Leslie Cane Articles

By: Leslie Cane: A lot of wives who contact me about a husband who seemingly doesn’t care anymore will tell you that the whole thing was kind of abrupt. I don’t mean to imply that they never noted any unhappiness or frustration in their husband. They did. They often knew that things weren’t great and that improvement should be sought as soon as possible. But what they didn’t expect is that he would go from merely frustrated to appearing to not care at all in so short a period of time.

Someone might explain: “It may seem as if I am being very dramatic. But what I am about to say is absolutely true. I don’t think my husband cares about me (and our marriage) at all. It is as if I can no longer get through the thick armor that he has built around his heart in regards to me. I know that we are having problems. But when we first started talking about our issues and trying to work through them, he honestly seemed very invested. Yes, he was certainly frustrated. But so was I.  However, he seemed like he still cared very much about me and it seemed that he ultimately wanted to work things out. I don’t get that sense anymore. At all. It used to be that when we would fight, I would cry and get upset and he would always comfort me, tell me it was going to be okay, and then try to make things better. These days if I cry or get upset, the best I might get is that he ignores me altogether. The worst is when he rolls his eyes at me or sighs deeply like I am the biggest annoyance in the world to him. He will often just walk right out on me. The other day, I yelled after him ‘it’s nice to know that you don’t care at all.’ His reply was ‘eventually, you have no choice.’ He didn’t even deny it. I really don’t understand this. A month ago, he was still comforting me and telling me that we were going to be okay. Now he acts as if he can’t stand to be in the same room with me and he’s pretty much admitted that he doesn’t care at all. He’s even started hinting about a separation. What would make a husband (who seemed invested) go to not caring and then talking about a separation so suddenly?”

I can only give you my theories. I’ve gone through a similar situation in my own marriage (which eventually ended up in a temporary separation.) And I do hear from a lot of folks as a result of this blog. So, I’ve developed some definite theories as to why husbands seem to go from invested to uncaring way too quickly.

He Believes That Nothing Is Going To Change, So He Has Lost All Patience: Sometimes, he seems to snap suddenly when in actuality (at least to him) this has been brewing for a while. What I mean by that is that the whole time that he was comforting you, he was probably hoping that soon, he would not need to offer you comfort because things were going to change (for the better.) So when he keeps having to comfort you because nothing is changing, he begins to lose patience and hope. When he finally begins to believe that nothing is ever going to change, he may shut down his emotions in order to try to avoid more disappointment. This whole thing may seem sudden to you, but there may have been some steps that you didn’t see. I know that this was true in my own case.

He May Be Distancing Himself From His Emotions: As I alluded to above, there is likely to be an awful lot of disappointment in this scenario. When he was comforting you, he was likely hoping for the best. When that didn’t pan out, he could well have been very disappointed and frustrated. And of course, these are negative emotions that most of us do not enjoy feeling. So we can shut down to try to protect ourselves. Frankly, it might not be that he doesn’t care. It might in fact be that he cares too much. And his feelings are painful to him. So for now, he’s holding back because he just doesn’t want to feel. This doesn’t mean that he doesn’t care. It means that he is choosing not to show it.

Moving Forward: From my own unfortunate experience, I know that it’s very tempting to try to get some sort of reaction out of him. In my own case, I laid it on a little more thickly, hoping that my husband would feel bad and try to interact with me. When this didn’t work, I tried to pick fights. As you may have guessed, this only made things worse. As hard it was, it wasn’t until I backed off some that my husband eventually became receptive again and then it became obvious that he in fact did care quite a bit. But no matter how much I pushed, I wasn’t going to see that immediately. Many things had to happen first.  You can read more about how I had to back away to gain some ground on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com

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