The Emotionally Distant Spouse
The emotionally distant spouse is a person who can be a source of significant unhappiness, stress and conflict in marriages and families. Frequently couples do not seek counseling for this serious marital difficulty. They may even separate because of the failure to honestly discuss and address this weakness in self-giving. Fortunately, the uncovering and work on this conflict can lead to a strengthenig of the romantic aspect of the marriage, marital friendship and betrothed love including sexual intimacy, particularly if there is a spiritual component to the healing process.
The two most common causes of emotionally distant marital behaviors in our experience are, first, the result of men modeling after fathers who had this conflict and, second, the result of spouses whose ability to trust was deeply wounded by the trauma of their parents' divorce. Those men who modeled after distant fathers and spouses whose parents divorced often have great difficulty in receiving love.
Although some spouses gave freely of themselves during the early years of their marriage, under the influence of numerous types of stress, the emotional wounds of mistrust from childhood and adolescence emerge. These can lead them to pull away or criticize in an unconscious attempt to distance themselves from husbands or wives. Other important factors which can lead a spouse to withdraw love and self-giving are various hurts over the years of the marriage which lead to the development of a fear of vulnerability, mistrust, anger and sadness. Finally, these behaviors can be due to a giving into the pervasive selfishness in the culture and a major contributing factor in such individuals can be the use of oral contraceptives.
Case studies will be presented from the textbook, Helping Clients Forgive: An Empirical Guide for Resolving Anger and Restoring Hope, R. Enright & R. Fitzgibbons, American Psychological Association Books, 2000. These should help you come to a deeper understanding of the process of healing the pain in the emotionally distant spouse. You will be asked to complete a checklist which evaluates marital self-giving in both your spouse and in yourself. Then, cognitive, emotional and behavioral recommendations and growth in specific virtues (Positive Psychology) will be offered which have helped others in the healing and strengthening of marriages.
Please evaluate your self-giving in your marriage and that of your spouse on the checklist below. Then try to identify common causes of this weaknesses in your spouse and in yourself.
Marital Self-Giving Checklist
Please answer the following questions by identifying the appropriate number using this scale on the following checklist. Choose the item which describes your feelings most accurately.
0 - Never | 1 - Very Little | 2 - Moderately Often | 3 - Very Often
Common Causes of Emotionally Distancing Behaviors
Now please try to identify items on the list below which might apply to you or to your spouse.
Childhood/Adolescent Life
- Controlling or critical parent
- Alcoholic parent
- Abusive or selfish parent
- Parental fighting
- Selfishness
- Parental abandonment
- Separation or Divorce
- Loss of a parent or sibling
- Multiple moves
- Legacy of mistrust in the family
- Cold, distant, unaffectionate parents
- Abusive sibling or peers
- Excessive sense of responsibility for others in the home
- Poor body image/lack of confidence
- Poverty
- Betrayal in friendships
Adult Life
- Modeling after a distant parent
- Emotional trauma in the marriage
- Unjust treatment by bosses or coworkers
- Placing work, sports or friendships ahead of one’s spouse
- Unresolved anger or sadness
- Financial worries/setbacks
- Loss of job
- Loss of health
- Excessive sense of responsibility
- Exhaustion from work or from giving in the home
- Lack of balance in life
- Inability to trust employer
- Weak spiritual life
- Selfishness
- Inability to let go of burdens
- Inability to accept crosses and contradictions
- Use of artificial contraceptives
- Abortion
Marital Communication
An important aspect of martial self-giving is communication to a spouse which is essential to maintaining and strengthening the marital friendship. Please rate yourself and your spouse by choosing the appropriate option on the marital communication scale below.
Examples of Healing
Now we will move onto some examples of the healing of the anger and emotional pain associated with the emotionally distant spouse from Helping Clients Forgive: An Empirical Guide for Resolving Anger and Restoring Hope.
The Distant Husband
Helen came into treatment for depression, which she believed was the result of severe marital loneliness. Her husband, Mike, loved her but was not physically affectionate and rarely told her that he cared for her. Also, she grew up in a home in which she felt little affection from either parent. Her depression resulted in chronic fatigue and she began to neglect her children and home. In an attempt to escape from her loneliness, she met a man on the internet and considered having an affair with him. As a result, Helen felt very guilty and became even more motivated in her attempts to improve her marriage.
In the marital sessions, Mike stated that he had justifiable anger with his wife for acting in an irresponsible manner regarding the care of the home and children. Her behavior was interpreted, in part, as a manifestation of depression and of passive-aggressive anger toward him.
Initially Mike was quite resistant in examining his own weaknesses from his family of origin. He was loyal to his father, whom he viewed as an excellent role model in most ways and it took several months before he could admit that when he was young, he wished often that his father had been more affectionate and affirming. Slowly, he came to understand his wife's needs and the fact that he had difficulty in being sensitive to her as a result of modeling after a father who was markedly limited in the communication of love. The uncovering of Mikes childhood and adolescent anger with his father was a lengthy process.
When he understood that his unconscious anger with his father was an important factor that interfered with his ability to love his wife, Mike tried forgiveness exercises in order to improve their marriage. He was given a written cognitive forgiveness exercise on which he was asked to picture himself as a child and as a teenager and think, "Dad I want to try to understand you and to forgive you for not giving more affection, praise and warmth to Mom and me." Then he was asked to imagine communicating to his father, "I want to model after your good qualities, but not your weaknesses. I don't want to be emotionally distant like you." Mike came to realize that his father’s style of relating was the result of modeling after Mike’s grandfather and that he had not meant to hurt his family.
As Mike worked at forgiving his father and committing himself to act differently, he actually began to feel freer from the weakness which he had acquired from him. Slowly, he grew in his ability to communicate to Helen and during this process, he was able to apologize to her and express remorse for the ways in which he had hurt her by his aloofness.
Helen, at the same time, was struggling with her anger and tried daily to understand and to forgive him for being distant. She did not want to continue to vent anger at him in passive-aggressive ways. After forgiveness was explained as a method for letting go of her anger which would help in the healing of her marriage, she agreed to try it. Initially, she employed cognitive forgiveness exercises in which she did not truly feel like forgiving him. As her understanding of Mike's family conflicts grew and as she saw him work to change his behavior, she felt much more compassion and was able to genuinely want to forgive.
Helen also came to recognize that she had been overreacting in anger at Mike as a result of her failure to resolve her childhood and adolescent anger with her emotionally distant father. Helen's father had lost his own father when he was three years old and had grown up in foster homes. Helen was asked to try to understand and to forgive her father. In the process of using past forgiveness exercises she imagined herself as a child and teenager thinking, "Dad, I want to try to understand and to forgive you for being so emotionally distant." The resolution of Helen’s anger with her father and with Mike for past hurts diminished her resentment and as her anger decreased, her husband then felt safer with her.
The resolution of the anger associated with the conflicts in Mike and Helen’s relationship took several years of treatment. The psychotherapeutic use of forgiveness was employed successfully with each partner and led to a marked improvement in their martial relationship.
In the deepening phase of the forgiveness process, each came to a greater understanding of their partner and their trust in each other grew. Each realized that their spouse did not deliberately want to inflict hurt, but had acted out of unresolved emotional conflicts from the family of origin. They also grew in a greater sensitivity to their own weaknesses which had created tensions earlier in their married life. They were more hopeful as a result of a greater confidence in their ability to resolve marital conflicts in a more peaceful and positive manner. Finally, forgiveness became an important tool in protecting their communication and their marital love.
The resistance in many men in facing their issues with their fathers can be formidable. Unlike Mike, a number of men steadfastly refuse to examine the influence of their own father’s relationship upon them and their marriages. Uncovering father anger in these men can be facilitated if the therapist shares how he or she worked to break through the denial in order to understand and forgive a parent or significant other.
The Distant Wife
Walter, a thirty-five-year-old man, entered therapy for the treatment of severe depression and it required the use of several antidepressants to restore his sleep and cognitive abilities. The history disclosed that he had been extremely lonely in his marriage. Walter complained that his wife was acting more and more like her unaffectionate mother. He was conflicted because he still loved his wife and feared that a divorce would severely harm their two young children.
His wife, Susan, thought the marriage had deteriorated after the birth of their oldest child nine years earlier. She believed she had developed a postpartum depression at that time, but it had gone untreated. Susan, too, was upset about the emotional distance in the marriage. She admitted that she had great difficulty in feeling good about herself and in offering emotional support to Walter. However, she also believed that his anger kept her at a distance.
Susan had a good deal of insight and was aware that she had unresolved conflicts with her critical and cold mother and was highly motivated to resolve them. She believed that her mother had never been emotionally supportive of her and never would be. When asked what she had done with her anger with her mother, she related, I tried to bury it as deeply as possible within. However, she intuitively knew that this denial did not free her from the anger or the sadness associated with it.
Each spouse recognized inner excessive anger and was motivated to overcome it. After forgiveness was explained to them, they demonstrated no resistance in making a decision to employ it in their marriage. Then a forgiveness assignment was given to each of them. Walter was asked to try to think of being patient with his wife and of forgiving her for the weaknesses which she had acquired from her mother. Susan was requested to employ past forgiveness exercises for her anger with her mother. She would reflect daily that she wanted to both understand and forgive her mother.
Since her mother was such a controlling and difficult woman, Susan did not want to involve her in the work phase of the forgiveness process. Instead, psychodrama techniques were used in which Susan would visualize her mother seated in a chair and relate to her, "Mom, I've hated your insensitive and controlling manner of treating me from the time I was a little girl. I can't express fully how much you have disappointed me as a mother. I don't want to act like you. I want to let go of my anger with you." Then, even though she did not feel like doing so, she would try to think that she wanted to forgive her. This work phase of forgiveness was very difficult for Susan. She related, "This is the most difficult thing I've had to do in my life, but I know I have to let go of my anger with her if I want a good marriage." She was able to move ahead in the work of forgiveness, in part, because she came to view her mother as an emotionally sick woman.
In Walter’s work phase of the forgiveness process, anger emerged with his father who kept everyone at arm’s length. Walter came to realize that at times he may have overreacted to his wife’s distancing because of similar pain he had felt as a boy and as a teenager with his own father. In marital healing it is helpful to ask each partner to work to resolve anger with the parent who had disappointed them the most. Also, in this phase each partner was asked to seek forgiveness from their partner and to promise to improve their behavior. Susan related, "Walt, please forgive me for acting like my mother and for overreacting in anger." After granting forgiveness, Walter asked, "Please forgive me for being short tempered and for misdirecting anger at you which was meant for my father."
Slowly the anger diminished in this marriage. However, Walter told Susan, "I’m afraid of trusting again because I'm afraid you’re going to pull away again and put up walls." It took many months before he felt comfortable being vulnerable to her. However, as he saw her becoming warmer and more giving, Walter felt more comfortable in being vulnerable. Susan grew in her ability to communicate love and affection as she resolved her anger with her mother and as she committed herself to act in a very different manner than her mother. Fortunately, she was able to identify a loving aunt as a healthy role model for emotional giving and tried each day to model after her. Susan had great difficulty in absorbing the years of pain with her mother, but the rediscovered relationship with her aunt was very comforting.
Cognitive and Behavioral Interventions
The process of change from being distant to being more emotionally giving and receiving takes a significant amount of time and effort. Since the most common cause of this conflict is the result of modeling after a distant parent, important initial progress occurs when the person thinks daily that he wants to repeat the good qualities of a distant parent, but not the parent's weaknesses
Many spouses are helping by developing more by developing more positive thinking patterns and specially bringing to mind that they spouse is trustworthy and needs warmth, affection and praise. Also, thinking that one’s spouse is one’s best friend, that one is safe in the relationship and committing oneself to daily strengthen the friendship are helpful. The distant spouse can work on trying to:
- make a commitment daily to make one’s spouse happy
- receive communication, warmth and advice
- think of positive daily life experiences to share
- identify areas of common interest
- be cheerful and positive
- work on the romantic aspect of the relationship
- think that love is deeds
- praise and compliment
- void expressing anger by using immediate forgiveness exercises
- ask for forgiveness for hurts
- be physically close to spouse in the evening
- relax with each other after dinner
- go to bed at the same time
- vacation together
- be patient and understanding
- let go of an excessive sense of responsibility
- avoid one word answers
- avoid being negative/sarcastic
- communicate all important issues in one’s life to spouse
The Role of Virtues in Strengthening Marital Friendship
Growth in virtues strengthens the character or personality and facilitates self-giving in the romantic, friendship and intimate aspects of marriage. Pope John Paul II wrote in his first encyclical, The Redeemer of Man, "To be sincere gift of themselves human persons must possess a full freedom which comes only from mastery of oneself." The virtues enable us to gain greater mastery over ourselves.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 1803, states, "A virtue is a habitual and firm disposition to do the good. It allows the person not only to perform good acts, but to give the best of himself. The virtuous person tends toward the good with all his sensory and spiritual powers; he pursues the good and chooses it in a concrete way. The goal of the virtuous life is to become like God."
Please rate the frequency with which you see the following virtues in your spouse and in yourself using the scale below:
0 - Never | 1 - Very Little | 2 - Moderately Often | 3 - Very Often
Our clinical experience has been that a commitment to work on growth in the virtues of trust, forgiveness and faith are particularly effective for healing in the distant spouse.
The Role of Faith
The role of faith and prayers have been demonstrated to be beneficial in physical and in emotional healing. For example, Dr. Herbert Benson has demonstrated the beneficial effects of meditation on one’s cardiovascular health and has written extensively on the role of faith in healing (see www.mbmi.org).
John Paul II's description of marital self-giving to romantic love, friendship and betrothed love in marriage from his book, Love and Responsibility, can assist couples in understanding their most important calling in the sacrament of marriage to truly love and give to their spouses as Christ loved and gave himself to the Church. I recommend that you visit that chapter on our site.
We have found for Catholics that prayers and sacraments can be highly effective in strengthening marital self-giving and in resolving conflicts which lead spouses to be emotionally distant. For those with childhood and teenage wounds of mistrust and fear meditating upon Mary as a protective other mother or St. Joseph as another protective father can very effective. Also, the sacrament of reconciliation can assist in resolving parental or spousal anger, which imprisons one in mistrust. Some spouses report that receiving the Eucharist on a regular basis helps unburden and strengthen them in their marriages. Others meditate on asking the Lord to deepen their safe feeling with their spouse which is essential to self-giving.
Couples also report that they are helped in their giving to each other and their children by saying a rosary together daily and by asking the Lord to free them from modeling after a distant parent. Finally, spouses relate benefits from asking the Holy Spirit to help them to become one with their spouses in every aspect of their marriage.
The Other Spouse and the Role of Faith
The person who struggles with an emotionally distant spouse regularly experiences a number of stressful emotions including loneliness and sadness, anger, anxiety, conflicts with confidence. An awareness that this difficulty can be healed can bring hope.
These spouses are helped by trying daily to understand the causes of this conflict in their spouse and to try to forgive him/her. Prayers for healing of the spouse’s weakness can bring hope, wisdom and courage. When the origin of this weakness becomes clear, it is advisable to discuss the reasons one believe he or she is emotionally distant. Many spouses fear being honest for numerous reasons. They may fear an angry response, may believe the marriage might end if this serious conflict is faced or lack the confidence to be honest. A major weakness here which blocks honesty about marital conflict is that of not trusting the Lord enough with the marriage.
When spouses are struggling to be honest I sometimes quote the writing of St. Josemaria Escriva, "You never want to get to the heart of the matter. Sometimes, through politeness. Other times, most times, through fear of hurting yourself. Sometimes again, through fear of hurting others. And, always, through fear!" (The Way 33). If a spouse gives the marriage to the Lord many times daily, he or she will not be fearful, but rather have a sense of trust and protection which facilitate honesty.
Husbands and wives are asked to express their desire for a closer relationship and to ask the spouse to try to be more emotionally giving. If their spouse has a spiritual life, they may request that he/she ask the Lord to heal their conflicts and to help them to be more emotionally giving love. Also, one can ask if one can make any changes to improve closeness in the relationship. During this healing process the giving spouse can find comfort meditating on in the Lord’s steadfast love and in prayer for the healing of this weakness in their marriage.
Finally, the person married to an emotionally distant spouse can suffer from what amounts to a type of post traumatic stress disorder. They are troubled by recurrent memories of the past when their spouse hurt them deeply by insensitive and cold behaviors. These memories can lead to a significant fear of trying to work on the marriage and of being hurt again. A certain purification of the memory can occur through understanding and forgiving the distant spouse and through giving the painful memories of the past to the Lord. Many report that their fears of betrayal diminish by meditating many times daily, "Lord help me to feel safe and protected in my marital relationship." Finally, growth in the virtues of faith, hope and love can strengthen this spouse to pursue God’s will for marital healing.