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Stop the emotional drift.
By Mitzi Bockmann — Written on Feb 13, 2023
It's not uncommon to find yourself disconnecting emotionally from your husband or wife from time-to-time.
If you've experienced it multiple times or for longer than a few days, that feeling probably scares the hell out of you. You so want to keep your marriage and your family intact, but your partner feels far away, emotionally.
You may be worried that the fact that you are feeling this way means that it’s too late for you and your husband to reconnect.
Luckily, it’s (almost) never too late to lean back into your marriage and reignite those loving feelings.
Here are three immediate steps to take if you feel emotionally far away from your spouse
1. Stop being wishy-washy
I remember vividly when I started to notice that I was drifting away emotionally from my husband.
It was year five of our marriage. We had two kids and two dogs and two jobs and two cars and luckily only one mortgage.
Needless to say, our lives were chaos.
What I remember most was that, when I realized it was happening, I wasn’t really sure if that wasn’t OK. If I was OK that I was becoming disconnected emotionally from my husband because I just wasn’t happy anymore.
It had started when the kids were born, this sense that I wasn’t really sure that I wanted to be with him.
Sure, I liked him, but the romance was gone. I was scared that I would never feel the passion that I had felt when we were first together.
We never fought but there was definitely a certain amount of tension always present in our interactions.
Being together just wasn’t fun anymore.
So, did I really want to do the hard work to reconnect with him? Was it going to be worth it?
For me, it was the thought of him with another woman that kept me on track, to lean into trying to get our marriage back on track. I didn’t like the way that idea felt in my gut so I listened to it. And I tried to lean back in.
The operative word here is "tried." I didn’t set out, determined to reconnect with my husband. To do whatever it was I had to do to make our marriage strong again. What I set out to do was to "try harder."
And, where did that get me? Nowhere. Our marriage lasted another 13 years but I never stopped the slide of emotional disconnection from my husband.
So, if you really want to reconnect with your husband, to get your marriage back on track, you need to be determined to do so and make a commitment to it.
Ask yourself — is this something you really want to do and know that you can give it your all?
If it isn’t, just know that the chances you saving your marriage are minimal.
If it is — go for it!
2. Change your priorities
I have a friend who was married once and it ended badly.
When she got married again, to a man who had also been in an unhappy marriage, they swore to each other that they wouldn’t repeat the mistakes from their first marriages.
There were a number of mistakes that they didn’t want to repeat but the one that was the most important is that they were each other’s top priority. Period.
My friend and her new husband had six kids between them and I just couldn’t see how this was possible. I know that for me, no matter what, the kids were first and my husband was second.
Actually, maybe even third, after the dogs.
How could I possibly prioritize him?
What my friend and her husband did was that they agreed that they were equal as a couple. That they worked together, always, to make things happen.
No matter if it was driving the kids to school, helping with homework or talking through a problem about work, they did it together.
This involved talking to each other about what was going on and agreeing how to split the work. It meant keeping in touch with each other as the day evolved.
It meant understanding that the other person might not do things the way they wanted it done, but that it was OK because you loved, trusted and respected them.
Of course, sharing equally in the mundane wasn’t the only thing that changed so that they could prioritize each other. There was fun stuff too.
Without exception, they had a date night on Friday. Unless someone was literally dying, they had their date. They got out of the house and, even if just for an evening, they were a couple and not mom and dad.
They made sure that they hugged and kissed each other in the morning and evening and that they were intimate on some level at least once a week.
They worked hard to never ignore each other’s wants and needs and acknowledged when they let the other down.
None of these things had happened in my friend’s first marriage and it had failed.
Her second marriage, however, is in year 17 and they have never disconnected from each other. They have worked hard to always prioritize each other and it has kept their marriage strong.
So, if you feel yourself disconnecting emotionally from your husband, I would encourage you to work to make the relationship a priority.
If you are a mom, this might be harder than it sounds because you have prioritized your kids for so long and lt will be hard to change but you can do it. Make your husband an equal partner in the relationship. Touch him regularly. Listen to him when he wants to talk. Tell him what you need in exchange.
I can promise you that, if you start to prioritize your husband again, he will think that he has died and gone to heaven and will happily make you a priority in every way he can.
3. Don’t procrastinate
Are you thinking that what I am saying will be a lot of work? Are you already tired and being pulled in too many directions and thinking that one more responsibility might kill you?
I get it. Life is hard — and marriage especially.
However, if you want to stop yourself from disconnecting emotionally from your husband, now is the time to do it. Not tomorrow or next week or next year or when the kids go off to college. Right now.
Why? For two reasons.
First, the longer you go feeling disconnected from your husband, the worse it could get and the harder it will be to reconnect.
Second, if you put it off, you might just forget to start it up again. Days, weeks or years might go by, with you in the middle of your crazy life, and then one day you might pick your head up and remember that you wanted to change things but that it just fell off your list.
Don't put it off one minute longer.
I can’t tell you how many of my friends felt like they were disconnecting from their husbands. We spent more time with our friends and our kids and our husbands were quickly becoming noise in the background.
As a result, because they were at the bottom of our list of things that had to be taken care of, we just never made the effort to reconnect.
We all thought that we could put it off, that when our children were grown and we had more time that we would be able to find our way back to each other, to renew the love that we felt when we were married.
Not all of us did this. A few recognized that they were growing disconnected and jumped right on fixing that. They are still married.
Almost without exception, those of us who didn’t are divorced. By the time the kids went off to school it was too late.
In my case, my ex-husband found someone else and moving toward her was much easier than having to work to reconnect with me.
If you truly want to reconnect emotionally with your husband, don’t put it off.
If you do, you just might find that it’s too late.
These feelings might mark the beginning of the end of your marriage and paying attention to them now is very important.
Reflect on what you truly want — to lean back into your marriage or continue to disconnect because you feel like that is what you really want. If you do want to save it, get started now.
Prioritize your husband and I can promise you that he will be so happy that he will prioritize you as well.
I do believe that, while in theory, it’s never too late to start working to reconnect with your husband, there might come a time when the disconnect has gone past the point of no return. Where your husband finds someone else or decides to prioritize himself and his feelings.
After all, if you are feeling disconnected emotionally from your husband, you are probably causing him a lot of pain, pain that might ultimately lead to him walking away from you.
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Mitzi Bockmann is a certified life and relationship coach. She has over 10 years of experience in helping people find happiness in life and love.