Relationships tend to dim over time. What once was a bright flair of love and passion fades to a dull fire that keeps you warm. People hear all the time about how common it is, and so when their partner begins to grow emotionally distant, they may not realize what is happening at first.
However, emotional abandonment is much more than just calming down in a relationship. Some common signs of emotional abandonment in marriage are feeling alone all the time, and never seeing your partner even in your shared home.
9 Signs of Emotional Abandonment in Marriage
1. Your Spouse Pulls Away When You Want to Discuss Something
Sometimes, you need to discuss topics with your partner. Perhaps you want to see if you can get to the bottom of why they have been distant or even talk about one of the problems your child is having.
However, any time you start to talk to your partner about anything deep, they shut down. They likely won’t bring up any issues on their own, unless it is to criticize you, and won’t delve deeper into any problem to try and solve it.
You will often find yourself confused about why they won’t open up. You may even blame yourself at first, and try to decide if you have been too mean, cold, or critical in the past to make them like this.
However, no matter how much you try to change or how much you open up, you can’t seem to get them to care about anything past the surface problems and they don’t want to invest any time or energy into fixing problems that appear.
2. You Stay Quiet to Avoid Fighting All the Time
When you start to feel emotionally abandoned, you may react by doing things you know will set your spouse off just to get a rise out of them. If they hate for you to leave dirty dishes in the sink, you will start to do it just so they are angry.
While you might not necessarily want them to be angry with you and start a fight, you may want to feel something from them. Anger at least feels like there is something in your relationship, instead of it just being empty.
However, sometimes, your spouse shows emotional abandonment by getting angry. In this case, they may snap about everything, whether it was something big or small, and they get angry just the same.
It may feel like you can’t do anything right and that everything you say or do causes a fight. When that happens, you may find yourself withdrawing. You may no longer say anything to your partner or voice your opinion at all, just to make sure that they don’t get mad at you.
Even if you would normally disagree, you may agree with them just to prevent a fight.
3. You Don’t Even Bother to Fight Anymore
Fighting can go both ways. Sometimes, you and your partner can’t stop fighting when you feel emotionally abandoned. However, once you get past that point where you just give up, then you two don’t even bother to fight anymore.
At first, this may make it feel like the relationship is better. After all, no fighting is better than fighting most of the time. However, in this case, the lack of fighting often means that they just don’t care anymore.
Your spouse has given up on trying to be there emotionally with you and no longer cares enough to get upset and angry about the things you are doing. If you start to notice that things that would usually set off your spouse are no longer getting reactions from them, that is a sign that they may be emotionally abandoning you.
Usually, the lack of fighting happens last. When this happens, it usually means you are at the end of your relationship. Even if you two stay together, this is often the point of no return as there are now thick walls between you both.
4. You Solve Problems All on Your Own
When you first get married, you may find that you and your partner often rely on each other. For example, you may go and talk to them when you are upset about a situation at work. Or maybe you brainstorm problems around the home together.
As your partner becomes more emotionally distant, that doesn’t happen as much. At some point, you will find yourself no longer even going to them when there is a problem. Before, it might have been your partner’s job to call a company to fix the garage door, but now you just get it done without them even knowing about it until after.
You may not even find it is worth it to ask for help with anything anymore. If you have children together, you may just pick up all of the responsibilities rather than deal with the emotional drain of asking them for help with any of it.
It can get so bad that you feel that your partner just works and contributes nothing to the home. They are just there in essence.
It often happens slowly, so you might not even be aware of it until your child or friend asks why they never see your spouse anymore or why they never take them to school or go to events.
5. They Get Annoyed or Overly Critical Easily
Some spouses grow emotionally absent by never saying anything nice. They may thrive on criticizing you and get annoyed easily by everything. They will often pick on you in private and in front of others to get a reaction out of you.
It will often feel like you can’t do a single thing to make them happy and that everything you do is wrong. You will constantly be walking on eggshells and can only relax when they are gone and you can be yourself.
At some point, they may get under your skin so you feel like you can’t even trust your own opinion or thoughts anymore.
Whenever your partner is around, you may find that doing something to please them is your only focus. You may go above and beyond to do things to make them happy, only to always fall short. They may even grow more annoyed with you the more effort you make to try and please them.
This can lead to them growing silent, ignoring you, or blowing up and having a huge tantrum. It can feel like they tend to snap over nothing.
Some of the things they may criticize include your looks, clothes, cooking, job, and quirks.
6. You Can Go Days Without Talking
At some point, your spouse may close themselves off so much that you go days without talking at all. Maybe they come straight home from work to go and play online with their friends. Or they just come home to drop things off before heading back out.
Even if they are just doing things on their own, it feels like they prefer anything over your company. Even when you try to do something they enjoy together, they brush you off or get annoyed.
When you do have to do things together, they are quick to brush you off or leave as soon as they can. They never have time for you because they have already made plans with others or have to do something else.
They may even make up excuses to stay up later so they don’t have to go to bed until after you are already asleep, or they may go to bed first so they can be asleep by the time you join. It can also work in the morning, where they stay asleep until after you leave for work, or they get up and are gone before you wake up.
At some point, you may realize that days have gone by without you saying anything to your partner besides a basic laundry list of tasks that need to be done. You might not have even exchanged standard greetings like ‘good morning’ or ‘how was work?’
7. Physical Intimacy Is Minimal if Present at All
While sex is a big part of physical intimacy, it isn’t the only part. What you do before and after sex, as well as when you two are just spending time together are also all forms of physical intimacy.
When you first got married, you probably couldn’t keep your hands off of each other. You were kissing, hugging, cuddling, and having sex whenever there was an opportunity.
Now, over time, physical intimacy can decrease. However, at some point, if you feel abandoned emotionally you no longer have any physical intimacy. Even if your partner initiates, you may not feel comfortable or relaxed enough to have sex.
You may no longer cuddle while watching movies together but sit far enough apart that it doesn’t even feel like you are watching the movie together. Hugging and kissing pretty much die off as well, and holding hands never happens.
This can be one of the saddest things about emotional abandonment. While you can fill loneliness with other friends and family at least a little, there isn’t anyone you can fill the void with when it comes to light romantic touches.
Maybe they used to wrap their hands around your waist while you cooked and make you laugh. Now, every time you cook in silence while they ignore you, you are reminded of what you are missing.
8. You Feel You Have to Pretend to Be Someone Else Around Your Partner
Many couples have weird things they do together and around each other that they wouldn’t even do with their closest friends. Perhaps they pee with the door open, walk around in just their underwear, or even pick their nose in front of you.
It can be a little gross, but it is often a testament to how open and comfortable they feel around you. You likely do several strange things around your spouse as well.
Or, at least, you used to. As the emotional abandonment grows stronger, you may start closing off. Oftentimes, you no longer feel as comfortable around them. This means that you stop doing a lot of the things you used to without realizing it.
It can get to the point where you feel more uncomfortable in your own home than it does somewhere else. You feel like you have to hide parts of yourself to stop the criticism from your partner.
9. You Tell Other People More About Your Life Than Your Spouse
When you learn something exciting, such as getting a raise, who is the first person you tell? If it isn’t your spouse, then it may be a sign that there is some emotional abandonment going on in your relationship.
Your spouse should always be the first person you want to talk to when good or bad things happen. If you find yourself telling a family member, friend, or even coworker first, you don’t have the strong emotional connection that married couples should have.
There could be various reasons that you don’t tell your spouse anything. It could be that you feel that they won’t care, or maybe they will say something rude and hurtful. Maybe you just no longer find yourself caring about their opinion.
No matter the reason, it is a sign that the emotion you once shared is now gone, and you are using others to fill the void.
