My Husband Is Cold To Me. I Think The Marriage Is Over And I’m Devastated.
By: Leslie Cane: Many wives begin to notice, with a very sinking feeling, that their husband’s stance and attitude toward them has most definitely changed. Perhaps their husband was never the most romantic or demonstrative guy in the first place, but he was able to convey loving and warm feelings. However, as time passes and circumstances become more difficult, many wives can no longer deny that those warm feelings are a thing of the past. There’s no longer any way to deny it: Her husband is now ice-cold toward her on a regular basis. Understandably, as a result, she’s worried that this means that her marriage is over.
She might say, “I wish that I was wrong, but that I know that I am not. The reason that I know that my feelings are accurate is that my husband used to be much warmer toward me. When we first met, he could actually be extremely sweet, even though he is a shy and introverted person. However, after we had our second child, I noticed the distance growing. He just doesn’t go out of his way for me in any capacity. He’s nice to and goes out of his way for his friends, co-workers, and family. He can be chilly to our children also, but nowhere near the way that he is toward me. Sometimes, I ask myself if I’m doing anything wrong, or if I have made a mistake that is worthy of this distance. I can’t come up with any missteps that I might have made. If anything, I try to overcompensate and act more warmly toward him, until I get so frustrated that I stop. When I attempt to bring this to his attention, he will tell me that I’m either overexaggerating it or expecting too much. He tells me that he is busy and that when he comes home, he just wants to unwind and not do tons of emotional work. He says that people reach out to him all day at work so that at home, he needs time to himself to decompress. This theoretically makes sense, but he’s still cold when we are on vacation or when he has had a long weekend to decompress. It has got to where I have to almost beg him to have sex or I have to hound him in order to have any sort of meaningful conversation. Sometimes, when I catch him looking at me, I swear that there is distaste in his eyes. But he doesn’t seem willing to address or change this. So I really feel like our marriage is going to be over. And I’m just not prepared for that. I love my husband, even now. And I don’t want to do this to my kids. I am a child of divorce. And my dad was cold to my mother – just like my husband is to me.”
I do understand these concerns and I would never tell a wife in this situation that she was overreacting. In her shoes, I told myself that my husband was just distracted and that things would eventually improve. This was a mistake. As a result of these assumptions, I did nothing and I ended up separated and almost divorced. It’s possible that I had taken action and made every effort to improve things when I first noticed the distance, I could have avoided an extremely painful separation that went on for far too long. I wish that I had understood the multiple reasons that a spouse can turn cold and perhaps then I would not have taken it quite as personally or been so reluctant to address it. Hopefully, the wife in this scenario can learn from my experience (and from the divorce of her own parents) that this is not something that you want to ignore. Below, I’ll explain some of the reasons that you might suddenly see a cold, distant spouse and I will offer some suggestions as to how you might deal with this.
Issues With Emotional Distance Can Begin In Childhood And Can Become Worse In Busy, Adult Life: Sometimes, in some people, normal but trying situations like difficult parenting or growing up in a household with parents who rarely displayed affection can make a person susceptible to being stingy with adult demonstrations of emotional contact and love. A person who already has this susceptibility may find their behaviors intensifying when they are very busy, they are stressed, or they are immersed in today’s culture of constantly multitasking, dealing with social media, juggling texts, and fighting work demands.
The reason for this is that it’s very easy to hide behind your electronics or work obligations in the culture in which we live today. Even the most demonstrative people can struggle to find the time to prioritize their marriage. But today’s culture makes it extremely easy for people to claim to be too busy or too involved to fully emotionally participate in their marriage. Frankly, we all have to fight to make time for it – even when we WANT to be emotionally available. So when someone already has the tendency to emotionally withdraw, the world can make that quite easy and can even reinforce this.
Evaluating The Marital Circumstances: Another thing that you may want to ask yourself is whether your physical connection has become more scarce. It is so extremely common for men, in particular, to pull away emotionally when there is physical distance. Or, your emotional connection might have paused due to child rearing, busy jobs, aging parents, etc. Again, this makes it very easy for an introverted person who has trouble with emotional demonstrations to pull away. A warmer person might fight to keep the connection. A distant person will dive right into the distance.
Reintroducing Intimacy Into Your Marriage: I can tell you how I was able to do this. My husband actually does not normally have trouble with emotional intimacy. He was usually relatively involved and demonstrative. However, as our circumstances changed, he did 100% withdraw and would not be pulled back in. I would think that you could use the same strategies, regardless of how or when the distance started. One thing that I learned fairly quickly was that if I was going to spend quality emotional time with my husband, I was going to have to come to him. No amount of guilting or begging was going to do it. Even when I was successful in getting him to spend time participating in activities that I chose, he was not really a willing participant. So I really didn’t gain anything when I forced this upon him.
I learned to spend time together doing what he wanted to do – at least initially. One of our first bonding activities was binge-watching mob-themed dramas together. My husband had already seen most of these, but I hate mob stories. Still, I knew that this was something that my husband would be willing to do and it meant being with him (and somewhat having his attention) for an hour at a time. I did this with various activities and outings. These events would not normally have been my first choice, but I wanted to connect with my husband. Sure, on the surface we were only watching TV, but this was a gateway to more.
I also learned that the physical affection was also going to have to initially come from me. Here is the thing: Your having to take the initiative can feel really vulnerable and unfair. But the truth is, someone has to go first. That’s just the way that it is. I might be still waiting for my husband to come around if I had waited for him to act first. I basically very gradually slathered on all the affection that he would tolerate and then I made a huge deal out of it once he reciprocated. When our physical contact improved, he became much more willing to give emotional contact. In short, I had to train this behavior into him and I had to offer tons of positive reinforcement when I got the behavior that I needed.
Did this sometimes seem painfully slow and did I occasionally resent having to pull loving demonstrations out of my own husband? Of course. But what choice did I have? Without this, we were going to end up divorced. I would strongly suggest working on these strategies now before you are separated or your husband begins asking for more “space” and “time.” Once this happens, your job actually becomes twice as hard, at least this was the case for me. Sure, I suppose it’s possible that a few couples might naturally see improvements if they do nothing, but why risk it? Especially when you deserve a husband who is present and warm. You can read more about how I got the emotional connection back during my own separation at http://isavedmymarriage.com
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