Why Is My Spouse Becoming Cold and Distant from Me?

It feels like rejection. It’s a wall between the two of you. There’s more than one possibility for what is going on. Most importantly, you need to make sure that you are not part of the problem. We never want distance, but we can accidentally create it. Let’s find out so you can fix it and get the love and closeness you want.

What could be causing the distance?

Left unchecked, emotional distance can easily become an affair and/or divorce. Action is required, as waiting for your spouse to become close again is not a good strategy for success. Today, I will help you consider whether you are unintentionally contributing to the distance.

But, before getting to what you may or may not be doing that is contributing to the distance in your marriage, let’s consider some other possibilities.

Could your spouse’s distance be due to:

• Stress?
• Drugs or alcohol?
• A medical or psychological condition?
• An affair?
• An adjustment to your unavailability?
• Your needy behavior?

Any one or a combination of these can tear your marriage apart. Something that seems minor could trigger collapse. Why is that? Because what you think is causing the distancing may be that one more thing that broke the camel’s back, rather than the root cause. You may get blamed, even though what you did or said was just a small contribution.

Consider whether your spouse is distancing from friends and other family. Distancing from everyone makes it less likely to be a reaction to anything you are doing. If the distance is only from you, then an affair or reaction to your behavior is more likely.

If it is nonmarital stress, drugs or alcohol (including prescriptions), or a medical or psychological condition, this podcast is not for you. There are many other resources helpful for those situations.

I have addressed affairs extensively elsewhere, and you can see my other podcasts or book on that. Instead, let’s look at unavailability and neediness.

Have you recently become more available?

If you’ve been focused on career or children, your spouse may have filled the empty space with friends or social media. Cutting back on your job or parenting makes you need more togetherness, but your spouse may not. You will have to gradually increase interaction in a very positive way with your spouse. It will help to also have other things to do in your free time. People who want to suddenly spend more time with older kids run into the same issues. Reengaging needs to be slow, steady, and positive.

Good intentions can still create distance

Spouses can get upset for all sorts of reasons. One of the natural ways to deal with things that upset us is to shut down, distance, avoid, and self-soothe. It would be great if we could just be open and honest about our thoughts and feelings and get empathy and cooperation in return. But that’s just not the way most people are. If you are married to someone who is, you are the envy of most–count your blessings.

A lot of people are sensitive to any kind of criticism, and even things that we intend for good can be taken the wrong way. We can say they shouldn’t be that way, which may be true, but it doesn’t change the fact that they are. Our intentions to be helpful or to address a problem can make problems worse. Good intentions without good communication still result in upset spouses.

How our behavior affects our spouse

Are you talking to your spouse in a way that you would not if you were first dating him or her? Or, are you talking to your spouse in a way that you never would with a friend? If you are, you will find that behavior will actually make your spouse:

• Not look forward to seeing/talking with you,
• be less interested in doing activities together,
• be less loving toward you, and
• prefer to do activities alone or with people other than you.

People don’t like to be around people who invalidate them, deserved or not. People want to be around people who validate them, deserved or not. The fact that affairs are more about validation than anything else should drive this point home.

Small changes can create a big improvement

One of the most powerful things we can do to improve our marriages is to recognize and eliminate our needy behaviors, while replacing them with secure, relationship building behaviors. The improvement can be dramatic.

Where can you start? Start by asking yourself (not your spouse), some questions related to connection.

Some simple self-assessment questions are:

• Would my spouse say that I make him or her feel better or worse about himself or herself?
• What would my spouse like to change about the way that I talk to him or her?
• Do I give my spouse the impression that I am always happy to see or talk with him or her?
• Do I prioritize my spouse over everything and everyone, except God?
• Do I make my spouse feel I like the way he or she looks, thinks, feels, and behaves?
• Do I make my spouse feel like the two of us are very similar?

These are the behaviors we would use with our friends or in early romantic relationships. They are the behaviors that our spouse would find attractive in others. They are also the behaviors that help to maintain an emotional connection in our marriage.

Regardless of whether you have a wonderful spouse, a terrible spouse, or one that is somewhere in between, a “no” answer to any of these questions can still result in distancing. And that can make our spouse more susceptible to pulling away, loss of love, an affair, and/or divorce. Even if it doesn’t, it can still lead to business-style relationships, devoid of emotional connection.

If you are answering “no” or “mostly” to any of these, those are great places to work on improving. Change gradually, be consistent, and you should feel your relationship becoming closer.

Don’t be a doormat

Keep in mind that I don’t want anyone to be a doormat. I have never supported doing that. What I am in favor of is people making their spouse feel loved, while also using good boundaries to deal with problems. It’s a healthy model for parenting, for friends, for other family, and for marriage. We have to be careful that our behaviors don’t make our spouse feel unloved, not good enough, untrusted, uninteresting, or incapable.

At the same time, we need to use behaviors that make our spouse feel loved, desirable, attractive, interesting, and capable. Most people do some of both, or they alternate. They make their spouse feel loved one day and not the next. Or capable one day and not the next. The result is that our spouse becomes guarded–never knowing what he or she is going to get. Guarded means emotionally closed off.

If we do some of the validating behaviors and some of the invalidating behaviors, that also results in us getting less love from our spouse than we otherwise would. If I make my wife feel attractive, but incapable, loved but uninteresting, or capable but undesirable, I’m just not going to get the best from her. No amount of Hallmark cards on her birthday, Valentines’, and Christmas will compensate for how I make her feel the rest of the time.

We all have relational blind spots

Before we can improve what we are doing wrong, we have to recognize what we are doing wrong. And, because these are behavioral blind spots, we can go our whole lives without seeing them. Often, not until we have lost multiple relationships do we stop to think that we might be part of the problem.

Even then, how can we figure out what we are doing wrong? I used to have many such blind spots, and my early relationships demonstrated that I was a very needy young man. I am very thankful for one loving and secure young woman who helped me to see how needy I was. She rejected me, of course, but she opened my eyes to my neediness.

If I could send one thing back to my younger self, I would send my book on overcoming neediness. I had to learn the hard way all of the things that I was doing that were damaging my relationships. As I learned what not to do and replaced them with what to do, my relationships improved dramatically.

I have seen the same changes in my clients who got the depressing view of how they have been harming their relationship, especially with their spouse. I help them to see that now that their eyes are open, it is actually a very exciting time for them. They change to the point where their spouse is strongly connected to them. And every week, I hear how my book on overcoming neediness has improved people’s lives.

Needy behavior that leads to emotional distance

Some needy behaviors are worse than others.

Do you think it is a needy behavior to criticize? Most people would. How about being open and honest? Most people would think that is a helpful behavior. But, openness and honesty about what you don’t like is actually criticism.

Saying, “I don’t like it when you come home late without letting me know,” is both criticism and being open and honest.

Saying, “I don’t like it when you look at your cell phone when I’m talking to you,” is both criticism and being open and honest.

If it were really good to talk this way, you would expect a good result, right? Maybe your spouse would say something like, “Thank you so much for letting me know. I had no idea. I am going to change that so our relationship can be better than ever.” What we get instead is defensiveness (either as explanations to excuse the behavior), shutting down to protect and punish, or counterattacking blame.

If you ever hear your spouse say, “I’m not good enough for you,” or “nothing I do is ever good enough for you,” then your belief about what should work is preventing you from seeing what is not working. Your open and honest criticism is making your spouse fall out of love with you. What does that look like? It looks like emotional distancing.

It’s just an example. You might not criticize, but do one or more of the other needy behaviors.

Some behaviors help a little but hurt a lot

Some people would counter, “Well, if I can’t share my negative feelings about what my spouse is doing, then how will things change?” They fail to see that things are actually not changing or are only getting worse. The thing they strongly believe in hardly works at all. It is possible to get fearful or resentful compliance with needy behaviors, but always at the expense of emotional closeness.

Instead of hanging onto a behavior that helps a little, people need to find ways to stop damaging behaviors without damaging their marriage.

Let’s look at another needy behavior that works a little, but hurts a lot…

Arguing is damaging. If you call it a debate or a discussion, it is no less damaging. Even positive motivations can drive negative behaviors. With arguing, the motivation is, “If only I can get my spouse to see things the way I do, we can solve our problem.” It makes sense, and people do what makes sense, even when it is obviously not working.

Often, the most needy people are the most rational, who never change an idea that makes sense–even if it doesn’t work.

Arguing is actually invalidating your spouse, while thinking it will make you closer. Invalidation never does.

Once you learn to identify the needy behaviors, you can work on stopping them, and you can work on learning replacement behaviors that actually work and build your marriage.

For example, the replacements for criticism are, in order:

1. Creating a positive desire in our spouse to please us,
2. using positive requests, and if necessary,
3. using boundaries.

These three take care of any problem behaviors your spouse has without needing to criticize even once. They are skills that need to be learned and practiced, but prevent the same issues and conflicts from recurring throughout your marriage.

As for arguing, the alternative positive skills are to:

1. Validate any truth in what your spouse is doing,
2. refrain from voicing your differing opinions,
3. do problem-solving around areas of common concern, and
4. where there is no common concern, use positive requests and boundaries.

Doing this is about as natural as bathing in ice water, but it is learnable and works wonders for both connecting and resolving problems.

You will never criticize or argue your way to a better relationship, no matter how right you are, no matter how heartfelt your sharing, no matter how good you are at arguing, no matter how much your friend says you should, and no matter how much your spouse does that with you. You won’t find recommendations to argue or criticize in the Bible or in the book How to Win Friends and Influence People–an excellent book by Dale Carnegie.

Bad results signal the need for change

Carefully looking at the impact of how you approach problems and deal with your difficult feelings will help you to identify some needy behaviors–well-intentioned, but hurting your relationship.

You can also learn from your own reactions to what your spouse says to you. If you don’t like your spouse’s complaining, ignoring, avoiding, questioning or whatever, then there is a very good chance it wouldn’t be good for you to do either.

Jesus’ golden rule is:

So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. (Matthew 7:12, NIV).

It isn’t to do to others as they do to us. To have good relationships, we must never criticize back, argue back, or do any damaging behaviors back. Two wrongs do not make a right, and never have. We validate where we can. We use boundaries when we have to. Loving. Effective. Never a doormat.

Self-evaluation, followed by constructive change, brings success

I know that it is not easy to take a critical look at ourselves. I didn’t like seeing how my needy behavior had made me lose a very good woman. If I had realized my neediness in time, I may have been able to save that relationship. I help many people to do that now.

Thankfully, overcoming my neediness allowed me to get another very loving and secure woman. God has a way of teaching us, but the lessons are never easy.

Being careful not to get defensive will help you learn what may be in your blind spot. Don’t judge yourself for what you find–just work to do better. Then, feel good about your success. You can improve a little in many areas or a lot in one. Either way, it will make a big difference for your marriage. Even if your spouse is responsible for a lot of the distance, there are things that you can do to make it closer. It may be switching out needy behaviors for helpful ones.

If you are willing to take a close look at whether what you are doing is causing distance in your marriage, I recommend you work through my book, Overcome Neediness and Get the Love You Want. Don’t just read it–work through it.

On the other hand, if you are really not sure what is causing the distance in your relationship, then get a consultation with me, and I will help you figure it out. Real life is complicated, and there are often multiple reasons for marriage problems. Let’s get it sorted and your first steps prioritized, so you can get back to a loving relationship with your husband or wife.

FAQ

Why might my spouse be becoming cold and distant from me?

Some possibilities are stress, drugs or alcohol, medical or psychological issues, an affair, adjustment to unavailability, or a reaction to damaging behavior in the relationship.

Can good intentions still push a spouse away?

Yes. A person may think a behavior is helpful, honest, or necessary, but if it makes a spouse feel criticized, invalidated, or unsafe, it can create emotional distance instead of closeness.

What kinds of behaviors can create emotional distance?

Disliked behaviors that make your spouse defensive or feel not good enough for you.

What should I do if I think my own behavior is part of the problem?

Identify behaviors that are not working, stop damaging habits, and replace them with helpful behaviors.

For further study:

Feeney, J. A. (2005). Hurt feelings in couple relationships: Exploring the role of attachment and perceptions of personal injury. Personal Relationships, 12(2), 253–271. https://drrebeccajorgensen.com/libr/Hurt_Feelings_in_Couple_Relationships_Feeney.pdf