Relationship Advice:
My Husband Doesn't Communicate With Me
Question
My husband does not communicate with me. It is like I am intruding on his privacy if I bring up a conversation, or dare to confront him with an issue. He totally shuts me out.
I have given up.
There never was much romance and in 18 years of marriage I was always the one to ask for sex.
I have decided that when my 15-year-old daughter graduates from high school, I am leaving him, if I can stand it that much longer.
I'd like to give it one more try. I need your relationship advice - is there a way out?
Our Relationship Advice
Yes, there is a way out, but the way out is through.
What that means is, if you truly want to work things out, you must face and go through your own issues, the internal stuff that has helped to create the situation. That will take commitment and courage.
You must still have some feelings of love toward your husband since you want to work things out, despite the problems. There is a great deal of estrangement happening between the two of you. During all of these 18 years of marriage, did the two of you ever go to counseling to find out what was at the root of these difficulties, or how to relate differently toward one another?
Non-productive patterns have gone on for a long time, and now there are long term and deep habits to overcome. They can be transformed, but what it will take on your part, since you are the one who is voicing the desire to work through them, is a commitment to new behaviors and new methods of communicating with him.
There are ways to communicate that alienate people and create defensiveness and distance, and there are ways to communicate that are positive, life affirming, and get you the results you're looking to have.
Most of us have never been taught how to communicate in life affirming ways. Instead, we use shame, blame, criticism, judgments, guilt - all of which are violent forms of communicating that cause harm and alienate those we are seeking to communicate with.
There is a great book out which is enjoyable and easy to read, by Marshall Rosenberg called Non-Violent Communication that, if you study it and follow the techniques offered, will bring about profound changes in your relationships.
We invite you to get it and begin to practice new ways of communicating.
It will take time, as you will have to let go of old, deeply ingrained methods that don't work, but that you have used all of your life. If you choose to do so, keep at it; be gentle with yourself as you learn to overcome old, negative habits. In the process, you also will be transformed. See what happens.
For someone to be as shut down as your husband is toward you, he must be feeling a lot of fear and intimidation, disconnection, and possibly a lot of anger. These are deep issues that may have begun during your relationship, depending on the dynamics between you, or it may have happened long before he met you, and the issues have simply continued since then, since they were not faced or healed.
You also must have some serious issues that you need to face and recognize - issues that would have you pick and stay with a husband where none of your needs got met, issues that would create disappointment and resentment in your life.
You too, are feeling a lot of anger.
These issues that you and your husband have are too big to go into here, in a short relationship advice, but they match one another and need to be faced and healed if you want to continue in the relationship and have it be other than it is.
He is a shut down person who cannot open up and give, and you do not allow yourself to get what you need. So, dysfunctionally speaking, it's a perfect match. Two sides of the same coin.
People come together to reflect, or be mirrors for one another's issues so that these issues can be seen, brought out into the open - hopefully with awareness, love, and sensitivity toward one another - and then dealt with and healed.
So far, neither of you has seen your own issues or dealt with them, or else things would be different. A couple comes together because they will have the same issues to work out - they come together to heal - so what you see in him is what you also need to face in yourself. He is a mirror for your internal issues, as you are for his.
Both of you have fears of receiving energy from another. Neither of you trust that you will be treated well and get the love and compassion that you need. You both just handle that pain differently. He shuts down, you probably get more aggressive.
Our best relationship advice is... thet when you face these issues honestly in yourself, and stop blaming him for the difficulties, when you explore them, see where they came from, and heal yourself, then life has the possibility of changing for you. We can only change ourselves. When we do, our external world changes as well.
We hope this relationship advice was beneficial for you...