You’d have thought that living with a person, day in and day out, would bring you closer to each other, but sometimes that is not the case.
It’s actually not at all unusual for people in long term relationships to experience periods when they feel disconnected from their partner and, sometimes, even begin to feel lonely.
If that sounds something like what you are going through right now, listed below are six ways to overcome lack of connection in your marriage.
1. Take a look at yourself first: It’s oh so easy for both parties in a marriage to blame each other for a lack of connection and do nothing at all about it themselves. The first step to rebuilding the bonds that you used to have is to look at what you might be doing wrong that has made you grow apart.
2. Talk about it constructively: Have you tried talking to your partner about how you feel? You probably haven’t, because communication is usually lost with the connection too. Find a time when you can sit down quietly with your partner and discuss your feelings with him, but avoid turning the conversation into a confrontational blame game. Tell him how you feel, not whose fault you think it is.
3. Listen to him too: This is another important tip on how to make marriage work. If you are going to reconnect, you are going to have to be receptive to what he has to say too, and some of that might be quite painful. Pay full attention to what he says and try to understand his point of view. If you lead by example, hopefully he will take on board what you have to say too.
4. Talk about everything: After you have both been at work all day long, it’s quite easy to fall into a routine of eating a meal, switching on the TV and then both of you simply switching off from one another for the rest of the evening. Talking about what has happened in your day is an important part of being connected, so update each other and talk about what is going on in your lives outside of the relationship.
5. Don’t just accept the status quo: You don’t have to accept that you have lost the connection, it can be regained. When you become disconnected from your partner, that disconnection can kind of feed on itself and, unless you both do something about it, it will only get worse. Apathy in a marriage is dangerous, so don’t accept the status quo, work at fixing the problems that exist and work on it together.
6. Open the door for meaningful conversations: If you are going to reconnect, you are both going to have to be honest with each other and have meaningful conversations. Let your partner know that he can come to you with his problems and he can open up to you. Encourage him to talk more and don’t shy away from the tricky topics.
