.
Your willingness to work on your own issues will be the key for finding personal peace, then potentially, success in that most important relationship, your marriage.
This edited article came from the great book, Distant Partner. It is written by Dr Les Carter, and is published by Thomas Nelson Publishers. The subtitle for the book is: “How to tear down emotional walls and communicate with your husband.” As Dr Carter says in the beginning of the book, “I have written this book primarily for answer-seeking wives. I want you to understand why some husbands act evasively and maintain a certain distance from you. Most particularly, I want to show you what you can do to improve your emotional reactions to your husband.”
We believe that obtaining this book would be an inexpensive way to start on a road to better understanding and working through issues that could greatly improve your relationship. Also, if you read this book along with your spouse Dr Carter explains in the preface of the book the best way to do this.
— ALSO —
For additional insight, here are two additional articles to read to help you deal with this issue:
• HOW TO RELATE TO AN EMOTIONALLY DISTANT MAN
• WHY DOESN’T MY HUSBAND ADDRESS PROBLEMS DIRECTLY
And then lastly, Dr Greg Smalley gives the following insight:
• FIGHT FOR YOUR MARRIAGE WHEN YOUR SPOUSE IS EMOTIONALLY DISTANT
Filed under: Communication and Conflict
(USA) Let me start from the beginning: We met on St Patrick’s Day in the bar downstairs in the building I lived in. I was unwinding from a long day at work and contemplated going out to “party” with my friends or take my laptop down stairs and sip on a glass of wine while finishing up some of the tedious paperwork I needed to finish. I decided to do the latter. I was taking a break from working for the night and decided to run upstairs, put my laptop away, and go have a smoke. While I was out on the street fulfilling my nicotine cravings, I met this guy who was annihilated. It was comical, yet sad. He was hitting on me but I had no attraction to “drunks” because of a previous relationship. I asked him if he was driving and he said, “no one of my friends is on his way to get me.” I casually went back downstairs to have another drink. About 45 minutes later “the friend” shows up and is standing right next to me. At that point I was a little loose so I told “the friend” (not knowing who he was at the time) to stop being so lingering and sit down and have a drink – after all it’s St Patty’s Day! The look I got was one of bewilderment and intrigue. We were married on 9/02/10.
In the beginning we had the best of times. We went skydiving, parasailing, golfing – we completed 101 things to do on Oahu. His demeanor was loving, caring, kind, sincere, affectionate, and the intimacy was daily! Fast forward to today. We haven’t slept in the same bed for almost eight months – I seep on the couch. When I try to go upstairs and get into our bed, he asks me what I am doing and why I am disturbing his sleep. When I try to “turn him on” he replies with, “I’m tired”, “I’m stressed”, “I worked all day”, or “what do you want?” Frankly, I cannot count the hours that I have spent crying because when I ask him what is wrong he gives me the cold shoulder or does not reply at all. Today is my birthday and instead of telling me happy birthday, giving me a hug, a kiss, some sign of emotion, he yelled at me, called me names, and told me that today is just another day and it is nothing special. He then texted me, “thanks for ruining my day, if you are lucky I will not come home.” We went from being one of the couples most people were jealous of because of the connection we had to coexisting in the same space. I have suggested counseling but he refuses to go. He tells me he was never the way I made him out to be and I am delusional – it is all in my head. I have pictures that prove otherwise and letters he used to leave me on my computer before I would go to work. I do not know what to do anymore. We haven’t been intimate in over six months, when I try to hug him he pushes me away (literally) or rolls his eyes and tells me to leave him alone. When I express my concerns and my feeling about this situation to him he tells me that it is my fault because I do not listen to him. What gives?
(USA) I just ended a relationship with an emotionally unavailable man after trying to improve communication for over a year. I showed him this article and others like it and he responded, “This is attacking men.” Every time I tried to have a conversation below the surface I was “attacking” him –ugh! I finally gave up. I guess protecting his safety zone was more important to him than saving the relationship. Men like this are cowards.
My advice is if you’re not already married, get out. He’s not going to spontaneously combust into being emotionally available. This kind of behavior works for them on some level and makes them feel in control.
(USA) While much of this article does describe the dynamic between my wife and I, there nothing about what is to be done, other than for the husband to “open up” and share his feelings. But what if when he does, he finds that many of his feelings are not welcome? Women expect men to be strong & stable, and attraction is based on this. When men share fears & insecurities, their wives may not react well to it.
David, You make some very valid points. It’s something that not many wives realize. I sure didn’t. But in the various studying and mentoring I’ve been doing, I’ve learned how different men and women perceive “communication.” Just because we communicate differently –sometimes VERY differently, it doesn’t mean that one spouse is wrong and the other is right. Often, it just means that it is different. It’s important after marrying, that we not only marry in name, but in purpose. And part of that purpose is learning how to marry our various approaches to every day events and that which comes up in the course of our life together.
When one spouse WANTS to communicate, but doesn’t, there is usually a pretty good reason for it. Some type of help is needed so both spouses can get on the same page in the way of being able to communicate together, and make it safe to do so. For a number of years, I now realize that I didn’t make it safe for my husband to share certain things with me. I’ve since learned differently, and so has he. We both had to learn to marry our approaches and make it safe for both of us to say what needed to be said. It has helped our marriage GREATLY!
There are two articles I recommend you read. They are both in the “Communication and Conflict” topic. One is titled, “How Well Do You Encourage Honesty?” And the other is titled, “Why Doesn’t My Husband Address Problems Directly?” They may be ones that you approach your wife to read and the both of you sit down together at a time, which isn’t a H.A.L.T. Time (which would be a time when either of you is Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired. There’s more vulnerability to be less tolerant during those times), to discuss these issues. We have other articles to read, which may help you to both better understand each other’s approach to relationship issues, but these are a good start.
If you can’t come to an agreement at some point, I recommend you find a “Marriage-friendly” counselor (which is explained in the “Marriage Counseling” topic) to help you both get over this issue so you can both better communicate in safety and honesty. You can be married 30, 40, or even 50 years and still learn new things. My husband and I have been married for over 41 years and we’re still learning things to help us grow and enjoy our marriage partnership. I commend you for WANTING to do this. Many spouses don’t –they just figure it’s impossible or not worth it and go into an unhealthy direction. I sense that you want more than this in your marriage. I’m so glad you do. I pray you gain the insight and the help you need so that you and your wife can grow in this aspect of your marriage together.
Hi David, I would love it if my husband would start to share his fears and insecurities. I signed up for the real deal when I agreed to be his wife. I would finally feel that I was in a normal relationship with mutual exchange. I also understand that I would need to honor the privacy of such disclosure if he could share at this level.
(US) I found this article about the distant husband interesting since my husband of less then a year is exactly like this. He also does not express interest in intimacy and shows no care or concern for me if I am hurt by something, which is not too often for me since I am not an overly emotional person. I try to talk to him very maturely and respectfully, and in return he just sits there very uninterested in having a conversation, sometimes just ignoring me completely so then I just keep going on and on. If there are no problems or nothing negative going on then everything is fine. This is how he deals with conflicts only. What can I do to influence a change?
My husband has always been somewhat emotionally distant (except when we were dating) and tended to be affectionate mostly when he wanted sex. A year and a half ago I was diagnosed with cancer. He was very supportive and wonderful during chemo and for the first couple of weeks after surgery. Then, like a door slamming he became more distant than ever before. He has also become very controlling. When I expressed how I felt about how I looked after the cancer, his reply was not to reassure me of his love or say I would always be attractive to him no matter what or anything like that. It was “the alternative was to be dead.”
When I cried he told my doctors I needed antidepressants. They made me like a zombie, no happiness or sadness and no expectations from him, and he thought that was a wonderful improvement. Then they made me suicidal. He still thinks I need to take them again. My friends were horrified at how I was on them. If I beg enough, I get a kiss a day for two or three days and then nothing again. But he still wants to go to all my doctor appointments. He has slept in our daughter’s old bedroom (we’re empty nesters) since my surgery a year ago.
I’m stage 4 so I wonder if he subconsciously thinks if he keeps me emotionally distant that it will hurt less when I die. But my doctors think they can keep me in remission for a number of years and right now I actually feel fairly good, although fatigued from all the treatments I’ve been through and some side effects from the anticancer meds I have to stay on. I do not want to spend the last part of my life like this.
Why not ask him? What you say may be true. He may be just as afraid as you are. Cancer doesn’t just impact those who have it. It impacts those who love the patient too. I speak from the perspective of a cancer survivor.
Why not just be honest with him. Tell him what you need and that if you have 1000 days or a 1000 years left to spend with him, you want to enjoy whatever time you have left together.
Jeff and Tony, you two will more than likely disagree with these points, because you don’t seem to see any fault of a man/husband, and you defend men’s sins. But read anyway please. Women the points below, may awaken many of you all’s complacent attitudes, about men and get you stirred up enough to realize that you should not kissing up and begging up to your husbands. They are not that into us as we are into them. It could be possible that they are incapable of real, deep love for a woman. I believe that men CAN care, about their women, but that’s basically it, since most times they are cold, distant, unfriendly, unloving to their wives and just plain ol’, mean, selfish, narcisstic, and immature. Give up women, go and get yourselves some kids and some hobbies to love.
POINTS: Women/Wives, You Need to Ask Yourselves, If Any Of These Are True About Your Situations:
!) My husband comes and communicates with me, only when he wants to know what is for dinner, or wants sex.
2) My husband can be in his cold mode, but instantly changes when our teen daughter walks into the room. Suddenly and magically, he lights up and becomes talkative with her. (This contradicts the lie, that men give about not liking to be talkative)
3) Your husband goes into a hypnotic gaze at the tv when his program is on. He pretends he doesn’t hear you ask him a question.
4)When his buddy knocks on the door and tells him to step outside or go fishing or riding with him, he gets loud and friendly, not cold and distant, like he is to you.
5) Your husband is loud when playing cards with his friends.
6) Your husband takes his mom’s side if you tell him that his mom insults you often.
7) He tries to over ride your authority in the delivery room, even though he cannot be in authority over you when you are ecposed then, and says it is unfair not to let his mom in there, when you have EXPLICITLY said NO! And anyway, you are the one giving birth with your private parts exposed, not him.
8) He complains about your housekeeping.
9) You work outside of the home too, but he expects you to cook all of the meals
10) He thinks it is okay for him to say “We’re pregnant”, not “My wife is pregnant.” But he distances himself from being close to you any other time.
11) Tells people that you spend too much time with thechildren (Wow!)
12) He is not the spiriyual leader that God has told men to be
13) He does not love and honr you like God tells men to
14) You worshipped your dad and let him walkk you down the aisle without your mother
There are other important points, but do you see women what is going on and how much we allow men to mistreat us? Women now you see that your husbands are sinners, just like you and he is not God! Stop exalting and kissing up to him, coddling him, begging up to him, looking at him with dreamy eyes, stop smiling at him when he is cold to you. Stop trying to get him to talk to you. Forget that! I am not saying be vindictive. I am just saying you need to stop treating him nice and fair, when he doesn’t googoo over you. Get yourselves together. Love yourselves women/wives. You are vital and important, just by being YOU.
Jean, The only fault I find is with your one-sided approach and failure to see when I’ve found fault with men. I tend to agree that if one finds themself with a man as you describe, it would be a pretty horrible situation. I simply don’t believe that fits the majority of men.
Furthermore, this topic is not about finding fault with men (or women). It’s about finding ways to address the situation. Fault-finding does little to address the situation and certainly doesn’t show your spouse any sort of love. If you say, “My spouse is faulty” who is going to feel loved and more willing to open up after that sort of judgment?
The guidelines above state:
“No name-calling, crude or profane language.
No hurtful comments targeted at belittling others.
Be mindful that this is an international ministry where cultural differences need to be taken into consideration.
Please honor the fact this is a Christ-centered web site.”
When you make false claims such as “don’t seem to see any fault of a man/husband, and you defend men’s sins” you are in violation of the terms here.
Let’s be clear on what are sins and what are differences. Being different is NOT a sin. In one of your posts, you (rightly) suggest women shouldn’t be changed by men. But then you talk out of the other side of your mouth by suggesting that women should change men. Your argument is essentially that the way men are is sinful and the way women are is Godly. When someone challenges you on this argument, you engage in a campaign to discredit that person by suggesting they are condoning sin.
Jean, that makes you a liar, full stop. So knock it off. If you want to talk about how to work to solve the problem, fine. If you simply want to say that if a man is not like a woman he is sinning, then I don’t think you are in line with the terms stated above.
I looked at your list again. I’m convinced that these are not only men’s traits. POINTS, Women/Wives, You Need to Ask Yourselves, If Any Of These Are True About Your Situations:
!) My husband comes and communicates with me, only when he wants to know what is for dinner, or wants sex. –Could be my wife. Some days, we both get so busy that the first thing we talk about is what are we doing for dinner.
2) My husband can be in his cold mode, but instantly changes when our teen daughter walks into the room. Suddenly and magically, he lights up and becomes talkative with her. (This contradicts the lie, that men give about not liking to be talkative) –Seen this happen with my wife as well. It’s cold between us, but her mom or one of her girlfriends calls and she lights up.
3) Your husband goes into a hypnotic gaze at the tv when his program is on. He pretends he doesn’t hear you ask him a question. — Again my wife. She can get so engrossed in Housewives of… that I have to call her name several times to get her attention.
4) When his buddy knocks on the door and tells him to step outside or go fishing or riding with him, he gets loud and friendly, not cold and distant, like he is to you. –Don’t really get buddies knocking on the door. Maybe it’s the girls put together a visit to the winery on Facebook and she’s off with her friends.
5) Your husband is loud when playing cards with his friends — Bunco parties my wife hosts are pretty loud.
6) Your husband takes his mom’s side if you tell him that his mom insults you often.
7) He tries to over ride your authority in the delivery room, even though he cannot be in authority over you when you are exposed then, and says it is unfair not to let his mom in there, when you have EXPLICITLY said NO! And anyway, you are the one giving birth with your private parts exposed, not him.
8) He complains about your housekeeping. –She complains about your cooking/lawn mowing/gardening/how you drive…
9) You work outside of the home too, but he expects you to cook all of the meals. –You work outside of the home too, but she expects you to mow all the grass, shovel all the snow, do all the car and home maintenance, and you have maid service, but she still can’t be bothered to pick up the dishes and glasses she uses while watching TV, so they are laying in the living room, on her bedside table and you can’t get into the closet because she has it packed with clothes she buys but seldom, or in the case of the ones with the tags still on, never wears.
10) He thinks it is okay for him to say “We’re pregnant”, not ” My wife is pregnant.” But he distances himself from being close to you any other time. –If he doesn’t say “we’re” pregnant, she looks at him strangely and says “you are in this with me”
11) Tells people that you spend too much time with the children (Wow!) –Tells people that you don’t spend enough time with me, but when he tries to spend time with you, you are busy with the children or one of your girl-gangs.
12) He is not the spiritual leader that God has told men to be –She sleeps in when you get up to teach Sunday School and go to worship.
13) He does not love and honor you like God tells men to. — She does not submit to you like God tells women to.
14) You worshipped your dad and let him walkk you down the aisle without your mother.
The point is, for most, and if I really worked hard at it, for all of them, I could find a counter point that demonstrates that women are equally capable of being sinful. Does any of that enumeration resolve the issue? Of course not. The question is, how do you navigate the differences and have a marriage that honors God and builds up both the husband and the wife.
If both husband and wife were the same, then one would be redundant. Thank God we are different.
Laurie if your husband is well educated… has a good income and has a good grasp on current event events… he more than likely is having an affair. Or it could be that it is physical… such as a low Testosterone count. So if he will not open up it means you will be in a very bad situation at midlife when women truly need their long term spouse.
This is the stepping off point…the end. It does not reverse after a man has hits 50… but the strange part for me is why would you want physical love from a man who does not share emotional love? That is not the norm for mid life with women. I lost any physical attraction for my husband when his emotions changed. I cannot have one without the other… no emotion… no physical.
You have a job and an education… two things God gave you. He did not give to all. Use them wisely to be in a better life with no confusion as to whether your happiness has deserted you. Your husband has done all but walk out carrying his new underwear.
I have read nearly everything posted here in the comments. I have been married to my husband for nearly two years, but we’ve been together for nearly eight. Our relationship has always been rocky but lately I feel like I’ve reached the end of my ability to continue. I look at what it really means to live a life with him for the next several decades, and I’m not sure I can do it. We do not have children yet, we are both 29.
I want to be loved by him, I want to be cherished and I want him to acknowledge the many things I do for him out of love, on a daily basis. He is emotionally distant, I am emotionally over eager, and we find ourselves in an ugly dance every time we argue and have conflict. He constantly says he feel unsafe with me… though never acknowledges the things he does that hurt me, nor considers where my anger at him stems from. I feel a little less alone after reading others’ stories. Thank you.
This sounds so much like my life with my husband right now. It hurts so much because I have given my all to him and feel like I’m getting nothing except jaded, something I’ve never been before (even after my first marriage ended). My husband left this morning on business and was so grumpy that I barely got a goodbye. He gave me an emotionless kiss, said sarcastically, “Thanks for everything sweetie. Love you. Have a good day”, grabbed his bag, and shut the door.
I don’t understand why he doesn’t actually appreciate what I do for him. I’ve been trying to do more and more and all that seems to do is lead to more expectations from him, not more love. I can’t seem to build anything with him, it’s very frustrating. He was married before, too, and that ended badly. He’d been married for nearly 2 decades and I think he invested a bit more in her emotionally. He didn’t think that would end so he’s putting up more and more walls of defense against me instead of letting me in.
I very much relate to what many of us are saying here on this website. I have been through 3 marriage counselors with my husband and 2 marriage classes trying to figure out how to cope. My 35 year-old husband spends most of his time doing things that make him feel good. He avoids all family responsibility aside from his skilled labor job. I work 50 hours a week, carpool my son to all of his childcare, make all the meals, do all the cleaning, pay all the bills, balance the banking, complete all the family paperwork, and organize all of the family activities. My husband literally sits on the computer playing video games and making comments on how we only have intimate time a few times a month (I’m typically intimate with him at least 2-3 times a week unless I’m sick or out of town).
His distorted view of our marriage breaks my heart and I have become increasingly more parental towards him as a result. Even when I try to be overly compensating on praise and TLC it still never clicks for him that there is a give and a take. I am exhausted, frustrated, sad. When I bring these things up I get a variety of reaction. Over the last few months he has told me he is unattracted to me (that I’m a great businesswoman but not a great wife). He has told me that he loves me but is not in love with me. He has walked away from me mid conversation, or he tunes me out drinking and playing shooting video games on his PC. I have read the love languages, the John Gottman books, etc and I cannot get my husband to make the same commitment. I think it may be ending and no one is courageous enough to call it and allow ourselves to have a happy life.
Hi Cassie! I completely understand. My husband just threatened me with divorce for the 4th time when just 2 weeks ago, we were happily in love and extremely connected. Each time this happens, I read all of the articles and books that I can and I am so thankful that I found this site. The articles have helped me a lot. After some soul searching, I realize that whether it’s intentional or unintentional, we have a power struggle going on in our marriage. I am dominant by nature and he is passive.
Recently, he’s asked me to help him save money. When he got sucked into yet another hobby, he spent $1200 on Magic The Gathering cards in 2 weeks. He was down to his last $30 and didn’t want to tell me for fear that I would scold him or reject him, which I have never done. Regardless, it’s his perception. Our balance got uneven so he threatened divorce to get that balance of power back. At first, I pushed back. Now, I only react to him with love and respect. It seems to be working. His anger is much less than it was last week. Now, I have to try and get us reconnected again by doing things with him that make us feel like a team. Wish me luck!
Don’t be parental towards him. Stop it! Stop doing what you do not have the desire to do. Start living your own life. Don’t respond to his threats, just continue to do what you think is right. It is not your job to lead him or make him do the right thing. God first, then your husband. Keep your vows, keep your emotions and desires in check and leave the rest up to him. If he chooses to go against God and his vows, it gives you the freedom to move on. It won’t be easy but either he’ll shape up or ship out.
I got a book called How We Love
by Milan and Kay Yerkovich, after hearing them interviewed on Focus on the Family. It’s very, very helpful in explaining how everyone’s childhood impacts their love styles as adults. There are 5 types of people: Avoider, Vacillator, Pleaser, Controller and Victim. They have lots of examples and I felt like they had been present in some of my conversations because it was so accurate.
The good news is, they talk about ways to improve your own communication patterns so that you can interact more effectively with your spouse. They believe that through prayer, and learning improved communication methods, a relationship can be improved. Even if you’re the only one making conscious changes, it creates a shift in the relationship.
My husband and I have been married for five years (next month). He was previously married to the love of his life, and the mother of his children, for sixteen years. In his mind, second wife means second best. His kids come first, then his ex-wife, then his parents, then his job (he travels so frequently I only see him 5 days out of the month). I come last, always.
He says he loves me, I just feel like he loves being married to someone who nurtures him, cooks for him, does his laundry, and is his companion at HIS convenience. At this moment, he is out of state visiting his oldest child at college -after I begged him not to go, because his ex-wife is trying to serve him yet another Contempt of Court order (he pays her over $1,000 a month, but she wants more -and she’s a millionaire). He has been in jail six times; she is trying to put him there again. I have dealt with her psychopath drama for so many years that I honestly don’t even care if he goes to jail again.
He is good to me as far as being a roommate and best friend goes. He is capable of being kind to me. However, the minute his ex, or his kids, or his parents call -even on my birthday, Mother’s Day, Christmas, or his birthday -no matter what I had planned, how much money I have spent, how disappointed and hurt I am that he puts his own needs over mine, he will drop me like a hot potato and do what HE wants to do.
He acknowledges that he has “caused me pain” over the years, and apologizes when he does me wrong -then he turns around and does it all over again the next time someone else (besides me) wants something. I am NEVER first. He expects me to still be there waiting for him when he is finished doing what HE wants to do, after he has stood me up, disrespected me, and hurt me -then he has the nerve to get mad when I try to explain how upset I am, as if it’s MY fault.
His parents still have pictures of the ex-wife all over their house, including their wedding pictures, and family pictures of him, her, and the kids. I have told them how much this upsets me, and they acknowledged it, but do nothing about it. I have not been in their house in over a year. They send her Mother’s Day, Christmas, and birthday cards, but not me. They have no pictures of me in their house, even though I sent them one of him and me a week after we were married. I told my husband he is a coward for refusing to stand up for me and allowing them to disrespect me. He agrees with me that what they’re doing is horrible, but will not tell THEM that.
He is very physically affectionate, always hugging me. His love language is Physical Touch. I respect that. However, my love language is Words of Affirmation. I NEVER get what I need from him. He uses the excuse that he is not a verbally expressive person. I am not a physically expressive person, but I suck it up and do it for him because I know that is what he needs, but he will not extend the same courtesy to me.
In bed, having sex with him is like having sex with the Terminator – human flesh on the outside, but a cold, dead, emotionless machine on the inside. He’s great at it physically, but many times I end up feeling used and resentful, like I am nothing more to him that a live blow up doll.
I want a divorce, I have told him I want a divorce -and the reasons why -and have even filed for divorce. The only problem, in today’s economy, I cannot afford to live alone. So I have to suffer and live with a man who only loves me as a buddy, not a wife. He is not, nor has he ever been in love with me. I’m to the point that I barely even like him.
That sounds awful. What a terrible marriage to endure every day. What you described reminds me of my ex. I also stayed with him too long due to financial worries. My family is distant and they do not support me, and it’s difficult for a single woman and especially a single mother to survive out there in the economy.
But after a while, I started to feel like I would rather be homeless than stay with him. Being homeless would be more peaceful than suffering every day in a miserable relationship. He told me I was selfish and it’s all about me and my feelings because I told him that I’m not getting what I need emotionally from him. He would be completely SILENT during dinners, and he would get angry and yell at me if I asked him questions that he didn’t like. When I tried to work through issues with him, he would hang up on me. I had my part in the problems too, but when he refused to talk to me it hurt terribly. I once cried so hard that my nose started bleeding.
Satan traps us with fear. I have to remind myself that Jesus is my security, not some emotionally unavailable man. I finally had to step out in faith because I couldn’t take it anymore. I would go without eating for days from the stress and become physically sick. I am sure God doesn’t want that kind of life for His children. It’s hard being alone, and I still worry, but I know that God will help me through it. If He fed the multitudes with five loaves, He can surely help single and struggling women, one day at a time.
I know it’s hard to see clearly when you’re in the middle of it, but as an outsider and someone who went through similar problems, it’s clear to see that you are being deprived of what you need in your marriage. You seem like a nice lady, and I pray that God shows you the right solution.
I live this life everyday. Some more than others. What makes it different for me? I’ve been married over 20 yrs. The last 6 months have been pure hell. I made up a saying “I like walking on the grass because it feels so soothing, so why am I walking on eggshells?” The evasiveness is pure Emotional Abuse or the gateway to a Transactional Marriage. Get Help A.S.A.P! I’m in therapy right now. It’s helping me deal with it.
How do you learn to live with someone so different from yourself? My husband was loving, giving, caring and my hero until he started spending money we didn’t have, and lying and even texting other women. This behaviour went on for 6 years; we split for 2 years and then with all the promises to change we reconciled. Again he was the person I met and fell in love with but he was still lying and spending up until about 18 mths ago.
Although I can never be sure if he’s ever not doing anything destructive, I know I’ve fallen into the anger trap because he makes sure I stay there in his comfort zone. I struggle to get out and he pulls me back in. I challenge him more now and it doesn’t go down well. When I sort myself out he brings out his old self and back we go into the unhealthy pattern; he acts like a jerk and I react badly until I get control over myself again. I feel like a yoyo.
My husband and I have been together for five years and married one. We have been raising my nephews off and on for four years of our relationship. Their mother is off doing whatever she pleases but this is a stress on us. We have somehow started only having sex a few times a month and I hate it. But on top of that I work a night shift job, not at my choice, and it takes away from my time with my family.
I feel emotionally detached from him. I’ve tried talking to him but it always ends up in a fight. I love him with all my heart and soul and I know he loves me; it’s just hard for me to just hear it. I want him to show me and he says, I do; we just had sex; lol it’s not funny. But that’s my husband. There are times when I feel I have become content with our life and all it’s crap but I know I haven’t really. We want it to be just us again but we know we can’t have that right now and probably not anytime soon.
I am only 21 and he is 25 and we live life like we are in our thirties. We are in a rut in life and I need help getting us out. I can’t do it alone. I know this. I’m working on getting him to come around to help me but I need help doing just that; like I could do this and try that or approaching it from his point of view. But I’ve done it all. I’ve tried it all, at least I think I have. My husband is a typical man. He really is I mean. He is what all women say their husbands or their boyfriends are but they really have no idea!
I don’t know what I’m to do about my family life or my relationship with my husband. I really need help! He will not go to counseling cuz he says there’s no need to pay someone to fix something that isn’t broken. I don’t know what to do. Is it just me or am I going freakin crazy? I’ve prayed and prayed. I’ve asked my mother who is in heaven to help me and nothing has changed yet. Someone please help me, please!???!!
Victoria, I’d like to ask you a few questions first for clarification so I (and hopefully others) will know better how to respond to your pleas. First, what country do you live in and are you both from that country? Also, is there any chance your husband is into social media big time, perhaps involving porn or cybersex, visiting chatrooms, or such? And, do you have any other family members that can help you sometimes with your nephews (taking them for a night here and there or so)? If you work nights, what time of the day or night does your husband work –the same time frame or different?
Hi, i read this artile with hopes to learn and perhaps deal better with my family. I have been married for just over a year now and it seems the relationship is just becoming unbearable. I did not know that women get more emotionally eager just after getting married, because we were co-habiting for 2 years before we got married and never had these issues. I guess I was naive to think things will be the same after marriage.
Now that things are worse I desparately need practical solutions to remedy my new family. I admit that I have been distant from my wife because she seemed to be negative, dragging me to negativity. I thought she only looked at thing that are wrong without acknowledging the many things that are going right. I honestly don’t know how to be that kind of a person. I’m the kind of person who focuses more on possitive things in life because that makes me appreciate life. Turning my focus to negative things will only make me miserable or depressed.
Tom, I don’t know what country you live in, but if it’s possible, there’s a good book that I recommend you get on this issue. It’s written by Dennis Prager, and it’s titled, Happiness Is a Serious Problem
. This book has really changed my view of “happiness” and being negative because the world appears to be negative. Dennis has a radio program that I listen to each day (when I can) and on Friday’s he has what’s called “the Happiness Hour” where he focuses on different aspects of happiness. As a matter of fact, you can watch a little preview of this book and the subject on a YouTube video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8uJQUdR3kc. I hope you (and your wife) will watch this short clip. It might whet the appetite to learn more.
Now, I’m not talking about giddy, fake happiness (and neither is Dennis). And I’m certainly not talking about the immoral “God just wants me to be happy, so I should leave my spouse because I’m not happy in my marriage.” That’s a crock of garbage. But if you listen to and read what Dennis says about looking towards and focusing on the brighter side of life (there is one if you look for it as gold) instead of focusing on negativity, it’s amazing how much better life can be for all. I learned this BIG TIME! I come from a family of negative relatives. My mom’s side of the family were/are mostly sad-sacks. It’s a whoa-is-me type of existence. And I’ll tell you, you can only take so much of that negativity and you want to run as fast as you can away from them at times. I love them, but enough is enough! We all have problems… that doesn’t mean we have to wallow in them.
I hope you can eventually help your wife to look towards the brighter side of life, for the most part. It took years before my Dad was able to get my mom to do this and years before I “got it” as far as not focusing on the negative –dealing with it, yes… but not staying there and inflicting it on others with a sour-puss outlook on life day in and day out. We have some BIG problems going on in our lives right now, but my husband and I refuse to stay focused on that, which we can’t change. We look to the Lord to guide us through them and look for the joy that is around us to focus on. I pray your wife eventually is able to get there too. I hope you are able to (gently) help her get there, as well. It will bring you all the more closer together.
I have been married to my husband for almost four years, but we’ve been together for about seven. We have almost four children together. I say almost four because next week I am expected to birth our fourth. I was a typical daydreaming woman, thinking that having my schooling in order and being married and having a family would bring me everything I had always wanted, a nice close and solid relationship with my children and my husband.
I am an emotionally eager woman; I have had attachment issues since I was a child due to a traumatic experience in my adoption situation. I have had people in and out of my life emotionally and I have a lot of anger I work on resolving because of it. I’m tired of people not realizing how much they hurt me by not being there. So the only person left I still hold to a standard really is my husband, my life partner and father of my kids. Sometimes I feel very foolish; I feel foolish because I expect him to be more understanding, sensitive, compassionate, more tender and affectionate, and he tells me “you knew what kind of man I was when you met me” meaning he is basically none of those things.
The thing is that when I met him he was definitely more of those things than he is now. He works very hard, and allows me to stay home with our children, which is something I cherish as a huge gift. Sometimes he makes me feel lazy and suggests I need to be working to help with our income, although all of our needs are met with his income alone. He is climbing the corporate ladder and I’m trying so hard to be supportive of him even though he doesn’t support my dreams or visions. He has told me my dreams aren’t logical, they are unrealistic, and that the scope of them has brought him fear and anxiety in the past.
I am a dreamer. I have big dreams and goals and was headed in those directions when I met him. I feel resentful that I’ve kind of given those up because I don’t have the support I wish I had from him. He wants this to be our last child, and I’m resentful because I feel that he has never “been there” emotionally for me during my pregnancies. He has always jerked his hand away when I put his hand on my stomach to feel the baby move, saying it felt weird and that he couldn’t emotionally connect to our baby until it was born. I’ve been left to waddle through the hormonal changes of pregnancy myself and felt at fault for being too sick or too tired during or after the pregnancies to amount to his expectations.
I resent sex with him because I don’t believe in hormonal birth control, and he doesn’t want any more kids yet tells me I run the sex schedule. I resist sex because I also feel that it is fulfilling him physically and my emotional needs are not met. It is very hurtful and hard to be in this position because I love my husband with my whole heart and our family but I feel despair when I think of continuing a relationship like this for the rest of my life. I want my kids to see an energized, encouraged, lively woman in their life who shows them how to shoot for the stars because she is optimistic. I write in a Mr/Mrs journal I purchased a while ago to write openly to my husband and he to me about our issues and feelings, and he never writes in it unless I remind him after I’ve written about an issue I’m upset about. I knew marriage wouldn’t be easy, but I just want to feel loved, appreciated, to have him be grateful for my sacrifices and my efforts to please him. I want to feel cherished and beloved. And I don’t think he’s capable of making those changes on his own. I feel lost as to what to do and frustrated.
Hi, just came across this and need advice. I’ve been married over 20 years to a guy who’s a “man’s man” – has his own interests and is true to himself (regardless of the hurt it may cause others). The first few years of our marriage weren’t bad, although I did have to ask/cry/breakdown for sex, I kept thinking it would change.
Fast forward, we had 2 kids, and things never changed. In fact, my oldest was the one who discovered dad’s Internet history of lots of porn sites and dad chatting away when I wasn’t home. I got him to a counselor once or twice, where he admitted he doesn’t know why he married me. I’ve worked on myself for 5 years now, thinking that at some point things would get better. What has gotten better is my own hope to separate from him so that I can live a life that accomplishes without dampening.
Unfortunately, my youngest is still in high school. My oldest is going to college this fall. I feel guilty about the horrible example of marriage that they’ve grown up with. Our house is full of anger (my husband’s technique is to be angry and/or stonewall –will not discuss anything -ever) when my husband is home. While he’s a helpful man (cooks, does shopping, helps clean sometimes), emotionally it’s often challenging to anticipate his moods and to suppress my own desires (we don’t have sex and haven’t for 5+ yrs) (asking for home improvements makes him angry, same with car issues).
I promised God to stay with him forever, and it feels like the lonely life sentence. I’m not sure even what I want any more. It just seems like the easiest and most sane thing to do is to leave. He won’t go to counseling. Would going to a counselor help (I have been, 5 years ago in the porn discovery, and then a year+ class for spouses of porn addicts)?
I just feel stuck. Thanks.
Thanks for this article. I am a man who realized I fit into this mold. I hope it’s not too late to save my marriage. It’s close, I’m just not sure. My wife says I broke her heart, and I did. We’re moving forward, communication is extremely hard, but I’ve spent the last 6 months in therapy. I’ve dealt with my demons. I’ve come to the other side, I know what they are and how they have affected my relationship. I am 43 and wife 38, we have two kids 7 and 4.
We are both trying to make amends and come out the other side, yet it’s hard. I’ve started to pay more attention, lose weight (22 lbs so far), treat her better, and give her more respect and support.
We had communication problems in our relationship and I had self worth issues, so together after losing a job, things started to fall apart. It’s sad. Now I’m at a stage where I’ve stopped pleading (by actions) for her to return to me as my wife in spririt (we both live in the same home) to one of action. But an action of purpose. Realizing what I’ve done, making changes, and projecting a new image, not for her to remain, but for me to show I am growing into a better man.
I’ve begun to be present in the relationship, learning how to latin dance (her favourite), being more communicative, thoughtful, and put together things to show her I do love her for who she is, and not because I need her to be a mother figure…
That said… Most of the respondents to this email are women. What would you like to see? Spell it out, not for the sake of doing it, but for a way to really see real examples of what would you wish to see your husbands do or wish they would have done to save your marriages…
By saving the marriage, I don’t want to go back to the good times, because those were just that good. There were relationship problems then, I want us to be great. That means taking the steps now to make it so and growing our relationship into something new, stronger, healthier, with outlet valves to reduce steam when needed. Any advice would be appreciated…
Peter, Keep trying! Try to discover what makes your wife “feel” loved. Is it gifts? Sex? Verbal acknowledgment? Time for herself? I read a book once that stated everyone has “love buckets”… I think it was the “Five Love Languages”. Find out what hers is and try fill it. Personally, I feel like actions speak louder then words. You wrote that you have tried to make changes in yourself and you should be proud of that.
When you ask her what she needs to move forward in the relationship what does she say? That’s the answer to your question. If she doesn’t know the answer, give her time & support to find the answer. Maybe she doesn’t know what will really make her happy… and if she doesn’t know how are you to know? Be patient & Good Luck!
Peter, I was pleased to read a post from a husband on this website. I just found this article today. I’m an over eager or I guess, the emotionally trying or changing partner. I’ve been married for 12 years to my husband and we’ve been trapped in a pattern of co dependence and low self worth. I’m emotionally expressive, I’m an extrovert, he’s an introvert and socially very shy. I’m ambitious and driven, so is he, but he doesn’t take risks and is resentful at times for my successes. We are both creatives but even though I am also as insecure as he is, I’m fearless (because I’m competitive) when it comes to putting myself out there; where he is not.
In sum, I’m constantly trying to work on myself through CBT and therapy. He feels there is nothing wrong with him- I am the sick one; he’s the adult. Unfortunately, he’s also chronically depressed but refuses to deal with it and is evasive, doesn’t ever want to rock the boat; and though he tries to make me happy, or says he tries to make me happy, he mostly is just ingnoring our issues and wants to pretend he didn’t hurt me for four years acting out in our marriage. He has acknowledged his mistakes but wants me to get over it now; I realize now, I did not work through it, just shoved it down inside me – and as we tried to recover the last four months, and as we have tried to heal and get closer, those wounds are fresh for me.
As we get closer I become vulnerable and scared and think he’s lying again. Old hurts surface. Adding to the mix is when discord erupts, he blames me that I’m causing the friction and that he’s not being evasive or avoiding things- but he is, unfortunately. He says I’m creating drama that doesn’t exist. Maybe he’s right. He doesn’t want to listen to me or my recovery or my thoughts or growth or revelations. I ask him about himself but he doesn’t share.
Now to you- I can’t tell you how to make your wife feel safer or better -or how to make your marriage greater- you should ask her. For me, I like to talk – a lot, about feelings and all kinds of other things. I don’t necessarily want fancy vacations… or cooking classes together and all that stuff. I want my husband to listen to my newest philosophical problem with a concept I’m dealing with in one of my paintings. Not to solve it, but to listen. Or actually, care about it, because I deeply care about his passions.
I want everyday acts of intimacy and kindness or thoughtfulness. Like for example, if my husband gets up in the morning first, he makes the coffee, and maybe he sets out a cup for me too. Or even better, if he knows my schedule for the day, he brings me a cup and wakes me up if I haven’t gotten up because my alarm clock hasn’t gone off because I forgot to set it–I do those things for him. Or, maybe he gets the kids up and helps get them ready or makes them breakfast so I’m not running around trying to get them ready- making myself late for work. Often times my spouse sits outside in the garden reading or playing video games on his iPad while I’m in the house getting the kids ready – leaving me with the burden of the kids, all the while I have to juggle the lunches and everything else. It just makes it feel like we’re not a team.
In the end, most wives want what they’re calling “the new man” which is an equal partner in the marriage. Someone once stated that if we all have a house, and each of us have rooms in our houses, one for work, one for sport, one for friends, we ought to let our spouses into those rooms openly, not be shut down. Because if you don’t let your wife in, she’s standing outside like a stranger, feeling unappreciated, in the cold, resentful and hurt or worse, rejected, confused when spouses want physical attention. But the prevailing message most wives receive is that if men let the wives in, the wives will rule or control those rooms.
Guess what? We won’t. We’re just insecure because we adore and love our husbands and want to make them happy- undeniably. We think you’re going to cheat or watch porn or lose interest as we age and divorce us and leave us high and dry for a younger version of us- and we’ve screwed ourselves because of our careers and taking care of the kids. We’ll never earn as much… and so we desperately want to connect emotionally to you -want some sign that you truly love us for us as women, not as objects; respect us despite our emotional complexities.
Anyway, I don’t know if any of this helps… Maybe none of it!
Peter, Just the fact of your open and honest interest in making changes in how the two of you interact, is beautiful! Remember to not bend over too far to “become” what you believe she wants. Any changes you make in yourself that are only to please someone else will not last and end up being a double betrayal.
I would bet money that your wife wants a husband who listens (you’re actively learning to do that) but also takes what he hears his wife and children say and uses it to LEAD, not in the sense of bossing or controlling, in the sense of guiding and guarding.
Also, something I heard several years ago that blew my mind because it was SO TRUE to my heart is, a woman’s children are an extension of her. Treat the children like you treat your wife. When you hurt them with your own issues, you hurt her to the core.
That’s not to say that she doesn’t also do things that hurt them and maybe she doesn’t even realize it. Don’t tell her straight out, that is like blowing holes in her soul. Ask her why she does it and then model a better choice with them in a similar situation. Even be willing to step into situations that she doesn’t handle well with them. Again, LEAD by guarding and guiding. And PRAY PRAY PRAY. You have the ability to be everything your family needs you to be, and be joyful because of it!
If you were my husband I would want you to ask me how I feel… ask me how my day was, and then listen and act like you care when I answer. (Please turn down the TV and look at me when we’re talking) Find out (ask me, pay attention to my response) what gives me pleasure sexually and do it EVERY TIME, so I am not left aroused, but unfulfilled. Realize that as a stay at home mom I work every bit as hard, if not harder than you do, but I don’t get any praise from adults, nor do I get a paycheck for my work. YOU are the only possible source of praise or appreciation I’ll get for rearing your children, so PLEASE acknowledge my efforts occasionally. Tell me I look nice, or I’m pretty, or you find me attractive. A little goes a long way, I promise! Don’t treat me like a maid. Talk to me about your work. Tell me about your good and bad days. Plan a date… nothing fancy, just ask me out to dinner or a movie. Tell me you love me.