Do You Feel Neglected In Your Marriage?
In some marriages, one or both partners may begin to feel neglected by the other. Feeling neglected by a husband or wife doesn’t mean he or she is failing to do their duty or is being intentionally difficult. It can mean feeling as if your spouse doesn’t care anymore what you are thinking or feeling. For example, your spouse never answers your questions about things that you know must be bothering them at work. When a spouse stops communicating and sharing their innermost feelings, or doesn’t include you in activities, you begin to feel as if the person is excluding you from their life. This can be emotionally painful and difficult to handle.
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One of the most frequent causes of a spouse feeling neglected is when two people begin to go separate ways. The marriage is intact and there is no intention of divorcing, but each has their own schedule and it doesn’t include the other spouse most of the time. People who are married need to have their own interests, but it can be taken too far one way also.
There are plenty of reasons why married couples can begin to develop separate schedules. For example, a working spouse may have many work commitments that require attendance on weekends or evenings in addition to the regular schedule. The spouse who cares for the children often has a full calendar of events and commitments requiring at least one parent’s attendance. Normally the same parent takes responsibility for being at the kids events on a regular basis.
Other activities which can separate couples include sports participation, going out with his or her friends too often and volunteer work. The more people do separately, the wider the channel between them grows. This can lead to feelings of neglect for two reasons. First, most of the time communication will decline. Second, the spouse most often left out of events will feel excluded and even unwanted.
Lack of Affection
There can be many different things going on in a marriage that can make a spouse feel neglected. One of the most obvious is when there is little touching, affection or infrequent sexual relations. People like being kissed and hugged and treated tenderly. When the signs of affection that were once displayed regularly are now few and far between, it can make a person feel neglected and unloved.
A spouse who feels neglected may also claim that the couple doesn’t have fun together anymore. With separate calendars, it’s hard to come together and enjoy quality time as a married couple. A spouse who works a lot of overtime often has a married partner at home who is wishing they could find just a little time to spend together.
Sometimes when a husband or wife claims they are feeling neglected, it can seem as if a mountain is being made out of a mole hill. The neglected person is feeling badly about the relationship. The other spouse is just doing the various things he or she enjoys doing or feels is necessary to do. So the first thing you have to do is talk about the issue without sounding critical or childish.
Keeping good communication going in a marriage is crucial to its longevity. If you think your spouse is working too much then you should discuss your feelings with them. But you don’t want to start pushing blame onto them for all the marriage woes or for your feelings. A discussion should be two-way which means you give each other a chance to explore emotions, feelings and facts without recriminations.
To avoid one spouse feeling neglected, there should always be joint activities on the calendar for the husband and wife. You have to have time together in order to nurture the relationship. Living separately emotionally even while married physically is not good for the marriage. It is always important to take time out of busy schedules to do things together.
A spouse can feel neglected in a marriage for a number of reasons. Often the neglect is not intentional. It evolves over time as people simply try to handle day to day living as best as possible. But a marriage takes a conscious desire and plenty of effort to keep communication lines open while reserving time for joint activities.
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Hi my name is toni and I love my husband,but I feel very neglected by him. By the time he gets through with his life schedule he doesnt seem to be to concerned about me. I feel taken for granted. When I try to talk to him and tell him how I feel, it just turns into me trying to tell him what to do. When all I am trying to say is I am lonely and I need you. Why dont you give me a little more of your attention and not just for sex. OH ya I really believe he loves me. He begged me to marry him and I finally said ok after 9 yrs.
Hi Toni,
Many men show their love with sex. If he feels like you have a problem with him, then by making love to you he may feel like he is ‘fixing’ the problem. You on the other hand feel as if that is all he wants.
To gain the attention you desire, instead of ‘telling’ him ’show’ him.
When he comes home instead of feeling down about his lack of interest, make it exciting for him to spend time with you. Make him want to come home and not ignore you.
Have nice music playing, put candles on the table for dinner.
Make life spontaneous, so he doesn’t feel like he has to put a ‘band-aid’ on the relationship.
It’s an unfortunate fact of life that when one feels neglected, the other cannot see or understand what the problem is. Women like to talk and explain a situation, whereas men want to fix the problem. If they can’t see a problem, they can’t fix it.
I do feel neglected, my girl and i work on the same day at the same time, we have a good portion of the week together, but with constant interruptions during the day we only get nights together, but as the day comes to a trickle she completely immerses herself into school work on her computer only taking breaks to smoke, and that’s not often. she puts on sound canceling headphones, by the time she’s done i am asleep, i don’t really get to hug her, kiss her to much anymore, and our sex life came almost to a halt aside from three weeks ago. I don’t know what to do, I feel like i am at the end of my rope. I am very shy and unable to really hold a quite conversation.
Hi Jason,
Firstly, please do not be concerned about your shyness. Your lady met you and was attracted to you, shy or not, but there are so many questions I want to ask you regarding this.
For example, are you shy or do you mean you lack assertiveness in your relationship? These are two separate issues.
What were some of the things you enjoyed doing together when you first met? Do you still take time doing those things or has she totally immersed herself into her work?
If she is truly busy, make a plan (to fit her schedule) and do something special, if you know you can be spontaneous, do it! Take the lead role and whisk her off her feet!
I am unfortunately shy and lack assertiveness (particularly in a situation like this where she’s trying to better herself). But I hunkered down and dropped a huge “I am upset, and i am waiting for ask why.” hint. She asked and we talked, which is what i wanted, apparently as I getting upset I made her feel as though i wanted her fail, which i would never wish upon her, as we talked we kinda came to unspoken compromise as we conveyed how we felt, I said I will be more conscious of my attitude and try to make her feel more support in her efforts, and in turn at times we can really sit there and go over what she learned and not so much talk about our day, but just really hang out. I don’t ask for sex often and she doesn’t really offer to often so it works out on that aspect.
I want to congratulate you on taking positive steps. I truly hope things move in the direction you wish. A key component of relationship dynamics, which is too often overlooked, is that the only person that anyone has the ability or the right to change is themselves. Whilst frank and open communication is essential, the aim of dialogue should not be to “change” the other, it should be to listen to their beliefs, needs, etc and to express yours.
Then the most important step is to work on oneself. This does not necessarily mean simply changing your own behaviors to comply with anothers wishes, especially if you deem them inappropriate. Take time for self assessment, look within, acknowledge faults and take a path to self improvement based on whatever you believe that improvement to be.
The person you are becoming comes about by your thoughts and actions today. Be happy and positive in your outlook. Make the person you are becoming, one who that special person would truly want to be with.
Thank you very much, I congratulated her earlier she gt 2 perfect scores on subjects she didn’t know to much about, I would have given her a hug but she hurt her ankle and i am a bit clumsy, but I am happy that I have managed to really tell her how i feel, now only if we can stop debating over technicalities, which we both do, we are both considered geniuses (well, i say i am no smarter than an average person, IQ is just a number) but she likes to show it off, I just have a habit of correcting, and getting hung up on the technical……. sorry sidetracked, but i really do hope we can maintain the line of communication here, I am happier than i have ever been with anyone else, and like all great things i want it to last.
Hi Jason,
Just so you don’t feel so alone, I am disclosing some of my own personal experience. In my own marriage (which everyone, including my husband and I, believe to be a perfect, loving relationship), we still have to confront the same issues you have described.
My husband and I are perfectionists and one of my husbands self admitted faults is a compulsion to correct inaccuracies expressed by others. He does not intend to be destructive but feels that if he does not correct spoken errors that he is somehow tacitly agreeing with them. Then hours later he regrets having corrected (me or others) and realizes that had he let the moment pass with a smile and a nod the only thing different would have been less friction. I can accept it now as I know he does not mean to hurt me, but in the early days, it hurt me badly.
He too is a genius (and although I am not, I was always a straight A student), so in the beginning of our relationship, we both thought we had to be right!
We now, spend 24 hours a day with each other, 7 days a week, because we couldn’t bear being apart, so found a business we could do together. Other people find this ‘weird’ because being with their partners is not exciting.
The only reason I am telling you this, is because you have described us! He is also shy, but I find very attractive!
You Jason, have found a woman, that will meet your intellectual needs, which will take you into your senior years. So often people do not have that.
Good luck, you both have the beginnings of a very beautiful relationship!
First i would like to say sorry for the delayed response, busy, busy, busy. But it’s funny because I feel the need to correct spoken errors too. Oh so many times I wish I had kept my mouth shut too. I am hoping that she’ll take me into my senior years with her, see, I’m 20, she’s 27 and we get along great even with the short age difference (except in music, we sometimes listen to the same stuff, but she listens to older stuff than I) and I know I am young but out of every relationship I have ever been in, I feel different with her. I would say it’s Love but I don’t know what that feels like. I say “I love you” to her and I mean it. I feel pretty good about us, and I enjoy her presence very much…. oh and another coincidence, My girl and I work together too. same company, at the same time, same place, she’s just a little bit further away from my “station” i guess one could call it. but at the end of the day we both physically hurt, worn out, cramping up, and falling asleep. It’s weird how much my relationship coincides with yours
LOL.
Hi Jason!
I was actually telling my husband about you and we both hoped you had a very Happy New Year!
I understand what you mean by “I say I love you, but I don’t know what that feels like.” Many people never know if they have experienced love.
You are young but have the intelligence to step outside the square. If you can feel what the other feels and say to yourself, ‘how would they like to be treated right now, would they like to be alone, would they like to be hugged, do they want a friend or do they want a lover?’ then you are a thousand times ahead of the average person.
You are far more mature than your age suggests and I think your lady already sees that. Be happy knowing that it is a new love, it will keep growing everyday, where you cannot bear to be apart. Communication is important. Never close the door to that.
Our relationship is very parallel with yours, except we are almost the same age and we work from home…we did that because my husband didn’t want anyone else telling me what to do!
I did have a good new years, how was yours. Yeah we’ve been doing much better than before with communication going. I help her on math and whatever else, if i can’t come up with a definitive answer then I google it. But I still have a few kinks to work out of myself, and they’re getting ironed out my girl says i’m “in training” but it’s more of a joke, she asks if certain things are okay (Like going over to her best friends house whose husband enjoys threesomes and is always aroused), and I ask too, and either of us say that we’re not comfy with it then something else is worked out. I am very happy with her and I do hope it lasts. I hope you had good things to say about me to your husband
I am not sure if I can but when you respond is it possible for me to send you my email or something, this conversation is really nice.
LOL I’m really enjoying this too! I do have your email, but I am going to ask you if we can continue on my blog. I have a very selfish reason
First of all, I do feel like we are able to communicate easily and I know many people want to ask the questions you already have.
Sometimes it is easier for us all to relate to a ‘real’ person rather than just words in a book or on a blog. I myself would prefer to share what we talk about anywhere on my blog. You can pick any spot you like, it doesn’t matter.
I personally am interested in how it all goes for you and I am sure others reading this will be too!
If others can benefit from your insights then I am truly happy. Please don’t think in any way that I am limiting our contact or conversation, I hope that we can continue to converse as often as suits you…daily if you like! Don’t ever think you are contacting me too much!
Oh, and my husband empathizes with you, in a “been there done that” kind of way…it was just a little longer ago!
For anyone interested….Communication In All Relationships