I Get Mad At My Husband Who Won’t Spend Time With Me

Do you ever get the feeling that your husband is avoiding you?

Does he duck into the living room when you come into the kitchen?  Is he acting like he really does not want to get cornered by you for fear that you will be making some kind of demand on him?

I bet if your husband is treating you this way,  you feel slighted and are somewhat angry that you are getting shortchanged.  After all, a couple ceases to be a real couple when they rarely find time to be together to talk and enjoy each other’s company.

This problem of a wife fighting to get her absentee husband to spend more time with her is not unique.

But what is driving your husband to pull away like this?

Are you married to a guy who acts like he would rather be somewhere else rather than with you, by your side and in your company?

Let’s say you take him up into your arms to show some loving affection and he pulls away.  Perhaps it is not obvious. But you notice he just doesn’t want to display much affection and when you initiate it, it feels like he is rejecting you.

Perhaps it is all very subtle.  Perhaps you are thinking it is just all in your mind.

Maybe it is.

Then again a wife can usually tell when something is up with their husband

When he pulls away from you, does this cause you to get confused or resentful with your husband’s actions?  Is something going on with him emotionally?

Or let’s say you start up a conversation and instead of listening carefully and participating, he mumbles something and wanders off.  Does this make you feel underappreciated because he is simply not engaged?

Do you become frustrated with your husband’s lack of commitment?  Do you feel your emotional needs are being ignored as he seems incapable of even trying to get involved in your life, despite your many efforts?

To that point, I wrote a post that focuses on emotional needs which you can read about here….

https://marriagerecovery.com/my-husband-does-not-satisfy-my-emotional-needs/

Being married to a guy who doesn’t seem to want anything to do with you can make you feel a lot of different things.

It can be a little frightening when you start to seriously wonder if your husband still loves you or thinks of you in the same way.  Why else would he be ignoring you, you might think.

It can be quite unfulfilling when your husband is not there for you to share in your success or provide you a much needed shoulder to cry on.

What is it that causes some men to shy away from the woman who loves him most?

Why do some husband too often avoid intimate conversations or even casual conversations with their wife?

Is he hiding something?

Why Does My Husband Treat Me So Badly

Is the husband disinterested in his wife and this is his way of telling her that he doesn’t want to be around her….that he doesn’t feel the same way about her?

Is he going through some kind of emotional thing and just needs time to work it out?

Let’s hear from some of my clients about what happened to them.

Look Chris, I really have had enough.  My husband never makes time for me and  when we are together it’s usually only after I begged him to do something with me.  It shouldn’t be this way. What is going on inside him.  He won’t open up. I can’t figure out why he withdraws into his own world so much.

You talk about how spending alone time together as a couple is supposed to cement the marriage. I have news for you.  My husband seldom wants to do anything with me and when I complain he just ignores me even more. I can understand my husband not wanting to spend time with my family, but I feel like the woman he  cast aside. It’s like I am not worthy of him. My self-worth is down in the dumps.  When you feel less important to the man you love, it just gnaws on you. Any suggestions?

What are you to do when your husband would rather be with his friends? How are you suppose to cope when your husband doesn’t respect you and just goes about his day with little concern about what is going on your life.  That is where we stand right now. I am like his forgotten wife.  We argue about this and he says I am too needy and want everything my way.  Am I asking too much to just want to do something special with him?  He keeps saying nothing is wrong and he loves me, but I am not feeling it.

My marriage is a mess.  My husband doesn’t want to be around me and acts like nothing is wrong. I know things are off.  It feels helpless. Lately he has gone to sleeping in our guest bedroom, saying that he doesn’t want his snoring to bother me. I made the mistake of complaining about it and now I think he is using it as an excuse to free himself up from me. What can I do?  Is it in my head? I know I am thinking too much about it now, but I feel him slipping away.

There is no joy in these women’s hearts.  When you feel your husband is moving away from you emotionally and seems in denial, it can make fixing the problem challenging.   When you find yourself constantly wondering about what to do and why your husband ignores you all the time, things are clearly not right at the old homestead.

The most frightening thing for most of these women is the thought that their husband may not love them anymore.

Let me just say, that is a big leap.  So try to avoid going there.

How would you even know for sure about such a thing?   It is unthinkable to even consider if your husband has stopped loving you.  You can literally tie yourself up in emotional knots obsessing over such a thing.

Has My Husband Stopped Loving Me

Is such a thing even possible?  Can your husband’s love for you just evaporate?

And is this how it happens?

He just slowly pulls away, largely ignoring your very presence?

Honesty, “love lost” is rarely the cause of what we are talking about here in this post.

Love just doesn’t jump up and run out of your hearts.  But there are several things that could be going on.

The Top 10 Reasons For Why Your Husband Doesn’t Want To Be Around You Anymore

1.  It is possible one of the reasons your husband has been shying away from you is his sexual appetite has diminished.  Sex is an important cog in relationships. Your husband’s sexuality influences to some degree how and where he spends time with you, his wife.  If your husband no longer is aroused or excited to be with you, then quality, intimate time will suffer.

2. Some husbands get attached to watching porn, sometimes to a point of obsession.  They can get drawn into this kind of medium for any number of reasons.  The net result is they can satisfy some of their desire for sexual expression and be less inclined to spend intimate, alone time with you.

3. The lack of attention you are receiving from your husband could possible be due to his attraction to someone else.  It is possible your husband could be having a physical, sexual affair with another woman or possibly an emotional.  The outcome is a husband who is detached and less interested in being around his wife.

4. Sometimes the guy you are married to changes in some ways.  It usually doesn’t happen overnight, but over time, the strength of the emotional connection you had with your husband can diminish.  There are a lot of factors that can come into play over the lifetime of a marriage.  The evolution of a relationship will take different paths.  Some of those paths can lead to the husband and wife drifting apart due to their failure to explore new experiences and re-invent their marriage.

5. Sometimes it can feel you are all along in your marriage.  Your husband is most likely like a lot of guys who turn outward to fulfill his interests and needs .  He may be attracted  to other competing interests and hobbies and as a result he can get sucked into these time-consuming activities.  As his wife, you may end up feeling like you are competing with his interests in sports or perhaps some intellectual endeavor.  The bottom line is you end up seeing less of your husband as he is chasing after other things.

6. It is entirely possible that as the marriage rocks along, slowly but surely your husband will be swayed by what he thinks are more important priorities in his life and where this happens most is in the workplace.  As a result of this attitude, your husband starts spending more time at work and you start wondering whether if he is really bound by work responsibilities or just trying to find a way to get way from you.  Most of the time, it is the work that has drawn him in, leaving less precious time to spend with you.  In a way, his work can become his temporary mistress. But occasionally, when a guy just won’t leave the office and continues to insist that work is just piling up, it could suggest that he has shifted priorities.  Instead of “YOU” being the center of his life and all things important, his workplace and all the challenges and fulfillment it may bring to him, has become the place where he would rather spend his time.

7. Another thing that can affect the quality time the two of you spend together is your husband’s reaction to stress.  Sometimes when a guy is experiencing some kind of stress, he will hole up in his man cave.  He may not want to be bothered and the more you pressure him to change his behavior, the greater his desire will be to pull away from your clutches.  Bother him too much, he will grow to resent you or be annoyed.  I think most men are designed to retreat into themselves and don’t want to be bothered until they can work it out in their mind.  Instead of talking about the matter, which comes natural to you, his wife, he would rather be alone.  It can be confusing to you, with your female perspective and his behavior may be totally illogical, but it may be what is best for him at the time.

8. Boredom can strike at any marriage and cause a couple to  slowly drift away from each other.  Marriages take work to keep them fresh and renewed.  As time rolls by, certain habits and routines can become the standard ways in which the two of you interact.  And before you even realize, the two of you are off into your own worlds, doing things apart from each other to stimulate your self interests.

9. When you and your husband begin a family it is natural that there will be a sacrifice in the amount of quality alone time you spend together.  Your children, particularly when they are small, will  compete for a big chunk of your time.  It can be exhausting to juggle all the balls of marriage.  Given there are only so many hours in the day, you and your husband may be simply making pragmatic choices about what to do. Of course, that doesn’t change the fact that it feels like your “alone time” is being  short changed.

10.  Sometimes your husband simply won’t do things with you due to health or fatigue reasons.   It is possible that with growing demands at work and responsibilities at home, he can become  emotionally exhausted or even depressed, leaving little time for you.   Or it could be possible your husband finds himself chronically ill, pulled down physically.   As a result, the thought of making time for you is the last thing on his mind.

What Can You Do To Encourage Your Husband To Spend More Time With You

The first thing you should do is not jump to any conclusions that your husband doesn’t love you.

Seldom is that the problem.

As you can see from the reasons listed above, your husband’s lack of love for you is seldom the underlying cause for why the two of you are spending less time together.

So what can you do to battle the common problem of husband and wife drifting away from each other, spending less time together doing things that are fun and memorable?

Well, if that is the underlying cause of why your husband is not spending time around you, that is one of the easiest of fixes.

How Do I Make My Ex Husband Miss Me and Think About Me Constantly

As I mentioned, it is a problem that affects all relationships.  It is easy for your husband to get set in his ways or distracted by other matters, or bogged down in his work.  It happens everyday to couples everywhere.

One of the most effective ways to combat this problem is for both of you to agree on the problem, recognizing  that an unhealthy routine that has gotten traction in your marriage.

I have nothing against routines, so long as they produce positive outcomes.  But sometimes as life passes by, you or your husband can get caught up in doing things at the expense of the relationship which results in the marriage taking it on the chin.

The way out of this problem is to recognize what is happening, call it out, and doing something about it.  Until you sit down with your husband and have a serious discussion about what his transpiring and how it’s negatively affecting you on a personal level, not much will change.

Most problems do not just spontaneously get better or fix themselves.  In many of these cases, your husband may not even realize that he is pulling away from you and that you feel less important.  So openly discussing this and talking about how it makes you feel, then coming up with a joint plan to change the underlying behavior is the way to making things better between the two of you.

Now sometimes, you and your husband won’t be able to solve the problem by yourselves.  You may bring up your concerns and he may say all the right things, but not much changes.

He may mean well, but the resolve and commitment to really make some lasting changes is not there.  So sometimes it is helpful to get outside help.  Simply having a few sessions with a marriage couples counselor can help underscore the importance of proactively addressing this problem.

If such a trend is left unaddressed, it usually spells more problems with the marriage.  Sometimes, just the mention that you want your husband to go with you to see a couples counselor will cause your husband to wake up and realize he really needs to fix the problem and that avoidance or denial is not the answer.

If you think that your husband’s sexual interest in you has diminished and are concerned about what might be driving that behavior, then it might be time to shake up your sex life.

How we respond to each other sexually plays a role in the quality of our relationship.  While sex may not be the center of all things that makes the relationship shine, its importance should not be underestimated.

With an increase in quality sex, a couple experiences many benefits.  When you make love with your husband certain hormones (e.g. oxytocin, dopamine, etc) are released that causes the two of you to be happier, healthier, and drawn to each other.

There are numerous things you and your husband can do together sexually that is different and unique.  There is a lot of material out there that you can tap into.  Remember, men are visually oriented so it could be simply wearing something different or surprising him with something that is slightly out of character.

But increased sex or better sex with your husband does not necessarily resolve by itself issues around lack of quality time together.  Sometimes the problem goes a lot deeper and you need to get out of the box in implementing a solution.  It all starts with understanding the cause of the problem.  Without understanding the factors that are contributing to your husband’s desire to cut you out of his life,  you could be spinning your wheels.

So it could be time for an intervention.  If this problem with your husband is serious enough and you have tried most if not all the conventional ways of trying to  get underneath what is causing your husband to behave differently, yet he is in a denial phase, then you might need to do something that he cannot ignore.

Does Your Husband Have a Secret Girlfriend on the Side?

I once spoke with a woman whose husband was saying all the right things, but nothing was changing.  She felt like he had little time for her and had  organized his days which left her on the outside looking in.   She explained that it was like living with a roommate who had little vested interest in you.

So what did she end up doing to get her point across?

Well, it was creative and struck the mark.  First, she made a big sign and hung it up over their bed.  It said, “Husband Looking For Room Mate Who Is Satisfied To Spend Little Time Together.”  It was meant to be a sarcastic shot across his bow.

Then she really drilled home her point by leaving her husband a brief note telling him she was staying at a nearby hotel until he either found a new roommate or was prepared to change his ways and act like a “real husband”.  It was daring and a little risky.  But knowing her husband, she was confident that he would handle it well.  She also believed this approach would amplify her concerns and convey to him the urgency in which he needed to act.

It worked for her.  It busted up the negative time management routines that had developed in their marriage and opened a door for some real dialogue and solutions.

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