Dealing with Emotional Neglect in Marriage

The marriage relationship is one of the more intimate relationships that a person can have. This is the person with whom you share your life, dreams, fears, and everything else that one person can share with another.

A godly marriage is one where the two spouses honor one another with their bodies, hearts, and minds. The couple aims to please and serve one another, seeking each other’s highest good, and they engage in a unified, lifelong pursuit of the Lord and His purposes for their lives.

Of course, marriages exist in a world where people have issues, and they face bumps and jolts along the way to a successful marriage. The idyllic picture painted above is attainable, though each marriage goes through seasons of hardships and triumphs that aren’t easy to predict. One of the issues that a marriage might have to navigate is emotional neglect.

What is emotional neglect?

Emotional neglect is when your partner consistently doesn’t notice, acknowledge, or respond to your feelings and needs. Such neglect doesn’t just happen in marriage; parents can neglect their child(ren) in the same way. Unlike physical or verbal abuse which may be more noticeable, emotional neglect is often about the things that don’t happen or the absence of certain kinds of interactions in your relationship.

In many ways, emotional neglect is more about the absence of something than it is about its presence. A couple can live together in a situation of emotional neglect and feel like everything is normal. Sometimes, emotional neglect is invisible to the couple because that’s how they’ve been relating to each other for a while, and sometimes the way emotional neglect manifests can be quite subtle.

Emotional neglect can feel like being lonely even when your partner is around. It can also be when you feel as though your spouse is not a true partner in the marriage, or that they don’t know you. Emotional neglect can also manifest in other ways, such as:

• Surface level interactions with little substance.
• You prefer to spend time alone than with your spouse.
• Ignoring or discounting one another’s feelings.
• There’s a lack of trust in the relationship.
• One or both of you would rather seek support from outside the marriage than from each other.
• Not engaging in social activities together as a couple.
• Your communication is dysfunctional.
• When you do have conversations, you don’t know what to talk about.
• A lack of physical intimacy.
• Secrets are abundant in the relationship.
• Walking on eggshells around each other.
• Your partner shuts down when you want to talk, or they give you the silent treatment.
• You tend to avoid conflict and sweep issues under the rug to avoid addressing them.
• This leads to having deep, unresolved grievances in the relationship.
• Not feeling like you can be yourself around your spouse.
• Feeling lost or worthless in the marriage.

Emotional neglect pushes a couple apart. Instead of meeting one another’s needs and being a safe emotional space for each other, the marriage can feel empty and unfulfilling.

Causes.

Each marriage is unique because your story, experiences, strengths, and personalities make for a complex and singular relationship. However, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t some common issues that affect marriages, and that can lead to emotional neglect. There are several common causes of emotional neglect, and these include:

• An extramarital affair.
• Poor or insecure attachment that makes it hard to be vulnerable or know how to respond to other’s needs.
• A new job that draws one spouse’s attention and focus away.
• A new baby that takes up one spouse’s emotional energy and time.

Each of these causes a shift in one’s focus that leaves their spouse feeling disconnected or as though they are not important to their spouse.

Overcoming emotional neglect.

Emotional neglect isn’t always obvious in a marriage. It’s possible that all you may have to go on is the vague sense that something isn’t right in your relationship, that you’re not clicking the way you should, or that something is missing. If you see the above signs of emotional neglect, or if you have the impression that something maybe isn’t quite right, speak to your spouse about it, and try to address those concerns.

When a couple identifies areas of emotional neglect, they can begin moving toward one another to address the situation. Sometimes, what’s happening is the result of a simple lack of emotional awareness, or it is the result of one spouse’s experiences of childhood neglect which affects how they relate to others.

Instead of resorting to blaming one another for the impact of emotional neglect, it’s more constructive to move toward each other with empathy and cultivate tools to engage each other’s emotions effectively.

A couple can overcome emotional neglect in their relationship by taking time to process their emotions and growing their ability to communicate effectively. Sometimes, what’s needed is better mutual understanding about how best to approach one another or communicate needs effectively.

With help from a counselor, you and your spouse can process your feelings to understand what’s going on in your marriage. Your counselor can also help you cultivate healthy communication and conflict-resolution skills.

If you’re in a season of emotional disconnection with your spouse, take that step to move toward each other and bridge the gulf. Reach out a connect with a counselor to begin overcoming the pain of neglect and bring healing to your marriage.