How to reconnect with your spouse

Are you dealing with an unavailable partner? While distance can be a relationship red flag, it doesn't have to mean that the state of your union is shaky. Here, Harriet Lerner, Ph.D., relationship expert and bestselling author of Marriage Rules: A Manual For the Married and Coupled Up, offers 10 simple steps to reconnection, guaranteed to bring you closer.

Respect differences

When stress is high your partner may crave emotional and physical space. He may manage his anxiety by intensifying work-related projects or withdrawing into technology or sports. Your way of navigating stress, however, may be to press for more togetherness. His way is not necessarily better or worse than yours — just different.

While it's ideal to strike a balance between separateness and togetherness that works well for your spouse and yourself, we all have different needs for space and closeness at different times. Marriage requires a profound respect for differences. The lesson? Try not to judge the distancer.

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Don't take it personally

You may be married to a private guy who doesn't want to debrief after every dinner party or talk in detail about the symptoms of his stomach flu. If you can see your partner's need for privacy and space less personally, you'll be able to calmly invite more connection, rather than anxiously or angrily demanding it.

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Call off the pursuit

When we're upset by a partner's unavailability, we may go into "pursuit mode," which only makes the problem worse. If you chase a distancer, he will distance more. Consider it a law of physics. Under stress, don't press.

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Lower your intensity

Getting out of pursuit mode may mean turning down your level of intensity, which includes loud, fast-paced speech, interrupting, over-talking and offering help or giving advice that isn't asked for. It's not that anything is wrong with you or your personality. It's simply that many distancers are viscerally opposed to intensity. Sometimes, the sheer number of sentences or even the edge in our voice can drive them away.

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Give him space

If you're in the habit of hovering or giving advice when he's preparing dinner, folding laundry or putting the kids to sleep, go to a different room where you can't observe what he's doing. Don't text or call him unless you need to. Remember that distancers open up most freely when they aren't being pursued or criticized by their partners.

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Make a date, not a diagnosis

When you want more connection, suggest an activity ("I hear there's a new Italian restaurant: Do you want to check it out this week?"). Refrain from diagnosing your partner ("I feel like you've shut down"), or the marriage ("We don't really communicate anymore”"). Instead of talking about how you don't talk, just try talking.

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Pursue your goals, not your partner

Shift the focus from your partner to the direction of your own life. What talents or hobbies do you want to develop? What are your work goals? Do you want to make new friends or spend more time with old ones? Are you exercising, eating well and taking good care of yourself? What sort of home do you want to create? Focusing on you is the best antidote to getting overly focused on a distant partner.

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Try out a new you

If you know you're going to be pressing your partner for conversation if you stay home, go out with a friend. If you're at the movies and you feel angry that he's not taking your hand, talk only about the film when you leave the theater, not about your hurt feelings. Get creative about lowering the intensity between you and your partner, even if it's the last thing you feel like doing.

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Warm his heart

Calling off the pursuit doesn't mean distancing yourself or going into a cold withdrawal. Do the special things that you know will make him feel valued. Praise the specifics ("You were so funny at the party last night"), and dial down the criticism.

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Know when distance signals trouble

If you've been following the previous rules for three months and your partner’s distance still feels problematic, don’t stick your head in the sand: Speak up about your concerns and keep the conversation going over time. If nothing changes, get help. If your partner doesn’t want to join you in therapy or counseling, go by yourself. Rather than staying on automatic pilot (that is, doing what you do naturally), be the one to change first.

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1Comment

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Anonymous was a woman.

Apr 21, 2013 1:51AM

This advice is all well and good, but how about something more timely, more serious? There are thousands of young wives out there who have had to separate from their men for 9 months to a year, repeatedly. Before they leave on deployment, the various branches of service conduct seminars for the couples. But they are crowded, impersonal and all too brief for what they will face. Upon their return there is no "safety net", no support system. These devoted young couples must part at a time in their relationship when they are at the height of romance, at their most vulnerable. When they are reunited, they often face a virtual stranger. I grew up (proudly, an Army Brat!), watching my Mother and countless other women suffer through this. True, some wives handle deployment better than others. Many who don't are surprised by their own reaction. I know this is nothing new in the history of the Armed Forces and other countries have certainly seen worse, but as the old saying goes, "No pain is as bad as your own." If we want better soldiers and sailors we have to address this problem before it gets out of control. After all, these young service members are sacrificing enormously. Don't they deserve our support in the way of "domestic tranquility"? I, for one, think that's the least we can do.