15 Realistic Ways to Fix Emotional Detachment in Marriage

If you are a subscriber of this blog, you will know that I have written about emotional detachment in marriage before. In this article we will be discussing how to fix emotional detachment in marriage. We will also look at the signs of emotional detachment in marriage.

Fixing emotional detachment in marriage takes making a decision and sticking to it. It takes work. However, if love exists or has ever existed between the two of you, it makes the work easier to do.

Can you love someone and be emotionally detached?

Yes. You can certainly love your spouse and be emotionally detached. In fact, you may have achieved emotional detachment in a loving way.

RELATED: How to LOVINGLY detach from your spouse emotionally

Emotional disconnections do not necessarily mean that the love is gone. It may still be there but exist in a different way. To put it in another way, you will be loving them from a distance. An emotional distance.

What are some signs of emotional detachment in marriage?

Here are a few ways you know that either yourself or your spouse have emotionally disconnected from the marriage.

1. A lack of interest in sex
2. They have increasingly less interest in spending time with you
3. Your spouse has little to no reaction to the emotion that you show them
4. No physical displays of affection
5. They are easily irritated or annoyed by you

That is by no means an exhaustive list but those are very common signs of emotional detachment.

Can a marriage survive emotional detachment?

Yes, a marriage that has the foundation of love and respect can survive emotional detachment. Maybe you do not feel emotionally attached to your spouse right now but that can change. Below, we will look at some ways that you can fix emotional detachment in your marriage.

In the time that the emotional neglect has not been repaired though, you may need to figure out how to co-exist with your emotionally detached spouse. Various aspects of your marriage and family must continue to have some semblance of normalcy.

How to live with an emotionally detached husband

1. Give them space. Give them the chance to work through their issues or problems on their own and without nagging them. They need this even if you believe their issue is with you. Giving them space might help them to come up with a good way to communicate their troubles with you.
2. Attempt to empathize. Giving them space is useful for you as well. It lets you look at this situation and try to understand where your spouse is coming from. It also allows you to take a step back from the situation to think about how to fix the emotional detachment in your marriage. Or if you want it to be fixed. 
3. Be factual rather than emotional.  Do not waste your time and energy trying to communicate your feelings to your spouse if they do not seem to hear you. When your spouse is emotionally disconnected from you, it is futile to approach them with too much emotion. Instead, present information to them in factual form and in a calm and rational manner.
4. Be patient. Things will not change overnight. He is a human being and it would be unfair of you to expect him to transform completely overnight. You cannot force the fix.
5. Seek therapy. Rather than couples therapy, you could benefit from individual therapy to provide you with guidance on how to relate to your detached husband. Living with someone who is emotionally detached most likely means that you have had to become a different version of yourself too. Getting therapy will help you to return to a better version of yourself. Therapy, while viewed by some as the last resort, should ideally be one of the first steps taken when trying to fix emotional detachment in marriage.

It is best to not wait until there are no other options left but to leave when your spouse is emotionally unavailable.

Sometimes, though, you may truly have no choice but to exit the marriage.

When to leave an emotionally unavailable husband

1. He does not want to change. He has no desire to work on himself and the marriage so that the two of you can be in a better place. This is not the case only if he will not go to counseling with you. Counseling is not for everyone. It is more about his actions and if you can see that he simply has no interest in putting in the work to have a happy marriage.
2. He cannot change. The work that goes into fixing emotional detachment in marriage should never be underestimated. He may not have it in him. It is clear that even given the tools, he is not capable of changing the things that matter. You can tell that he is trying but his best effort is just not enough.
3. Your physical and mental health are affected. Being emotionally disconnected from the person who is supposed to be your closest friend can take a toll on you. You are spending more time being unhappy, worried and dissatisfied than not. You know how things should be and yet, despite effort on both parts or on your part, nothing is changing. 

In the three situations above, it is perfectly understandable for you to start to re-evaluate your commitment to the marriage.

15 Ways to regain emotional connections in your marriage

1. Do an activity together that takes you both out of your comfort zone. Activities that take you out of your comfort zone will usually bring on some level of an adrenaline rush. That rush is great for a couple that are struggling to connect emotionally. It is difficult to remain completely emotionally closed off when you are on an adrenaline high. You will be expressing some sort of emotion whether it is excitement or fear, for example. 
2. Be direct. When communicating with your spouse, be clear and open and honest about how you are feeling.
3. Be calm and factual. Present your spouse with facts rather than hysterics. As mentioned above, if you are trying to fix emotional detachment in marriage, you cannot approach your spouse with hysteria and expect them to hear you. It is too much emotion for them to handle at one. 
4. Put yourself in your spouse’s place. Try to understand why they may be emotionally disconnected from you.
5. Show gratitude and appreciation. Emotionally disconnected from you or not, there are things about your spouse that you can be grateful for. There will be reasons to be grateful for them. These may be things from the past or from the present and they may be big or small.
6. Leave the past in the past. Everyday. Take nothing into each new day except lessons learned. Do not haunt them with their mistakes.
7. Do and say what you would if you only had today with them. We have to get a little morbid here. If you only had this one day with them because one of you would not be here anymore, how would you want the day to go? This helps you to put things into perspective.
8. Organize dates. This is to help you to re-establish the connection that brought you together in the first place.
9. Let down your guard. As difficult as it is to be vulnerable with someone who is emotionally closed off to you, letting your guard down may be the one thing they need in order to fully understand how their behaviour is impacting you.
10. Show genuine interest. Try to gain an understanding of what your spouse is feeling and thinking.
11. Listen. In showing interest, you will hopefully get your spouse to talk to you more. Listening carefully to them when they do speak to you could give you some keys as to how to fix the emotional detachment in your marriage.
12. Take a break from each other. This may be all it takes for your spouse to remember why they wanted you in the first place and start to value all the great things about you that brought you together. In the process, they may also remind themselves of the things about them that made you want them.
13. Apologize. Whenever necessary. Not flippantly and because you think you must but rather because you understand why they deserve an apology. 
14. Find out their love language and connect on that level. You might think you are doing all you can to connect to them emotionally, to show them love. However, if they receive love in completely different ways from how you naturally show love, they might not fully appreciate your efforts. Connect with them on a level that they can understand.
15. Look inward. What part have you had to play in the emotional disconnection that you are experiencing in your marriage?

If you love and cherish your partner and your marriage enough, give the process of fixing emotional detachment time. Communicate like your marriage depends on it and remain hopeful.