Dear Lori and Jeff,

My wife and I have been married for six years and she recently told me she was seriously thinking about ending the relationship because I was not meeting her emotional needs. I have been trying to figure out what I did wrong as I thought our marriage was going fairly well. We definitely have our moments when we fight and don’t talk to each other for a few days but we always seem to make up and move on. I feel totally shocked by the things she’s said recently and have asked her to give me another chance. What else can I do?

Signed, Blindsided

Dear Blindsided,

Lori and Jeff: You’re describing a catastrophic communication breakdown. The fact that her struggles in the marriage have been utterly unknown to you means that either she has significantly failed in conveying her needs or there has been a substantial block on your side to receiving, understanding and accepting what she has been expressing. Or both.

Lori: If she has any curiosity about whether the marriage could be repaired, the first step is for each of you to have an honest conversation within yourselves about where you may have made missteps. I empathize with your wife feeling at her limit with hurt and frustration, and that felt experience needs to be validated (by you). Simultaneously, she also has to be willing to consider whether she was clear, direct, proactive and grounded when she was communicating with you. What it means to have emotional needs met varies greatly from one person to the next. “Emotional connection” and “emotional intimacy” are incredibly vague terms. We often have a felt sense of when we’re experiencing them, but can struggle to clearly define what exactly creates them. When asking for a partner to meet emotional needs, it’s important to give concrete examples of what it would look like to meet those needs. Has she given you feedback in the moment saying, "This worked for me and this is what I would like more of” or “Next time could you try x instead?”

Communication of needs also has to come from a grounded and proactive stance. Some women have difficulty advocating for themselves. They haven’t yet developed confidence in the skill of asking for what they need, or the belief that it is okay to state their needs. Without this confidence, communication can come out passively or passive aggressively. Or thoughts, feelings and needs can be held in over time until eventually erupting with anger. All three of these interaction styles tend to trigger a protective response in a spouse’s nervous system, making it much more difficult for the spouse to hear and digest the message.    

Jeff: After working with couples for over fifteen years, I can safely say that you are not alone. Many men struggle to fully integrate the messages they get from partners who say their emotional needs aren’t being met or that they want deeper emotional intimacy and connection. Most of us have never been taught or even seen firsthand what emotional intelligence or awareness looks like. But this is no excuse. Things are changing in regard to gender roles (and gender as a whole) and it’s time for men to step up and be willing to learn about emotions. When talking about their lack of understanding of emotions and feelings, I have repeatedly heard this statement from men: “well, that’s just how I’m wired.” Well, no—that’s just how you’ve been socialized. And this conditioning can be reversed. It will need to be if you want a healthy, sustainable relationship, as many women are no longer accepting the traditional roles of men as solely being the stoic protector and provider.

Resist your default tendency to compartmentalize events and “move on” when you think they have been resolved. Clearly, you and your wife have very different perspectives about when something has been reconciled. Each time you decide it has (without checking in with her) and you move on, she builds another layer of resentment that has now become the insurmountable mountain. This may have come as a surprise to you because you have swept things under the rug or buried them deep in a hole. But she has not and her frustrations have probably been building for years. She needs to feel safe and invited to let you know what is and isn’t working for her.

Tell your wife you are willing to work on this in order to save the marriage. It might be through counseling, reading or listening to podcasts but you need to assure her you want to better understand her relational needs and learn how, as a more fully integrated man, to meet them.

Jeff and Lori: It’s not uncommon for one partner to feel content in a marriage, while the other struggles with feeling disconnected, unfulfilled or alone. These challenges arise when partners are overly focused on their own experience and stop being curious about how their spouse is experiencing the relationship. Even if you think you know and understand your spouse's needs and wants today, they are going to change and grow as an individual throughout life. In healthy marriages, both partners accept that their role is to continuously learn how to love each other.