How to Save Your Marriage When Your Spouse Is Pulling Away

After 30 years of helping people save their marriages, one thing is clear: most people go about it the wrong way. They panic, push, plead, explain, and talk the marriage to death. Then they wonder why nothing is getting better. This does not have to be you.

Saving your marriage is not rocket science, but it does require the right steps, in the right order, and at the right pace. Some marriages need outside help, depending on how bad things are, but there is also a lot you can do on your own.

To save a marriage, you need to understand three things:

• What makes for a good relationship in general,
• what creates attraction on top of that, and
• how to deal with a spouse who resists reconciling.

Start by finding out what your spouse wants

The first question I would ask you as a client is not what you want, but what your spouse wants. That answer will determine where you start, and starting in the wrong place is one of the biggest reasons people fail.

If your spouse:

• Also wants to save the marriage, then work together.
• If your spouse does not want to save the marriage, then start on your own. And
• if your spouse is not sure, then also start on your own.

Doing this will help you to avoid resistance, which leads to conflict or churning.

Why churning will hurt your marriage

The feeling, “Here we go again,” is not an indication of improvement. Churning is when you talk about the same things over and over without making progress. It’s like if you were single and wanted to get married, but your boyfriend or girlfriend didn’t want to. You could talk about it over and over, but it wouldn’t make your relationship any closer. Instead, you would hear, “we need to have a talk.” Breakup comes after that.

What to do instead of churning

Instead, you would need to help him or her have deeper feelings for you. Not until then would it be good to propose marriage. Instead of “we need to talk,” you would get, “I can’t imagine my life without you.” You can help your spouse to feel that way.

To get there, here is a key point you need to understand:

Married relationships work the same as single relationships. The way feelings work before and after marriage is the same. What creates love before marriage creates love in marriage. What creates rejection before marriage creates rejection in marriage.

If your spouse wants to work on the marriage

If your spouse would like to work on the marriage, do what you can, together. Don’t confuse “would like to” with “is willing to.” I am willing to pay my taxes and take out the trash in the rain. But, if my wife has the same feelings about doing something with me, it is not a victory. Although relationships are work, you don’t want your spouse to feel like it is work to talk with you or be with you. My desire for paying taxes has not increased by having to pay them every year.

Even if he or she really wants to today, tomorrow may be a different story. It’s not a cause for panic. If your spouse changes his or her mind, then don’t push him or her to continue. And, even if your spouse continues to work with you, be prepared to try a different approach if working together is just not working. Specifically,

Be ready to stop working together if:

• You stop making progress,
• you have ongoing conflict, or
• your relationship work is churning,

When poor communication is the problem

Ever feel like you are saying the same thing over and over, and your spouse is just not getting it? Or, maybe your spouse feels that way? Or, worse yet, you try to be loving, and your message is taken as an attack?

If you are having communication issues, then get marriage counseling together. One of the major benefits of couples counseling is having someone to help both of you to talk to each other. Problems related to misunderstanding should diminish fairly soon after beginning couples counseling. Make sure you end your marriage counseling if you get churning. Going week after week without progress is not going to result in anything good for your marriage.

If you are churning or if there is no miscommunication, work on skills next. Attending a marriage retreat is a good step when disconnection is more of a factor than misunderstanding. And, if that doesn’t get you close enough, marriage coaching is a good next step.

If your spouse does not want to work on the marriage

If your spouse does not want to save the marriage, then don’t try to get him or her to do that. Instead, help your spouse to enjoy you more, desire you more, feel connected, and respect you. Those are the feelings you would want to create in a potential spouse if you were single. Without those, he or she is not likely to want to get married.

We can’t talk our spouse into or out of feelings. This means that apologizing, pleading, promising, reasoning, and repeatedly talking about problems will not help you save the marriage. These behaviors create more distance the more they are used. Many people talk their marriage to death in their attempts to reconcile.

I think one reason there is a high divorce rate is because people simply don’t know how to do anything except needy behaviors like:

• Repeatedly apologizing,
• begging and pleading,
• making promises to change,
• trying to induce guilt,
• rational arguments, and
• repeatedly talking or fighting about problems.

These behaviors don’t work for singles, and they won’t work for married people either. You need to have a single mindset to do well with your spouse. Instead of “wife,” think “woman”; instead of “husband,” think “man.” This will help you to break free from your stereotypes about the way marriage is supposed to be.

Why trying to fix things makes it worse

A marriage mindset will make you focus on “fixing,” rather than focusing on “connecting,” or “attracting.” Connecting and attracting are what fix relationships. Trying to “fix” often breaks them. If your attempts to fix things make things worse, then you know you have a fix-it mentality. You need a fresh approach (and you will enjoy it a lot more, too).

What makes your spouse more attracted to you

It may have been a while since you were single and dating, or you didn’t have very good dating skills even then. Let me give you a refresher.

• If you want your spouse to be interested in you, then you must be interesting.
• If you want your spouse to desire you, then you must be desirable.
• If you want your spouse to desire you more than another, then you must be more desirable than another.
• If you want your spouse to talk to you, then you must be enjoyable to talk with.

As obvious as this sounds, many people get it wrong. They think that if they are interested in their spouse, their spouse will be interested in them. Or if they desire their spouse, their spouse will desire them. Or if they are open with their spouse, their spouse will be open with them.

“I always say nice things to my spouse, but I get treated like crap.” “I am always the one to plan things to do together.” “Why can’t my spouse listen to me the way I listen?” If you have such thoughts, then you may be frustrated by the very way you try to get these things from your spouse.

Behaving in a way that will get you more of what you want will get you more of what you want. The people who tell me these things are obvious generally are not doing them. Get the message to go from your head to your behavior.

Single people kind of know this instinctively. So they are:

• Consistently relaxed and friendly,
• use positive body language,
• avoid complaints and negative talk,
• work to look their best,
• agree and empathize,
• develop similar interests,
• gain respect with good boundaries, and
• are careful not to have too much contact.

These behaviors make their relationships grow, just as they do in marriage.

Start at the level of connection you have now

Single people can’t just go up to someone and start kissing them–unless their relationship is already at that level. Otherwise, they will get rejected, pepper-sprayed, or possibly taken away by the police. Your spouse probably won’t pepper-spray you or call the police, but rejection is bound to happen if he or she is disconnected from you.

No matter how connected you were in the past, you have to start with the connection level you have now. For many people, that means the casual friend, or even acquaintance level. That means not asking for dates or romance. It means small talk with a lot of validation and no disagreements or sharing your differing opinions, as some people like to call it.

You need success at your current level in order to build to the next level. If you move too fast or get ahead of your spouse emotionally, your marriage will stall or get worse. We need to help our spouse want more, not less. A little hard-to-get, while remaining desirable, is a tried and true method for developing feelings. Love bombing and smothering are tried and true methods for getting separated.

If you are doing this good relationship building with your spouse as you would with a single person, but you are getting resistance, then there are six possible reasons. I use the acronym RESIST to remember them.

Each letter in RESIST stands for a reason for resistance:

1. (R)emaining neutral or negative instead of relaxed and friendly,
2. (E)xpressing disagreement or mismatching feelings,
3. (S)tepping too fast rather than using the right pace,
4. (I)nconsistent behavior which creates doubt and distrust,
5. (S)taying unattractive instead of working to be the kind of man or woman your spouse wants, and
6. (T)oo much interaction which prevents feelings from growing

While you are helping him or her to enjoy interacting with you, you also need to make sure that you are being happy independently. What I mean by that is, if the only way you can be happy is for your spouse to be happy with you, you will be undesirable. Instead, you need to create the kind of lifestyle that, if your spouse were meeting you for the first time, would make you appealing.

How to become more desirable to your spouse

Think successful, social, active, and sexy. See if what you are doing fits into one of those categories. “Cleaning the house” does not. “Getting out of the house” does. Think, “If I were single, what would make the opposite sex more interested in me?”

Relationship boosts come from several small changes, like:

• Making a friend of your own,
• agreeing or empathizing more,
• starting a hobby on your own,
• becoming more active,
• dressing a little better,
• becoming a little more fit,
• swapping out conflict for boundaries, or
• having a little more career success.

The combined effect of small changes enhances desirability more than a big change in one area. Learning to have a nice smile would do far more for many women than plastic surgery. A little agreement and empathy can do more to enhance a man than doubling his income.

What if your marriage is still not getting better?

Suppose you say to me, “Coach Jack, I have done all those things. I have a life I enjoy even without my spouse. I am relaxed, friendly, and validating. I spend less time together than my spouse wants, but we are still headed for divorce.”

I would have two things to say to you. First, great job becoming a desirable person! You would be a good catch for someone else, and your spouse knows it. The second is that your spouse does not want to lose you.

You see, people don’t really want to lose a good spouse. But, for many people, if they can keep their relationship while gaining more freedom, they will. If they can keep the relationship while also having an affair, they will. And, for many people, if they can keep the relationship while also behaving in a lazy and disrespectful way, they will.

Respect is the missing piece

And that brings us to that last quality necessary for building a single relationship or rebuilding a marriage. It doesn’t matter which–they are both the same. That quality is respect. If your spouse thinks he or she can use you, abuse you, or neglect you, then you are missing respect. Don’t start demanding it because…

Respect is earned. It can’t be demanded or bought.

Respect is earned by:

1. Doing what you say you will do.
2. Living according to your values, even if others don’t like it. And,
3. Not allowing other people to continue to mistreat you.

Many people become discouraged when counseling approaches that focus only on relationship- building fail. Being wonderful, great, and super nice, at best, will get you to the friend zone. You see, we can’t really fall in love with someone who has not earned our respect.

Take the next step

Have you been able to identify at least one thing to work on from this podcast? Work on it. Don’t try to do the least you can to keep your spouse hanging on. Do the most you can for every single area. You need to do more than is necessary so that when times of stress come, as they will, you are still the best catch in town for your spouse.

I have some resources to help you with your work on your marriage.

First, I have some free downloads to help you help your spouse enjoy talking with you. That will help, no matter what level of connection or disconnection you have.

I have books for overcoming neediness, connecting with agreement, and using boundaries.

And, I have a Re-Connections Coaching Package that will help you to be that person your spouse wants to be with. Don’t make it your goal to get your spouse to work with you. That wouldn’t be your goal if you were single, would it? Make it your goal to make your spouse desire you. Do that, and there won’t be much left to work on. Don’t solve problems in order to connect. Connect in order to solve problems.

The right steps, in the right order, at the right pace, will restore your loving relationship with a spouse who wants to be with you every day.

FAQ

Can I save my marriage if my spouse does not want to work on it?

Yes. If your spouse does not want to work on the marriage, you can still do a lot on your own. Your goal is not to pressure your spouse into working on things, but to become more enjoyable to be with, more desirable, more connected, and more respectable.

What should I do if every discussion about the marriage goes nowhere?

Stop the churning. Use a different approach, like working on behavioral changes rather than trying to fix things with discussion.

What makes a spouse want to come closer again?

The same kinds of things that create love before marriage also create love in marriage. A spouse is more likely to come closer when interactions feel good, attraction grows, connection improves, and respect is present.

For further study:

Ogolsky, B. G., Monk, J. K., Rice, T. M., Oswald, R. F., & Maniotes, C. R. (2023). A systematic review of relationship maintenance. Personal Relationships, 30(1), 1-26. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/pere.12429