Your marriage is a shell of what it used to be. This is the same issue that many men have to work their way through as they begin to realize that their wife isn’t the same partner she used to be. She’s not as bright and cheery, she’s less apt to make plans for the future and your wife is emotionally detached. You often feel as though you are living with a complete stranger and it’s painful, to say the least. You feel as though there’s a divide between the two of you that you just can’t cross on your own. I know it’s disheartening and confusing. You worry over what the future will bring and whether the emotional distance you feel now is only going to get worse and worse.
If your wife is emotionally detached, it’s not productive to accuse her of not caring about you. Many men do this only because their emotions are so close to the surface and they feel overwrought. They lash out at their wives because they sense that she’s just given up. That’s not what has happened at all. Actually, many women who seemed to be emotionally distant are actually struggling with issues of their own and they feel so weighed down by those issues that they can’t effectively communicate or even interact with their husbands.
Before you can help your wife you really need to take some time to try and identify what has happened that may have caused her to withdraw into herself. There are, of course, some highly emotional issues that can make a woman retreat including if her partner has an affair or if she is confronted with the death of someone close to her, such as a sibling or a parent. In these cases, depression may be a contributing factor to her increasingly solemn moods and if that’s the case, it’s important that you encourage her to discuss her mood with a medical professional. Suggesting that she confides in her personal physician about her feelings of sadness will help you both in the long run.
If your wife hasn’t had to deal with any type of life changing situation recently, it’s going to be harder to pinpoint why she’s become emotionally detached. If you two have been married for some time she may have reached a point where she’s questioning the direction her life has taken. This happens to many women after they’ve become mothers and have shifted their focus from their own lives to tending to the needs of their children and husband. They feel they’ve become an extension of their family and have lost their own identity. You can typically sense if this is what your wife is struggling with if she has made comments about not being sure of her purpose in life or if she wonders what her life could have been like if her choices were different.
Dealing with all of this can feel a bit like scaling a mountain if you’re a man who has never been that in touch with his own feelings, let alone his wives. I realize that you may feel ill equipped to help her, especially if she’s not sharing what she’s feeling openly with you. The point that you need to always remember though is that there are numerous ways you can recreate the closeness you two once shared.
Talk to your wife more. I’m a woman and I can tell you, without reservation that we love to talk. Your wife may withdraw at times, but if you start a conversation on a very general topic, such as the children or the weather, you’ll find that she’ll become more engaged as it progresses. Sometimes a woman just wants to know that her husband still finds her interesting and worth talking to. This is especially important if your wife and you live such busy lives that you don’t connect on a regular basis.
Tell your wife how much she means to you. Women love hearing how much the man they’re with adores them. We soak it up and we absorb it all. Even if your wife has become so emotionally distant that she never tells you that she loves you anymore, don’t allow that to stop you from sharing with her how you feel. She wants and needs to hear it. If you say it enough and in enough, subtle ways, she’ll begin to feel closer to you all over again.
Do more for your wife. It’s not uncommon for women to start resenting their husbands when they’ve been married for a time if the bulk of the daily family responsibilities fall unto the wife’s shoulders. If your wife has to tend to her own career and then also chase after all of the children’s needs, that can become a burden. If you don’t ever offer any assistance or you shy away when your wife does ask you to help, that’s bound to cause some friction within the marriage. The resentment your wife feels may channel itself as emotional distance. That’s why it’s essential that you do more to help her any chance you get.
Staying committed to making the marriage work has to be your main goal. You must, as a loving and caring husband, take the time to nurture the connection you have with your wife to bring it back to life again. Sometimes, concentrated attention within a marriage can make all the difference in the world. Treasure your wife, as you did in the earliest days of your marriage, and you’ll start to notice a shift in her attitude and how attentive she is to you.