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My Husband Is Emotionally Distant

How I Got My White Picket Fence After All
Rachel Hanna, Laura Doyle Certified Coach

All of my life, I had my eye on the prize: being married to my one true soulmate.

I imagined us laughing together on the couch and gazing into each other’s eyes, deeply in love. I imagined a love of such closeness and comfort that we could have a blast together at the grocery store. I also imagined accomplishing big dreams together–white picket fence and all.

I yearned and prayed my heart out to meet him, a focused mission I made my top priority as I became a young woman.

Then I met him, and I knew right away.

He was sensitive, gentle, brilliant, and shared the same dreams as me. From the time we met, he felt familiar and comfortable, like a brother, and also the man I knew I would forever love more and more deeply.

When we got married, I naively said we would be different from other couples. I expected smooth sailing from day one because we were gentle souls aimed for kindness and sweetness towards each other.

Despite that good foundation, within a few weeks the challenges began.

He had taken a job with long, late hours, which didn’t match my vision of the evenings we would spend together as newlyweds. I complained, telling him it was wrong to work so late when we were newly married since we should be cuddling and laughing all evening, as true soulmates do.

It wasn’t long before he was withdrawn and distant.

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You’ve been working really hard on your relationship. At least it feels like hard work because it’s so draining and takes up so much time and energy.

The bad news is you were probably working on fixing the wrong things.

The good news is that, no matter how bad it seems now, it’s not too late to save the relationship—and get the fulfilling one you set out to have when you first fell in love.

That’s true even if you’re separated, there’s been an affair, or the divorce has already started.

Here’s what you can do to restore the peace, passion and connection you once shared:

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My Husband Avoids Me

How I Attracted Him Back–and Became My Best Self

Amy Beth Kauffman, Laura Doyle Relationship Coach

I met my husband 27 years ago, the day I moved to a new apartment. We ran into each other by chance in the lobby as he was leaving a friend’s place. He then turned around to come back upstairs with his friend and me to hang out longer.

A month later, he drove over to my apartment to ask me out on a date, and we have been together ever since.

I married him for many reasons: He was smart, gentle, stable, reliable, generous, compassionate, hard-working, and he has amazing green eyes! I thought the world of him.

He was attentive to me, planned dates for us–everything from lunch to vacation–and we were fortunate to have the family of our dreams. It was a fairytale.

Until it wasn’t.

We decided that I would put my career on the back burner to be a stay-at-home mom. It made sense financially and emotionally. Motherhood was wonderfully exhausting, but I was lonely for my husband.

While I waited at home for his attention, he was becoming a superstar at work. He received promotion after promotion, which I was proud of and yet, I began to feel less important and less worthy than I was.

I unfairly expected him to fulfill all my needs for attention, affirmation and affection.

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My Marriage Is Miserable

How I Stopped the Fighting

Sonya, Laura Doyle Certified Coach
“Better to live on a corner of the roof than share a house with a quarrelsome wife.” —Proverbs 21:9 (NIV)

I met my husband in college, and disrespect started early—even before we got married.

He said he’d always dreamed his bride would come down the aisle followed by a long white train. I found a gown with a short train. He didn’t see until our wedding day that I had completely disregarded his wishes.

Six months into marriage, I complained bitterly to my mom and sister that I couldn’t see any advantage to being married.

I worked and he was in school, which created an awkward dynamic. He was spending my money, going golfing with his friends, or settling into a book or playing computer games at home, and I was lonely a lot. My expectations for a happy, fun, never-alone relationship were not being met.

I was miserable and told him so.

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My Husband Disappoints Me All the Time

5 Ways to Inspire Him to Be a Better Man

Being constantly disappointed in your marriage can wear you down and make you hopeless about the future.

Maybe your husband disappoints you when it comes to celebrations–he forgets your anniversary, gets you a present that has nothing to do with what you like, or acts like it’s just another Wednesday.

Or, let’s say he complains when you’re sick because you aren’t doing the things you normally do. The demoralizing message is that you’re not that important except for what you contribute, not to mention his lack of compassion when you just want to be taken care of!

Or he may be a disappointment in a bigger sense, like not showing up to be the dad your kids deserve.

Either way, you don’t have to just suck it up and continue to hurt endlessly.

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My Husband Abandoned Me Then Became the Man of My Dreams

Mari-Jean Anderson, Laura Doyle Certified Coach

I have always believed in marriage.

I just couldn’t make it work.

First married for two years at 18 and again at 35, this time for only a year, I could not figure out how to be in love for very long.

In 2003, at age 53, I found myself falling in love once again, this time with Clark, a confirmed bachelor who had dated a number of women I knew. Ever optimistic, we married in 2004.

It didn’t take long for things to fall apart.

Although we married in November, Clark didn’t move in with me until after January. I would spend night after night by myself in my house, a new bride alone in her bed.

I was ashamed to tell my friends that my husband preferred the short commute from his old home to his office rather than making the drive to be with me at night. I felt angry and neglected.

I was determined to write a better ending to the story.

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Selfish Husband

The Cure for the Chronically Self-Consumed Man

When your husband doesn’t clean up even his part of the mess but just leaves it for you to do or plays video games instead of putting the kids to bed or wants you to notice the yard work he did but never says a word about all the work you do, it can get irritating.

When he makes plans without checking with you, forgets to tell you about them, then disappears when he knew he was supposed to help out with moving the furniture, it can make you resentful.

If your guy sleeps through middle-of-the-night feedings, expects sex whenever he feels like it, and seems to want you to solve all of his problems like the world revolves around him, it’s not only exhausting, it’s lonely.

But there is a solution.

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Stella’s Success Story: Attracting Him Back when He Wanted Out

By Stella McBride

I’d been married to the man of my dreams for 22 years. Our marriage seemed idyllic to others, but the cumulative pain of having the same arguments again and again was overwhelming us both.

On the worst days, when I most wanted him to comfort me, he would avoid me. I would sob in my bed for hours. I was so lonely in my happy-looking home, and so sure he was to blame.

Then, one summer day I found affectionate notes between him and an old girlfriend on a messaging app on our home computer.

I was devastated, he was sorry, and we started counseling.

After a couple of months, it was abundantly clear that verbally bashing each other and bringing up hurt feelings for an hour every other week was doing more harm than good, so we quit.

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Making Up after a Fight

3 Power Moves to Restore Peace after a Breakdown

If you’re anything like I was, when you fight with your partner you both say nasty things.

It can be shocking to see how low this thing you live with will go.

And while I’ve said some regrettable things during a fight, the biggest thing on my mind when it’s over is that he owes me an apology. Big time!

And it’d better be a good one, to convince me that he’s really sorry and he’ll never do it again.

Until then, I will show that I am waiting for said apology by being distant and having an irritated look on my face.

That ought to motivate him.

But it didn’t. Mostly that approach got me a cold war and wall-to-wall hostility.

It’s stressful. It’s hurtful. Fortunately, I have a better post-fight game plan now.

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