Your willingness to work through the problems in your relationship is admirable. It’s also a positive sign that, despite your present difficulties, better days may lie ahead for your marriage.
The key to realizing that hope lies in serious and intensive marital counseling. If the therapy you’re undergoing at the moment seems to be taking too long in producing noticeable results, we’d urge both of you to be patient. Marriage counseling can be a long and difficult process with many ups and downs. If your relationship with your wife has been struggling for some time, then a “quick fix” is not something you should expect. If you’re the kind of man who tends to “shut down” under stress, it’s possible that your wife emotionally “checked out” of the marriage a long time ago. She’s going to need time to heal and rebuild her sense of trust and security.
In most cases, non-communicative husbands – those who are good at “hiding” emotionally and relationally – are simply following through on a style of behavior that they learned at a very young age, sometimes as a means of daily survival in an abusive or emotionally frigid home. Though your behavior may not be intended to convey any such thing, your wife may be interpreting your withdrawal and silence as signs that you are indifferent to her needs. She may feel that if you really loved her, you’d try harder to break out of your shell rather than abandoning her when she craves your validation and reassurance.
If that is not your intention, explain to her how important she is to you and how much you love her. Make it clear that you are committed to continue the counseling process until you discover exactly what it is that shuts you down and makes it so difficult to express your inner thoughts and feelings. Promise her that you will also find a spiritual mentor or a small group of Christian men who will be able to hold you accountable and help you learn how to become a better husband. In all of these ways you will be providing her with the tangible proof of your love and your dedication to the marriage that she so desperately wants and needs.
If for some reason you and your wife are not happy with your current counseling arrangements, call our Counseling department. They would be happy to discuss your situation with you over the phone and to provide you with a list of alternate referrals for your local area.
Resources
If a title is currently unavailable through Focus on the Family, we encourage you to use another retailer.
Hiding from Love: How to Change the Withdrawal Patterns That Isolate and Imprison You
One More Try: What to Do When Your Marriage Is Falling Apart
Other books on Communication in Marriage
Referrals
Hope Restored® marriage intensives
Articles
Learning to Communicate
