Emotionally unavailable husband

[designer mom]

Hello there, I could really use some advice concerning my marriage of 5 1/2 years. I have a husband who is not capable of being emotionally intimate with me. He completely and permanently withdraws from whatever it is I'm trying to connect with him over and never speaks of it. If I try to bring it up again, he literally does not speak. If I try to address him in writing, he does not respond. If I can manage to get any kind of a response out of him at all, he basically just repeats whatever it is that I have said to him. I am certain that he is not doing this on purpose, as it seems rather painful to him, and he does express love to me in other ways, such as really going out of his way to try to compensate for this by doing chores around the house that he knows I hate or am having a difficult time getting to. If I'm particularly disappointed in his lack of response to me, he will do extra chores.

I've come to a point where I am beginning to accept that I will likely never have a single heart to heart conversation with my husband, and that for whatever reason, he just does not have it in him. That's personal progress, I suppose, but I'm now left with this giant gaping hole where my hope used to be. I wasn't getting my emotional needs met before (or acknowledged), but I was able to look forward to a time when I someday would, and that day would come as soon as I figured out how to make him understand that there's a problem. I'm now able to face the reality that he knows that there's a problem, he's just not going to acknowledge it.

That being said, the problem has started to have some side effects over the last 6 months or so. I started re-developing feelings for an old boyfriend, who, not surprisingly, was very capable of connecting on a deep emotional level. I had not thought about this person in that way since we broke things off about a decade ago, but it really makes sense that I would start thinking about someone who was emotionally capable. I have gone to great lengths to fight this problem. I have NEVER spoken to him (he lives 5 hours away and we haven't spoken in years), and I even deleted my entire facebook account so that I would not be tempted to connect with him (among other unrelated reasons). I feel so guilty for having these intrusive thoughts about him, and at the same time, I feel like this is something that my husband is doing TO me, even though he doesn't even know about it. Also, is this something that I should tell him about? I have so many mixed feelings about that. I don't want to be dishonest, but at the same time I don't really feel that I've done anything wrong. On one hand, I don't want to hurt him, but on the other hand, I almost DO want this to hurt him - and THAT'S not good either! We have NEVER had a fight, and it's not because there is nothing to fight about. It's because he never talks to me about ANYTHING other than the weather or science, math, computers - surface level topics. Things I could talk about with the mailman! I can almost guarantee that if I told him about this, he would just sit there and not say anything, go to sleep (without any trouble), then come home from work the next day and act like nothing happened. I'm not sure that I can handle that, to be honest. I feel like it might literally drive me crazy. I actually had a nightmare recently that he literally drove me crazy, so I am honestly worried about my emotional health here.

Anyway, it's been an ongoing issue since the beginning. It didn't have a starting point, it just always was. I didn't really notice it when we were dating because he really goes out of his way to be an agreeable people pleaser, and it didn't even occur to me that perhaps his lack of confrontation and the lack of healthy conflict was a red flag. It seemed too good to be true - and it was.

Anyway, I'm left wondering, how does one get their emotional needs met when they are married to a person like this? What can I do to help myself? What do I do when marital issues come up if my husband can not acknowledge them? It's like being married to a brick wall that does house work.

Thanks.

 

[RedPonyDriver]

My husband is much like yours...after almost 18 years, I'm cool with it. I have girlfriends I can open up to if I need to, and for problems, if he's really being a brick wall, I talk to his CR sponsor. I DO know why he's that way and I can accept it.

Your husband is NOT going to meet all your needs...only Christ can do that. The best advice I can give is to stop looking to your husband to meet your needs and look to Christ to meet your needs.

 

[kmrichard7]

Read the Five Love Languages. Youre a perfect candidate for it.

 

[designer mom]

My husband is much like yours...after almost 18 years, I'm cool with it. I have girlfriends I can open up to if I need to, and for problems, if he's really being a brick wall, I talk to his CR sponsor. I DO know why he's that way and I can accept it.

Your husband is NOT going to meet all your needs...only Christ can do that. The best advice I can give is to stop looking to your husband to meet your needs and look to Christ to meet your needs.

Hello, thank you for taking the time to respond to me. A lot of people say that women should look to Christ to meet their emotional needs, but I very honestly find myself confused by this. I think of Adam in the Garden of Eden with God right by his side. Why did he need Eve? Did God not meet his needs by giving him a spouse? Were we not created to be in relationships? I honestly don't understand. Can a Christian be dropped off on a desert Island with nothing but their bible and left there for years on end and not feel loneliness and an intense need to connect with another human being?

 

[designer mom]

Read the Five Love Languages. Youre a perfect candidate for it.

Thanks, I did read it. Nothing changed. I'm now reading "Love and Respect" and setting out on a journey to respect and admire my husband regardless of what I get in return. Of course, I can't help but hope for a miracle on his end, but I'm trying to make it about unconditional love and sacrifice, instead of trying to get something in return. I still don't know how I'm supposed to cope with the loneliness though.

 

[kmrichard7]

Thats rough. Have you had him read it? He needs to understand that you are not having your needs met.
Another thing thats helped me is a book Saving Your Marriage Before it Starts. Its helped me a lot and goes along the same lines as the 5 Love Languages.
But with this book its about learning to see his language and accept it as a confirmation of his love. Basically you may prefer he show his love in other ways but you can be happy in knowing he loves you through his own way of showing it.
Otherwise id really say to talk to a third party. Communication problems destroy marriages.

 

[ValleyGal]

Relationships are reciprocal. In the same way you can't be left alone on the island and expect Christ to meet all your companionship needs, you can't expect to respect and admire your husband without expecting anything in return. I recently had this conversation with someone - about the verse in the Bible that says two are better than one because if one falls, he has a friend to help the other up. My response was that what is even more tragic than one falling and not having another to help him up, is one who falls and the other watches and does nothing to help in spite of the struggle to get back up.

I don't have a whole lot to offer at this point, but I do understand how lonely a marriage like this is. At this point, stay on top of not allowing feelings for your ex to get a foothold. That would be devastating to the marriage - not saying your husband's behaviour isn't devastating, but don't get sucked into "repaying evil for evil" so to speak. Good rule of thumb: Good boundaries means keeping out the bad and letting in the good. So take active steps to protect your marriage as far as it depends on you. This might include a boundary with your spouse, that letting in the good includes being emotionally available and keeping out the bad includes emotional unavailability. His unavailability is going to eventually damage the marriage, resentments might set in, etc. But be careful here - find out why he is unavailable. Is it because he is not in touch with his own emotions enough to share them, or that he thinks as a man he does not need to share that part of himself with his wife, or that he simply can't go any deeper because that part of his psyche is not developed.... or is he choosing to be withdrawn for a reason. The latter is inexcusable, but you can work with the former.

One person alone can't carry the whole marriage. It takes a lot of hard work from both. Marriage is reciprocal.

 

[designer mom]

Thats rough. Have you had him read it? He needs to understand that you are not having your needs met.
Another thing thats helped me is a book Saving Your Marriage Before it Starts. Its helped me a lot and goes along the same lines as the 5 Love Languages.
But with this book its about learning to see his language and accept it as a confirmation of his love. Basically you may prefer he show his love in other ways but you can be happy in knowing he loves you through his own way of showing it.
Otherwise id really say to talk to a third party. Communication problems destroy marriages.

Thanks, He has read it, and he does understand, he is honestly not capable. I'll look into the other book and see if that might help. Like I mentioned, he does do things for me around the house. He also handles his fair share of parenting responsibilities. When I'm particularly unhappy, he does go overboard with these things, so I know that he is *trying* to compensate and express love to me in the ways that he feels he is able. The problem with this is that it is not emotionally intimate to do housework and take care of children. I could pay someone to provide these things for me. I can't hire someone to cherish me though.

We did try marriage counseling briefly. I quickly became frustrated because the guy kept emphasizing my right to leave. I wasn't able to express feelings of being trapped, desperate, etc. because it just led back to my not being trapped and alone because I could just pick up and leave at any time. My husband continued to see this councilor on his own time for awhile, even though I couldn't stand him and opted out almost immediately. I didn't really see any major changes in him, and he eventually stopped going as well. I have suggested that he try another therapist, but he has yet to do so. We also ended up leaving our church over this issue after the pastor completely blew us off. Long story short, we (mostly me) have tried 4 other churches since and have taken a break from trying.

 

[designer mom]

Relationships are reciprocal. In the same way you can't be left alone on the island and expect Christ to meet all your companionship needs, you can't expect to respect and admire your husband without expecting anything in return. I recently had this conversation with someone - about the verse in the Bible that says two are better than one because if one falls, he has a friend to help the other up. My response was that what is even more tragic than one falling and not having another to help him up, is one who falls and the other watches and does nothing to help in spite of the struggle to get back up.

I don't have a whole lot to offer at this point, but I do understand how lonely a marriage like this is. At this point, stay on top of not allowing feelings for your ex to get a foothold. That would be devastating to the marriage - not saying your husband's behaviour isn't devastating, but don't get sucked into "repaying evil for evil" so to speak. Good rule of thumb: Good boundaries means keeping out the bad and letting in the good. So take active steps to protect your marriage as far as it depends on you. This might include a boundary with your spouse, that letting in the good includes being emotionally available and keeping out the bad includes emotional unavailability. His unavailability is going to eventually damage the marriage, resentments might set in, etc. But be careful here - find out why he is unavailable. Is it because he is not in touch with his own emotions enough to share them, or that he thinks as a man he does not need to share that part of himself with his wife, or that he simply can't go any deeper because that part of his psyche is not developed.... or is he choosing to be withdrawn for a reason. The latter is inexcusable, but you can work with the former.

One person alone can't carry the whole marriage. It takes a lot of hard work from both. Marriage is reciprocal.

Thank you for the validation, I really appreciate it. I honestly am trying to stay on top of everything that I am responsible for, and I'm trying to allow God to teach me through all of this. I have concluded that he is definitely not being passive-aggressive or withdrawing on purpose. I honestly believe that understands what it is that I need from him, and that he *wants* to be able to share this part of himself with me, but that he is just not able to.

I have been hesitating to mention this, because I do not want anyone jumping to wrong conclusions of what goes on in his head, but my husband has Asperger's syndrome. I do not believe that is the only contributing factor here, I believe that whatever is going on with him goes beyond autism. I also have Aspergers (as do our children - it's genetic), and I know many others who are high functioning adults on the autism spectrum, so I feel that I can accurately attest to the fact that he absolutely has fairly normal thoughts and feelings - in his own mind. I've also seen enough snippets of evidence of this come from him over the years to know that it is the case. However, I don't believe that he is really capable of expressing these things. Perhaps if he were to seek out professional help, he might be able to find a psychologist that can get to the bottom of things for him over time, but whatever it is is so complex, it would really be very difficult to find anyone who is qualified. I honestly do not believe that he would be able to find anyone who can help him, if he were even willing to try.

Honestly, I can't even find anyone in a church to talk to about the complexity of this problem. As soon as I mention the word "autism" they retreat. Mental disabilities scare church people, and frankly, I'm at a point where I don't even want to talk to people about it anymore just to keep them from avoiding us like we have some kind of plague. Of course, that's not going to get us any help either.

Regardless of the "why's", I still find myself in a one sided marriage, with fairly typical needs that are not about to be met. I still need to figure out what *I* should be doing about how it's all affecting me.

Thanks again.

 

[2404]

Hello there, I could really use some advice concerning my marriage of 5 1/2 years. I have a husband who is not capable of being emotionally intimate with me. He completely and permanently withdraws from whatever it is I'm trying to connect with him over and never speaks of it. If I try to bring it up again, he literally does not speak. If I try to address him in writing, he does not respond. If I can manage to get any kind of a response out of him at all, he basically just repeats whatever it is that I have said to him. I am certain that he is not doing this on purpose, as it seems rather painful to him, and he does express love to me in other ways, such as really going out of his way to try to compensate for this by doing chores around the house that he knows I hate or am having a difficult time getting to. If I'm particularly disappointed in his lack of response to me, he will do extra chores.

I've come to a point where I am beginning to accept that I will likely never have a single heart to heart conversation with my husband, and that for whatever reason, he just does not have it in him. That's personal progress, I suppose, but I'm now left with this giant gaping hole where my hope used to be. I wasn't getting my emotional needs met before (or acknowledged), but I was able to look forward to a time when I someday would, and that day would come as soon as I figured out how to make him understand that there's a problem. I'm now able to face the reality that he knows that there's a problem, he's just not going to acknowledge it.

That being said, the problem has started to have some side effects over the last 6 months or so. I started re-developing feelings for an old boyfriend, who, not surprisingly, was very capable of connecting on a deep emotional level. I had not thought about this person in that way since we broke things off about a decade ago, but it really makes sense that I would start thinking about someone who was emotionally capable. I have gone to great lengths to fight this problem. I have NEVER spoken to him (he lives 5 hours away and we haven't spoken in years), and I even deleted my entire facebook account so that I would not be tempted to connect with him (among other unrelated reasons). I feel so guilty for having these intrusive thoughts about him, and at the same time, I feel like this is something that my husband is doing TO me, even though he doesn't even know about it. Also, is this something that I should tell him about? I have so many mixed feelings about that. I don't want to be dishonest, but at the same time I don't really feel that I've done anything wrong. On one hand, I don't want to hurt him, but on the other hand, I almost DO want this to hurt him - and THAT'S not good either! We have NEVER had a fight, and it's not because there is nothing to fight about. It's because he never talks to me about ANYTHING other than the weather or science, math, computers - surface level topics. Things I could talk about with the mailman! I can almost guarantee that if I told him about this, he would just sit there and not say anything, go to sleep (without any trouble), then come home from work the next day and act like nothing happened. I'm not sure that I can handle that, to be honest. I feel like it might literally drive me crazy. I actually had a nightmare recently that he literally drove me crazy, so I am honestly worried about my emotional health here.

Anyway, it's been an ongoing issue since the beginning. It didn't have a starting point, it just always was. I didn't really notice it when we were dating because he really goes out of his way to be an agreeable people pleaser, and it didn't even occur to me that perhaps his lack of confrontation and the lack of healthy conflict was a red flag. It seemed too good to be true - and it was.

Anyway, I'm left wondering, how does one get their emotional needs met when they are married to a person like this? What can I do to help myself? What do I do when marital issues come up if my husband can not acknowledge them? It's like being married to a brick wall that does house work.

Thanks.

You say there is no fighting but there are grounds.
Perhaps your husbands supportive behavior is the only avenue he see open to him?
Can you handle correction?

 

[designer mom]

You say there is no fighting but there are grounds.
Perhaps your husbands supportive behavior is the only avenue he see open to him?
Can you handle correction?

I'd agree that it's the only avenue he see's open to him. I do honestly believe that he's doing all that he feels he can. I did have a boss tell me that I don't handle correction very well one time. But that was before I was married and after he made me aware of that, I did honestly work on it. It's difficult to assess how this may or may not be affecting my marriage though. My husband is extremely non confrontational, so it's not exactly something that comes up. He probably does view me as unsafe though. I do not know if he views all people this way, if it's something specific that I may have done, or what. I'm trying to learn how to make myself more "safe", which I don't believe is going to do any harm either way.

 

[2404]

God bless you for your stand.
These are tough times.
Every situation is unique so I thank you for taking that from me.
Of course we know that only the Lord knows the way so again - God bless.

 

[lisah]

I've come to a point where I am beginning to accept that I will likely never have a single heart to heart conversation with my husband,

That being said, the problem has started to have some side effects over the last 6 months or so. I started re-developing feelings for an old boyfriend, who, not surprisingly, was very capable of connecting on a deep emotional level. Also, is this something that I should tell him about?

I have so many mixed feelings about that.

I don't want to be dishonest

It's because he never talks to me about ANYTHING other than the weather or science, math, computers - surface level topics.

Anyway, it's been an ongoing issue since the beginning. It didn't have a starting point, it just always was. I didn't really notice it when we were dating because he really goes out of his way to be an agreeable people pleaser, and it didn't even occur to me that perhaps his lack of confrontation and the lack of healthy conflict was a red flag. It seemed too good to be true - and it was.

Anyway, I'm left wondering, how does one get their emotional needs met when they are married to a person like this? What can I do to help myself? What do I do when marital issues come up if my husband can not acknowledge them? It's like being married to a brick wall that does house work.

What do you mean by "heart to heart" conversation, what are your emotional needs that you feel aren't being met, and what type of marital issues?

Maybe it's not a good way to handle marital issues, but if I have a problem with something my husband is doing or not doing, I say something at that time. It doesn't require any lengthy conversation about how it makes me feel because he knows at that time how it has made me feel. It took me a long time to develop that skill and it seems to work much better with my husband. Only you can know if it will work with your husband.

The old boyfriend stuff is just feeding your dissatisfaction. Just stop doing that, as it is something you are creating in your mind that is false. It may be a genuine memory, but your use of it is wrong and you are just exacerbating your problems.

 

[RedPonyDriver]

I was having this conversation with a friend...now, my husband is NOT one for talking much, period. However, he shows his love for me in other ways...
He always makes me coffee.
When I had a string of orthopedic surgeries, he would get in the shower with me to hold me up since I couldn't stand on my own.
He does all the housework because my back will start screaming if I stand too long now.
He drives me to doctor appointments (see back issues)
He takes out the trash and cleans the cat litter.

On the other side...
I would get out of bed at 1am to take him to the ER for pain relief when he was sick
I vomited propulsively off a third floor parking garage when he went into a surgery that had no guarantees
I slept in his hospital room for 12 days after the surgery
Every time I go out I always bring him something.

You don't need those "heart to heart" talks...you really don't. If I want a heart to heart venting kind of conversation, I call a girlfriend and we go out for coffee.