What Causes the Feeling of Loneliness in Marriage?
Stress from Work and Family
One of the most common and primary reasons is the stress placed on spouses from family life or work. When both of you are struggling with a packed schedule, work pressure, and childcare, you might feel like two people fighting their own battles separately. This can cause you to drift apart, ultimately leading to a sense of loneliness.
Stressful Events
Every couple faces various challenges, but some create real trauma in the relationship and cause spouses to grow distant from each other. For example, being laid off from work can be particularly tough and lead to loneliness if you feel your spouse isn’t sympathetic toward you. Even though you’re under heavy stress and need support, you don’t receive it. This leaves a scar that lingers even after the issue is resolved.
Unrealistic Expectations
In some cases, the feeling of loneliness isn’t directly related to your spouse but rather to your personal needs that aren’t being met. For instance, if you don’t have good relationships with friends, you might expect your spouse to fill that role in your life. However, they can’t always do that because it’s not really their job, and this can leave you feeling unsatisfied in the relationship, and consequently lonely.
Trying to Hide Weaknesses
If you try not to appear vulnerable in front of your spouse, you might experience loneliness. What happens is that the person closest to you doesn’t get to know the real you – including your less flattering sides – and as a result, the intimacy between you suffers. If you don’t talk to each other about your feelings, dreams, and fears, it will be very difficult to connect on a deep level.
Comparing to Others
Today, in the age of social media, it’s very easy for us to see how (on the surface) other people’s lives look and compare ourselves to them. As evidence of this, a study conducted in 2017 found that people who spend more time on social media report higher levels of loneliness. If you look at your neighbor’s grass and see that your spouse is “less good” than other people’s, you might feel they’re not meeting your needs, leading to loneliness in your marriage.
What to Do If You Feel Lonely in Marriage?
So what can you do about this feeling of loneliness and how can you alleviate it? Well, once you’ve figured out exactly what caused the loneliness you’re experiencing, you can address it accordingly, and of course, talk to your spouse about the issue and spend more quality time together. But that might not always be enough, so here are a few more things you can do to cope with loneliness in marriage.
1. Share Your Feelings with Your Spouse
First things first, talk to your spouse about how you feel and check if they feel the same way. If both of you feel lonely, it’s likely something you can work on together to reconnect and build a deeper bond. On the other hand, if the loneliness is one-sided, it might be harder to address. If your spouse supports you emotionally but you still feel lonely, it’s probably something within you that you need to work on.
2. Avoid Blaming Each Other
When working with your spouse to overcome relationship issues together, it’s important to avoid blaming each other. This can cause the person who feels attacked to become defensive, which won’t help solve the problem. Instead of pointing out what your spouse isn’t doing (e.g., “You never ask me how my day at work was”), focus on your feelings and needs (e.g., “I feel lonely. It would really help me if you asked about my experiences during the day”).
3. Spend More Time Together
Spending quality time with each other is an important step. You might have struggled to do this lately, or perhaps it’s been a while and you’ve gotten used to not going on dates or spending real quality time together like you used to, but it’s crucial to make time for your relationship and romance. It doesn’t have to be out at a restaurant – it can even be in bed, talking before you go to sleep instead of passively watching TV.
4. Reduce Your Mobile Phone Use
Almost all of us have gotten used to our mobile phones relieving our boredom, but they don’t really help us because they often rob us of opportunities for meaningful and important interactions with our spouse, and even with our entire family. Instead of spending the evening on your phone, dedicate your free time to your spouse. This will also help you stop watching what others are doing in their lives and comparing yourselves to them. Live your own life and focus on those close to you and your relationships with them.
5. Learn Your Spouse’s Love Language
Sometimes the reason for the loneliness we experience comes from us making our spouse feel lonely, which leads to a lack of intimacy and affection in the relationship. One way to overcome this and bring love back into the relationship is to learn your spouse’s love language. You might be trying to put in effort and show love, but not in the right language for them. Conversely, you might not be receiving the love language you need, even though you love your spouse exactly as they want and need.
So click here to learn about the 5 love languages, and you can also click here to find out what your love language is. It’s recommended to have your spouse take this test too so you can know their love language.
6. Seek Couples Counseling If Needed
If nothing helps and you still feel lonely and experience issues in your relationship, consider seeking couples counseling. A good counselor can shed light on things you and your spouse might not be aware of that are causing problems with trust, intimacy, empathy, and communication between you. The therapy itself will help you learn things about yourself you didn’t know, as well as about your spouse, and generally provide you with tools for better communication. All of this together will make you a stronger couple, and by the end of the process, you might feel more connected to each other than you did when you first got married.
In Summary
Loneliness in marriage isn’t rare, but it’s also not something you should endure or accept as is. There are plenty of reasons that cause this feeling, whether it’s your spouse’s fault or your own, and there are just as many ways to address and resolve it. Ultimately, you need to understand what’s causing the loneliness and deal with it, and if you do, you’ll see that things will improve for both you and your spouse.
