Leslie Cane Articles

By: Leslie Cane:  I recently heard from a wife who was worried because she couldn’t help but notice that her husband never wanted to be alone with her anymore.  Every time they went somewhere or did anything, he would automatically invite friends or family.  This hurt her feelings and it wasn’t doing much for their sex life either.  She had also noticed that they didn’t seem to be as connected to one another and this also really bothered her.

She said, in part: “my husband seems to want to avoid being alone with me at all costs.  I’ll try to make weekend plans so that we can have some alone time together, but no matter what I suggest, he will then want to call our friends or family and invite them along.  Lately, I’ve been asking him why, for once, it can’t just be us.  I have very directly told him that I want some alone time with him, but he scoffs and says that we’re a married couple and therefore we are together all the time.  Plus, he always makes the point that events are more fun with a bunch of people.  Much of the time, he invites his coworkers or family that sees all the time anyway.  I just don’t understand it.   Then at the end of the evening when I’m finally free of all the extra people, I’ll try to show him some affection and bond with him and he just doesn’t seem receptive, even for sex.  He’ll say that he’s tired or that there will be plenty of time for us later.  But later never comes. I’m not sure how much more I can take of this.  When I married my husband, I assumed that this meant I would get to spend a lot of time with him.  But it’s very clear that being alone with him is something that is not a given.  What can I do about this?  Am I asking too much? Why does he do this?  Does he not love me anymore?  Does he find it distasteful to be alone with me?”

I certainly didn’t think that the wife was asking too much to have some alone time with her husband.  But there are several possible reasons that her husband might not want to be alone with her.  I will discuss this more in the following article.

Some Possible Reasons That Your Husband Doesn’t Want To Be Alone With You: There are some families who have a sort of “the more the merrier” culture in their home.  Some men grow up with lots of different people and family members around their home all of the time.  They likely grew up seeing their parents always having other people included in normal and special occasions, so it’s totally natural for them to mirror what they saw growing up.  And, if this is the case, you may have  gotten a glimpse of this when you are dating so that you aren’t completely surprised now.

However, this wasn’t the case with this wife.  Her husband didn’t grow up in a family that always had other people over and, when they were dating, they were very often alone except for special occasions.  This issue was a relatively new one and she suspected that it indicated that there was a problem with their marriage.  She couldn’t deny that the connection didn’t seem to be there and sometimes when they were alone, the conversation lagged or things seemed a bit awkward.  However, the wife often wondered if she was noticing things that didn’t exist because this bothered her so much.

I’ve dialogued with a few men about this on my blog and often the men will tell you that they are just trying to make things exciting by bringing other people along.  Other times, they will tell you that things have become strained in the marriage so they figure if other people are around, they won’t argue as much with their wife and they hope that the conversation won’t be forced or strained.  On rare occasions, I’ve had men admit that they aren’t quite as attracted to their wife anymore and they dread sex so they are trying to delay it or to make it happen less.

On the other hand, many men will tell you that they  just enjoy being around the people that they invite along and they don’t understand why their wife doesn’t agree.   I can’t tell you which of these scenarios may be true for your marriage or for your husband, but hopefully you’ve read something here that might ring a bell for you.  Now that we’ve discussed why he may not be alone with you, let’s now discuss how you might handle it.

How To Handle It When Your Husband Never Wants To Be Alone With You Anymore: The wife had tried telling her husband that she didn’t enjoy having other people tag along all of the time, but this hadn’t worked.  Her husband was basically just telling her that she was being silly or dismissing what she had to say.  I suggested that the next time this issue happen, she address it in the spirit of compromise.  Because her husband had been accusing her of “always complaining” about the issue.  As such, he was likely tuning her out.  Sometimes, in order to get him to listen, you have to speak in the language that you know that he best responds to.

So, I suggested that the next time this happens, the wife respond with something like: “well, you know that sometimes, I’d like for it to be just us.  Can we agree that we’ll make it a group this time, but next weekend, it will be just the two of us?  I don’t mind having friends along tonight, as long as I’m getting you to myself next weekend.  How about you take care of the group plans tonight and I’ll handle the plans for next weekend?”

Also, the wife admitted that she usually pouted when they were out with others.  This was certainly understandable, but it probably wasn’t helping her cause all that much because it was making the distance and the awkwardness more noticeable and more likely.

If none of these suggestions worked and her husband was still pretty much refusing to be alone with her, then it was probably time to really take a good look at the marriage to determine if there was some larger issues at play.  If your husband doesn’t want to be alone with you because he doesn’t enjoy your marriage or your company, then there are certainly larger problems than having others around all of the time and those issues are where you should focus your attention.

I’m really glad that you want to take action.  Sometimes, people ignore these little problems so that they eventually become big problems that mean that the marriage is in real trouble.  Such was the case with me.  When it finally occurred to me that my marriage was in serious trouble, my husband already wanted to move out.  Saving my marriage was a lot more difficult as the result, but I was finally able to do it.  If it helps, you can read about what worked for me and what didn’t (as well as take a look at some very good free marriage resources) on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com

Filed under: Uncategorized by admin