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Women crave emotional connections. This is an ingrained personality trait that allows you to form a deep attachment to your husband, develop physical intimacy within the marriage, and continue to grow in love.
Therefore, it’s especially harmful to your emotional health and the health of your marriage when you feel no emotional connection with your husband.
A situation where you are not emotionally attracted to your husband could severely dampen your marital happiness.
This can especially sting if you used to have a healthy emotional connection at the beginning of your relationship.
Perhaps he was once attentive and insightful. Perhaps you used to spend hours in deep conversation together. However, presently he isn’t bothered to simply return a text message or share his thoughts.
The loss of this emotional connection can be extremely damaging to your marriage. These are nothing but signs of emotional detachment in marriage.
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The longer this lack of connection lingers, the more you feel like you’re living as roommates instead of lovers.
Lack of emotional connection in relationships or intimacy in marriage equals no emotional intimacy in marriage. Lack of emotional support from your husband saps all the trust, happiness, and comfort out of your equation with your spouse.
“I don’t feel connected to my husband anymore” – if you feel tormented with this nagging, paralyzing feeling, more often than not, it is time to take note of signs that suggest you are drifting apart.
Feeling no emotional connection with your husband is a dire state that needs immediate attention and corrective steps.
Psychologist Mert Şeker says that women want a man they can open up to, whether it’s a bad day at the office or it’s about their deepest hopes and fears. Having the empathy trait means you can understand another person’s point of view and sympathize with what they are going through.
For this very reason, women may also lose interest, good feelings, and commitment towards a man who is afraid to show their true feelings and openly discuss them or who has this tendency.
The reason for a lack of emotional connection could vary from your husband’s sheer negligence or he is just not emotionally intelligent.
Whatever the reason, you first must look for some obvious signs of how the relationship has grown emotionally distant.
Also watch: How to express feeling and emotions
Signs of growing emotionally distant
Here are some common signs showing a lack of emotional intimacy in marriage and how you are growing emotionally distant from your husband.
You stop coming to him for advice
One sign that you feel no emotional connection is that you stop coming to your husband for advice or his thoughts on what is going on in your life.
This is because you either feel like he will not care about your problems, you no longer respect his opinions, or you think, “I feel neglected by my husband,” and are not emotionally secure enough with him to share your problems.
Lack of emotional support from your husband could be a major blow to your sense of self-worth and could make you feel withdrawn and less inclined to seek his advice.
You stop sharing your life
Similar to the above, instead of not sharing problems, you find that you are no longer sharing anything with your husband.
Lack of intimacy from your husband, experiencing emotional disconnection in marriage, and feeling neglected by your husband leads to an inability to share each others’ lives together.
Your conversations consist of simple pleasantries before you settle in for a night of TV. You no longer share the details of your work, your family, your friends, or your children.
You do not feel he deserves to know what’s going on in your life.
When there is no emotional connection in a relationship or no intimacy in marriage from a husband, there is nothing that you or your partner find worthwhile to share with each other.
You stop having sex
A big red flag that you have no emotional connection with your husband is that you no longer want to be intimate with him. Without an emotional connection, you simply can’t fathom sharing that much of yourself with him.
Neglected by an emotionally detached husband, you may even start using the gatekeeper method of withholding sex as a form of punishment.
Psychologist Mert Şeker says that the first consequence of emotional distance between spouses is reflected in the bedroom.
You start feeling distant in a relationshipand experience no emotional connection with him.
You are purposely critical
Because you are feeling emotionally disconnected and hurt, you look for ways to hurt him. You start feeling disconnected from your husband and face a growing emotional detachment in marriage.
Psychologist Mert Şeker says that when you start to complain and criticize your husband more than you have ever done before, it shows you may have lost your respect for him.
It has been seen that it is quite possible to find individuals you do not respect inadequately and to constantly criticize them over minor things.
So, you find ways to take it out on him. You see his unwashed coffee cup in the sink and call him lazy or see a DIY project undone and claim he doesn’t care about your home. You may find the smallest thing to criticize.
This is a dangerous behavior, with studies suggesting that criticism in marriage can lead to an increase in depressive tendencies in couples.
Even though you are frustrated, know that if the majority of your conversations are criticisms, your husband is most likely going to withdraw even further from you.
Feeling no emotional connection with your husband can often push you to the brink of being overly critical.
Side effects of no emotional connection
Feeling no emotional connection with someone you want to spend the rest of your life with is more than just a little problem. These are harmful signs of emotional neglect in a marriage.
If you have been trying to connect with your husband and find that he keeps turning you away, it can lead to feeling hopeless.
This is a frustrating and demoralizing experience that can lead to serious emotional side effects if not dealt with. A few side effects have been listed below.
Loneliness and depression
You and your husband have made vows of forever and ever, and yet you feel like you are taking on your days alone.
Loneliness is disheartening. The situation is further aggravated when you are losing connection with your husband.
You keep thinking, “I don’t feel loved by my husband.” Loneliness and disenchantment become your constant companions.
Mert Şeker adds that one of the most important features or needs that make us humans is to socialize.
According to different studies, 7 percent of men and 13 percent of women who state that they are emotionally lonely may experience depression. If you are a lonely or emotionally isolated woman, you will be more likely to experience depression than your husband.
Self-doubt
There is little in life that is more paralyzing than self-doubt. When you can’t emotionally connect with your husband, you may find you start doubting yourself.
Are you not a good enough wife? Does your husband not like you enough to share his emotional side? Is he not connecting emotionally with you because he is already doing so with somebody else?
These questions can lead to jealousy, paranoia, and low self-esteem. But, the best way to save yourself from self-doubt is by identifying signs of emotional neglect in marriage and learning how to fix emotional detachment.
You grow distant
Feeling no emotional connection with your husband can create a detrimental snowball effect on your marriage. The more you try to get him to connect and feel nothing in return, the more distant you will grow from one another.
After feeling “turned down” from emotionally intimate conversations, you will simply stop trying to share yourself with your husband, both sexually and mentally.
After all, it is not easy to survive an emotionally neglected marriage.
Infidelity
Feeling emotionally neglected to a woman feels much like being sexually neglected to a man. It makes you believe that your partner no longer cares about you or about fulfilling your needs.
Loneliness and neglect can sharply turn into anger and resentment toward your mate. Coupled with insecurity, these emotions can leave you ripe for an affair. This will be because you were already feeling distant in a relationship.
How to rebuild an emotional connection
The longer you let an unspoken problem fester inside of you, the more hurt you will feel.
It is never a good idea to sit on a problem in your marriage, as marriage without emotional intimacy isn’t going to fix itself. You need to learn how to connect with your partner again.
Here is what you can do to take control of the situation.
Communicate
Let your husband know gently how you are feeling. Tell him you don’t feel as close to him as you once were. Ask if there is anything you can do to help you bond together again.
This may open up the conversation and allow both partners to share their issues.
Don’t play the blamegame
When you bring up your lack of emotional connection to your husband, it’s important not to play the blame game.
Do not tell him that it is his fault that you feel disconnected. This will get him defensive and create unhealthy communication. Instead, express your desire to be as connected to him as you once were.
Schedule date nights
Date nights are essential for a happy marriage, especially for those who have children. Even though you are now parents, it’s important not to forget that you are still mates who have fun together.
Scheduling a date night once a week and religiously following it will create a deeper emotional connection for both parties.
Take up a hobby together, go out for dinner and a movie, jog together, or simply go out for drinks.
Whatever you do, make sure it is something that you both enjoy, where you will be able to talk and share with one another as you used to do when you were in the dating phase of your relationship.
Have sex
This may be difficult to do, especially if you feel no emotional connection, but having sex is going to be beneficial to both of you. Sex that results in org*sm is one of the biggest doses of oxytocin, or “the love drug” you will ever get.
For women, this hormone is released post-org*sm and creates an intimate bond of trust by stimulating certain brain sensors.
Also, remember the signs of emotional connection you felt once from him, start working on things that used to make him smile, and you will see the difference soon!
Oxytocin also stimulates bonding and empathy. For men, sex with a partner stimulates the reward center of their brain and releases a rush of dopamine through the body.
Overall, sex is a bonding agent that is healthy for your relationship.
The bottom line
Remember that in order to revitalize the emotional connection in your marriage, both parties have to be willing to work hard at spending time together in an honest and open field.
After all, nobody can survive if there is no emotional connection in marriage between partners. Surely after you put in the work to reconnect emotionally, your marriage will come out stronger on the other side.
