When it comes to emotional abandonment:
“It’s a complaint I hear regularly from people looking for help for their marriages:
- ‘I feel distant from my spouse.’
- ‘I try to get my husband to open up, but instead he just shuts down.’
- ‘My wife just doesn’t seem interested in me anymore. I feel like we’re a million miles apart.’
- ‘I don’t know if I love him anymore.’
“What we’re talking about here is emotional abandonment. Instead of physically leaving the relationship, your spouse simply checks out emotionally. They stop investing in the marriage, leaving their mate feeling detached and unwanted. To the outside world the situation can still look rosy, but in reality the relationship is dying a slow, quiet death.” (Dr Dave Currie with Glen Hoos)
Emotional abandonment might not even die quite so slowly and quietly, as the spouse who is shut out tries to grapple with what is happening. Sometimes there is a lot of screaming and finger-pointing within the home— which often seems to complicate the situation even further. And yet, what can the abandoned spouse do to turn the relationship back around in the right direction?
Honestly, it’s confusing —even to those who call themselves “experts” in marriage relationships because everyone’s situation is different. What’s especially tragic is that emotional abandonment is something that seems to be happening in epidemic proportions in marriages today, or maybe it’s just that we hear more about this in today’s world… it’s difficult to tell.
But whatever the case, this is something we need to address because of the devastation it is causing on so many levels to individuals within their marriages, families, churches, and society as a whole, as the family unit breaks down and goes in an unhealthy direction.
To give you some type of insight into what may be causing emotional shut downs and what a spouse can do to turn things around in a better direction, we have found several web site articles that we believe will help. Please click onto the links below to read:
• EMOTIONAL ABANDONMENT: When Your Spouse Shuts You Out
• HER HUSBAND WOULDN’T SPEAK TO HER FOR THREE YEARS
• MY HUSBAND IS A MYSTERIOUS ISLAND
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(AFRICA) Please help me, I feel my husband does not want me anymore. Sometimes I feel he does not like me.
He is usually on his own. He does not make any conversation. I always have to start the conversation and he would answer me in NO’s and YESes. Our intimate life has stopped. He hardly touches me. In bed he moves away from me.
He can not tell me what is bothering him. I know things have not been well at his working place and I thought I would be there to assure him things will work out fine eventually, but he completely shuts me out.
I have reached a point where when he moves away, I also move away because I don’t remember hurting him. Why does he behave like he does not know me? I used to pray to God to change anything that I do wrong, some things that I know and other things that I don’t remember, also praying for him and my marriage. He does not seem to change a bit. I am so discouraged and I feel prayer is not helping him either. When I start to pray I fail to construct any sentence because my mind is so congested and I don’t know where to start from. I have given up and I am only waiting for him to react in whatever way he so wishes.
I cant just take it any more.
(SOUTH AFRICA) Hi Mary D, I really feel for you and I pray that God opens your husband’s heart so he can open up to you. You must be feeling neglected and unloved I know, but don’t stop praying. Don’t stop showing him that you care. If you have really tried talking to him without success, I suggest you write him a letter expressing how you feel and how his actions are hurting you. Tell him that you are at a point where you feel like your relationship is heading for the rocks. You feel like you are losing him as you cannot connect with him emotionally any longer. Tell him that you would not like to look elsewhere for affection when he is there.
This is not a threat, but a possibility! I hope he is not the violent type or extremely jealous because he is going to take as if you are saying that you will cheat on him! But if he is jealous, he will start listening, I can guarantee you. You need to be a little hard on these African men, otherwise it’s like talking to a wall.
Trust in the Lord and as you write your letter, invite the holy spirit to speak to him in a way that will make him understand that you are serious about this and you want a change in your marriage that will lead to a happier life for the both of you. I’m also in a dilemma with my husband and I don’t know what I feel anymore. See article on How To Stop Your Wandering Eye: Every Man’s Battle to see my story. God will help you my sister. I am praying for you. Take care.
(UNITED STATES) My husband has push me away so often that I am not sure how to ask God for help. He has two children from two previous relationships. We now have four children together and one on the way. He told me that if I continued this pregnancy I will make this relationship bad. I told him that I would not abort this baby. He did research on the computer and in the Bible. He found that it was considered to be murder if I did so. He left that situation alone.
However, he tells me that it is okay for married men to have sex with other women. And that it is not considered adultery. I asked him what about the promise that he made to God and me when we married. I told him that if he wanted to have sex with other women I would leave him. It is not a threat. I couldn’t bear to wonder who he was with or if he was coming home.
To sum it all up, he tells me that I’m not worth talking to at all. If I say anything to him he will snap at me. We basically have no communication at all. We don’t hug, kiss or say I love you. He doesn’t acknowledge that I’m pregnant. Everyone tells me how big my belly is and it’s like he can’t see it. We might have sex once a month.
I have begun to feel like I don’t care anymore. He says that I’m controlling and disrespectful. He doesn’t feel women should work outside the house. He tells me that everything that was bad that has ever happened to us, is all my fault. He tells me not to ask questions and I shouldn’t speak unless he has spoken to me. He says I’ve made him feel this way about me. He doesn’t love me like he use to. He tells me that I need to be just the housewife and mother to the children.
What happened to companionship and what a mother and wife may need? Sometimes I feel like a part of me is dying inside. How can I pray for us? I’m confused. One time he stopped talking to me for six months. I prayed that things would work out for us. And it did, just the day before I was going to tell him I wanted a divorce. I am seven and a half months pregnant now. I don’t feel I am strong enough to pull us through this situation. I am scared I will get sick again.
About five yrs ago when I was pregnant and we had so many problems at the time, I didn’t realize how much attention that I placed on us as a couple and I got sick. I was rushed to the hospital and an emergency c-section was performed. I had placenta abruption. Our baby didn’t survive and I almost died too. My blood pressure spiked so high causing this to happen to me. I was stressed out.
I will always love him and I believe that God put us together. I also know that God is real….I wonder could it be that our time is up together as a couple? I have given up so much just to be with him. I raised his two children. They feel like they are my own. I prayed until I am numb. I haven’t gotten an answer from God. I need help because I can’t do this alone.
(SOUTH AFRICA) Hi Moni, This is not an easy situation that you are finding yourself in. Have you tried counselling? My dear, I really feel for you. I got pregnant by my husband sometime before we got married and he did not want the baby. He told me to abort as he did not want any baby at his age. I was so hurt, disappointed and shattered. I could not go on with the abortion. It’s against my values and principles as a Christian. It was my first baby and I wanted to be a mother. I felt that he did not love me. He neglected me throughout the pregnancy. He had another girlfriend/s and just did not have the time for me.
I used to cry everyday and I isolated myself from friends as I did not want anyone asking me about him or when we were going to get married. Luckily, I had a good health plan and I went to a private hospital. When I gave birth and he came to the hospital, he said that the baby did not look like him at all and I could sense that he was trying to tell me that it’s not his child. And yes, the child looks more like me. But is it my fault? Do I prescribe who I want the child to look like? He started being nicer to me after the baby was born and tried to spend time with me when he felt like it. Four months down the line I was pregnant again and he still asked me to abort, but this time he was better than the first time.
He used to invite me to his house every now and then and would not even try to hide women’s clothing or items. I felt like he deliberately wanted to help me. I wanted to leave him, but he would not allow me. He would come to my house and beg me and say he would change, or he would turn it around and make it my fault. He just did not have respect for me.
This behaviour did not really change, but I still married him anyway. I don’t think I still loved him enough to marry him, but I felt that since he was the father of my babies, why not? After all, I did not want my children to grow up without a father. Bad move, maybe? The struggle still continues though. I don’t think he has a girlfriend anymore, but I know that he is still in touch with his ex’s which does not make the situation any better anyway.
What I’m trying to get at my dear is that you are not alone in this. In my opinion, if a man tells you in your face that it is okay for him to sleep with other women, he does not respect you. How does he think you will feel? Excited? I don’t think so! That’s emotional abuse. I have been through it and I have fought hard against it because if you don’t, you will start believing all the nasty things that he says about you. How can he say you are not worth talking to? What makes him more important than you?
If your husband does not want to talk to you, tell him that it’s either you go for counselling together or you separate from him until such time that he sees fit to talk. If he does not talk to you, but can have sex with you, what is he trying to do here? I know prayer is the best medicine, but you’ve got to help yourself too. Be firm, but pray at the same time. God will help you.
(SOUTH AFRICA) Hi, I have been seeing my friend for 5 years. We both have been married before (we are divorced now). We have so much in common and get on very well with one another being of course, mature adults. My question… he does not believe in marriage the second time around? He prefers we live together as a couple. He believe that we were married before, it did not work out, why take that chance again? Me on the other hand, believes in the sanctity of marriage… I believe that we can make it work as we are both mature adults and know where we went wrong the first time. He feels that it will spoil the fun. This is making me unhappy. I’m not sure what to do.
(USA) For those women writing in with emotionally distant spouses, I say to leave them. The situations below are heart-rending, and the women are being emotionally abused.
Go for counselling help, for sure, and continue praying and asking God to lead you, but these men will not change unless something drastic happens. Leaving them is not the same as divorcing them, but they are abusing you. You have to take care of yourselves and your children and waiting for these men to change is not doing that.
I have found that many times God acts when we act. Make plans to leave, be definite and firm, and then listen carefully to what the spirit says to you. He may say to go; he may say to leave; and if you sense nothing, then go ahead and leave, but continue to be open to his leading.
I am in an emotionally abusive relationship also, and have no love for my husband left, but we are in counselling and so I will stick it out for a while longer. I am so dead to my husband that I wonder if I even want this relationship to be saved. But women tend to dither and dither when sometimes decisive action is needed.
Remember, God can’t lead you if you’re not in motion. I’d rather make a move and get His red light and know I’m not to do that, than wonder and wonder in agony for years.
(KENYA) I am born-again Christian. Adultery in Africa-Kenya is no big deal – especially to the men. They are allowed to have more than one woman in their lives-I don’t know who allows them because the last time I checked, God does not stand adultery and allows separation if it happens.
When God created Adam he did not create Eve, Mary,Alice. The Bible says “…and a man will leave his parents and join with his wife”, and not wives.
Am so sorry to react this way and I hope it does not offend anyone. All the female friends and family around me are having issues with their marriages and I don’t know how to react because I am also married and confused.
(USA) My husband and I have been together for 7 yrs and I love him with all my heart. He used to be such a fun person and was my best friend. We had relations all the time and was together all the time because we enjoyed each other so much. It now has been 1 1/2 years since we have made love and as time goes on, we are getting further and further apart.
I get NO affection from him at all. The thing that is hurting me worse of all is no matter what I try to talk to him about he cuts me off like he doesn’t want to listen and the TV is more important that what I have to say. I even have tried to keep what I want to say during the commercials. But one time he made the comment "why are you even telling me that, it has no bearing on my life, so why are you even talking to me about that." IT HAS NO BEARING ON HIS LIFE??
That comment cut like a knife, I feel like MY LIFE has no bearing on his life. I tried to tell him that I just wanted to talk to him and share my day, but he doesn’t care about my day, he doesn’t care about anything that matters to me. He hates to visit with people as well as family, and my family is very important to me. But every time I want to have them over or go to visit them, it ends up in a fight. Our house is always very clean, but he excuses getting mad cause I should stay home and clean, instead of wasting time visiting my Mom or son.
One time I wanted to spend the day with my Mom and he got mad cause then he would have to clean house on HIS day off… Am I not entitled to a day off? I work between 45-60 hrs a week so I think that I am entitled to have a day off. Can anyone help me get my head wrapped around what is going of with him? I love him and I don’t want to leave him, but he is really making me feel not good about myself and I NEED him to listen or give me some sort of affection. I don’t know how to get that point across to him without it ending in a fight… please help.
(SOUTH AFRICA) Hi Loulou, I’m so sorry that you have to go through this. I can relate to what you are going through in so many ways. This sounds like emotional abuse to me. I also don’t get any affection, I need to beg for a hug (can you believe that) he just watches TV all day, never talks to me, doesn’t want to spend time with my family, we only visit his friends… and so the list goes on and on….
(S. AFRICA) Can somebody please help me? I just do not know what to do anymore. I have prayed and prayed and know that God is in control but perhaps my faith must be weak because this pain will just not go away. My husband has been having an affair for the past nine months. It started from "flirting on the internet"(with a lady in New Zealand) and progressed from there to a full blown relationship. When in the beginning stages of this affair I approached my husband it led to many arguments and I decided that marriage counseling was what we needed. We went to counselling and it really helped. I left after our last session feeling on top of the world and I believed my husband felt the same. We were close again and the future looked bright or so I thought.
It was only one week later that I found an SMS on his phone which told me they had never stopped contacting each other. I was devastated and immediately contacted our counselor and made another appointment. We went together again and after this my husband said he was not going again because he felt the counselor was biased and not considering his feelings at all. Anyway, soon after this he left home telling me he needed time to think. He said it was going to be a six months separation.
Before he left he took my credit card away and changed all the passwords to our joint banking account.This really hurt as I have never abused our finances in anyway.This resulted in me having to open my own banking account into which I could put my salary and pay for day to day expenses. He did however continue to pay for all major expenses such as the bond, rates and taxes etc and for this I am so grateful.
Anyway, the moment he left home he was free to continue with his affair without me looking over his shoulder. He became more and more distant from me and despite my pleading, tears and sometimes anger he continued mercilessly. Then the day came when he told me he wanted a divorce. I cried bitterly for days and then decided to seek legal advise. An agreement was drawn up and my husband was told to find his own lawyer should he want to file for divorce. (I refused to divorce him.) The day before this agreement was to be signed I was woken up early in the morning with my husband standing at the gate. He was home again. He said he had ended the affair – IT WAS OVER. When I asked him what changed his mind he said God had spoken to him. I was overjoyed and praised God for answering my prayers.
All went well for a day or two but after I asked questions and he told me the truth I fell apart again. She had visited him from New Zealand and their relationship had been physical. They were engaged to be married and had spent a wonderful three week holiday together squandering all our hard earned savings. During our separation he had also signed a two and a half year contract to work overseas and it had been part of their plan to get away. (By the way she is also married.) I felt so betrayed. How could he have done all this behind my back?
I tried so hard to get over my anger and hurt and continued to remind myself that he was back with ME and that was all that mattered. I prayed to God to help me. When I asked him if he loved me he said I must give him time. Oh boy this hurt especially since I love him so much. One day a week after he had come home I found an e-mail to his lover saying he can’t forget her and that he doesn’t love me. In the e-mail they had made a "deal" and his promise to her was that he would be in New Zealand with her in three months time. I did not tell him I had seen this as I did not want him to leave me for his overseas working contract (that was legally binding) with bad vibes between us. This was so incredibly hard.
Well, he has been gone for just over two weeks now and I am hurting so badly. His e-mails to me are short cold and abrupt. If I question him in any way he never answers me. He never says I love you and carefully dodges anything of importance.
My question is how should I deal with the situation I am in? I love him so much but have been told by family and friends to pick myself up and move on in life. I am in limbo and don’t know where to turn. I have given this problem to God but still have bad days like today when I feel at a loss. I pray everyday for God to change his heart. Please help me. Why is my trust in the Lord so weak? What must I do to move on? What should my approach to my husband be like? Am I making a fool of myself?
(USA) Rose, this is the time since he is gone, to grow emotionally detached from your husband. You have to pick up and move on. You know in your heart, that she is with him overseas. Please, tell him you know. You should have told him you knew before he left, so he wouldn’t think he is doing you a favor by saving you from heartbreak. You are heart broken now and he doesn’t know it. Why send yourself through so much pain? Please move on.
When she breaks his heart, he’s coming back home to you. He put you on a backburner for her. And when she hurts him, he’s gonna come back to you. He can’t drag you along on his string. You’ve got to cut the cord. If you do take him back, you’re really not going to want him because it’s not the same love it was when you two first met. It will be rebound love, him getting over her and realizing you will always be there for him. You deserve to be no one’s fool, Rose. Don’t be a fool for love.