I Feel Like My Husband and I Are Strangers (How to Feel Close Again)
Updated: 2 days ago
I Feel Like My Husband and I Are Strangers (How to Feel Close Again)
If you love your husband but sometimes feel like you and your husband are strangers, or that you barely know him anymore these days, then this is for you.
Maybe you wish he'd open up more and tell you what he's really thinking and feeling and let you into his inner world because you're tired of feeling lonely in your own marriage.
You want to feel like you're truly known by each other.
But maybe you've started to believe that he's just not the emotional type, or that he doesn't want that level of connection as much as you do, or that life has simply gotten too busy and you don't have the time or energy for that level of connection anymore.
Well, what if those aren't actually the things standing between you and the intimacy that you want?
Today, I wanna show you what's really getting in the way and three things you can begin doing to create a marriage where you both feel safe enough to truly open up and be yourselves.
If you're tired of feeling resentful and disconnected in your marriage and want to understand what's keeping you from feeling like yourself again, take my free Connection Blocks Assessment to discover what may be standing in the way of the connection you really want.
Why You Feel Emotionally Disconnected From Your Husband
Now I wanna start by unpacking the obstacles that you probably think are getting in the way.
And I know this because I've lived it. I've been the wife who just really wanted her husband to open up, but felt like, "Well, he's just not like that."
Maybe you feel like the biggest obstacle to having that level of emotional intimacy you want in your marriage is him, right?
His attachment style, maybe his trauma, his past, his personality. Or maybe you feel like it's his lack of care, or maybe he has a really stressful job.
Or maybe you just feel like, well, that's how he is. That's who he is. He doesn't like to talk about his feelings.
Maybe you feel like you have to ask him twenty questions in order to get any information out of him. Or maybe he will give you some details about what happened at work, but never how he actually feels about anything.
And you just wish he'd let you in, and you feel like the only person out of the two of you who really cares about going deeper.
It's painful and confusing when it seems like he's perfectly happy with the way that things are. And it's especially hurtful when you're still curious about him, but he doesn't seem curious about you anymore.
You might wonder, "Why doesn't he ever ask me what I'm thinking or what I'm feeling? Does he even care to know me anymore?"
You probably feel like if he would just become more emotionally available, then you'd finally be able to experience the deeper intimacy that you want.
That's an incredibly painful and lonely feeling.
You might even fantasize about what it might be like to meet another man and have those deep conversations with somebody who really wanted to meet you there and have them with you.
Now you're here reading this, so I think it's safe to say that you don't truly want that.
You love your husband, and you want that level of emotional intimacy with him specifically.
So let's keep going deeper.
Maybe Your Lives Have Just Become Too Busy
Another thing that you probably feel like is getting in the way is your current lifestyle.
Maybe when you first started dating and you first met, you had more time, or it felt like it was just easier to prioritize your relationship. But things have changed.
Maybe you both have a lot on your plates with work. Maybe you have kids, and you run a house together, and you're building your futures together, and you have very busy and demanding lives.
And so you become so busy in that life that it feels like you don't really have time for each other anymore, time to connect.
By the time you're both finally alone together, you're exhausted.
Maybe it feels like you haven't had a real date together in months or even years. Or it's confusing because you feel like you used to be able to talk for hours when you were dating, and now you're next to each other and you have nothing to say unless it's about bills or kids or what the schedule looks like this weekend.
And here you might think that, again, it's something completely out of your control because you're probably in a season of life where it is what it is.
Maybe your kids are small or your work is demanding or whatever it is.
And maybe you're thinking things will get better when the situation or the season of life finally changes.
And it might.
But what if it doesn't?
Right? That's scary.
And are you supposed to just hang tight and feel disconnected until things change?
I don't think so.
Maybe You and Your Husband Are Just Too Different
Here's another thing that you probably feel like is getting in the way of that connection you really wanna have with your husband.
You might think that you're just too different, right?
You might feel like, "Well, I'm the only one who really cares to go deeper, and he's happy with the way things are."
Or you might feel like, well, I'm the emotional and reflective one, and he's more practical and logical, or the other way around.
Maybe you're like me and you love talking about relationships and personal growth, and he could care less about that.
And it might feel like, wow, we have nothing left in common anymore.
Maybe you did years ago, but you've both evolved, you've both changed, and there's very little common ground these days. Or it feels like you just don't know how to connect on that deeper level anymore.
You might feel like he's just not capable of that kind of emotional intimacy that you really want.
And so it feels like it's a personality, and values, and prioritization thing, that your emotional capacities are fundamentally incompatible.
And then what?
Again, it's these things that are all outside of your control that you can't really change.
And so what are you supposed to do? Give up and move on and try again somewhere else?
If you're reading this, probably not.
You want that with your husband. You want that with this man that you chose to build a life with and that you chose to be married to.
And so does that mean you're just stuck?
You're just gonna have to live your entire life until death do you part in this disconnected and distant marriage where you don't really know your husband?
I mean, you know him, but you don't really know him to the depth that you want to, and you definitely don't feel like he knows you to the depth that you want to be seen and known and loved at.
And I believe when you look at the things that are actually within your control, which actually is a lot, you can absolutely participate in creating a different culture in your relationship than what you currently have.
One that is vulnerable and invites vulnerability. One that is close and connected and invites closeness and connection.
And one where you feel like you can be fully your authentic self and make room for him to be fully his authentic self as well.
Where you can meet each other there and be each other's safe space in this world, each other's sanctuary, where your two souls can come together to rest and refresh and replenish.
That's what I want for you, and that's what I believe you can have when you do these three things.
1. Come Home to Yourself
Starting with, first and foremost, and most importantly, I don't think you can have any of the rest until you start here.
It's coming home to yourself.
I spent years and years and years wanting my husband to open up to me.
In fact, I'll never, ever forget when it hit me like a load of bricks, the realization of how little I actually knew my husband.
We were hosting a cookout. We had some friends over, and my husband was up at the grill.
And he was talking to our friends and really opening up about his experiences at work, not just what was happening and what he was experiencing, but how he felt about it.
He was vulnerable. He was reflective. He was really opening up and sharing things that I had never heard before.
And I remember feeling embarrassed that I had never heard these things before.
One of our friends looked over at me and said, "Oh, what did you think when he told you that?"
And I remember thinking to myself, oh, this is the first time I'm ever hearing this.
These friends that we see once a year are hearing this at the same time that his wife is, the person who's supposed to be his person.
And I felt so sad about that.
It made me really reflect on, wow, how little I knew my husband at that point and also how little he knew me.
And so this was the first part, was really looking in the mirror.
Because I realized in that moment that I wanted so badly for my husband to open up to me.
But the truth was, at the time, I was keeping 99.9% of my own inner world to myself, locked up and safe, hidden behind walls.
And there's reasons for that, that I'll get into in just a moment.
But the truth was, I wanted emotional intimacy, but up until that point had been really unwilling to give what I wanted.
Why I Was Afraid to Be Vulnerable With My Husband
Now, I had been withholding that vulnerability because past experience had taught me that being vulnerable was painful.
That if I open up and share something deep about me, I might not get the response that I expected or wanted. I might feel rejected. I might feel disappointed by his response.
And so I stopped trying altogether.
It was only when I started sharing this with an older gentleman who had been married 50-plus years, who I felt really comfortable opening up to and who always had really beautiful marriage wisdom to share, that I began to see things differently.
I was telling him about this, and he said to me:
"You know, Laura, we all come into our marriages with strengths and weaknesses. Strengths being the things that we are meant to bring into our marriage more that might be opportunities for our spouse, should they be open to it, to learn from us and meet us there. And our weaknesses, which may be opportunities for us to learn from our spouse's strengths."
And I realized that one of my strengths, or one of the beautiful things that I brought to my relationship, was the fact that I cared so deeply about having emotional intimacy, about having a deeply connected relationship.
That was what was gonna give our relationship the opportunity to have that beautiful gift that we both might not have otherwise.
If I just gave up and said, "Oh, well, he's incapable of it, and I'm incapable of it, so I'm just not gonna have it."
No.
I had to have faith, and I had to have hope that, okay, there were some bumps in the road in the past, but that does not have to define the present, and it doesn't have to define the future.
And also, was I being overly sensitive in the past? Was I filling in blanks with painful stories that I had made up for myself?
That's something that I did a lot.
If I shared something vulnerable with my husband and I had been expecting him to respond to me like my closest girlfriends or like my sisters, and then he responded with something very practical, then I would tell myself, "Oh, that's cold," or, "He didn't really care," or, "He doesn't get me."
But really, he just has a different way of hearing and of wanting to help.
And for him, maybe he saw instead of empathy being the thing that would help me, a solution might be the thing that would help me, right?
And so I was filling in the blanks with my own negative, painful stories, such as, "He doesn't care, so I'm not gonna be vulnerable anymore."
And so I started to put up these walls, and I started to hide behind them.
But the reality is we every single day are participating in the creation of the culture in our marriage.
Whether we realize it or not, whether it's intentional or not, we are creating and participating in the creation of that culture.
And so if the current culture in your marriage is disconnected, and you wish he would open up more, then I wanna invite you to look in the mirror.
Where have you been holding back, and how have you been participating in the creation of the current culture that you have?
So that's the first part, is really looking in the mirror and knowing yourself deeply.
Asking yourself what you are afraid of and where you've been holding back, where you've been hiding, and how you've been holding back from creating the type of marriage that you actually want to experience.
2. Build Emotional Safety in Your Marriage
The second shift to creating depth and closeness and emotional richness between you and your husband is to build emotional safety between you.
Now, this is really embarrassing to share, but it's the truth, so here goes.
Years and years ago, before my husband and I were even married, we were in the car, and he was playing some of his favorite music and singing along.
And he turned the music down for a second and asked me, "Do you like these songs? Do you like this music?"
I regret this so badly.
I don't know what the heck was wrong with me, but I said, "Not really. I find it kind of tacky."
Ugh, ew, gross, gag.
Ugh, I don't know why I said that. I really don't.
Because actually the truth is, I love the kind of music he listens to. It's become some of my favorite music to listen to.
But I think in the moment, I was maybe caught off guard with the question, and I wanted to come off as really cultured or show off in some way.
And I thought that showing off in some way meant putting down what he likes and putting him down.
I know, absolutely horrible and horrendous, and trust me, I always regretted this.
But there's a lesson that I learned in it.
The Little Ways We Break Emotional Safety Without Realizing It
It was these moments, and on reflection, there were so many little moments, maybe not that bad, and maybe you're even cringing being like, "Ugh, yeah, that was bad."
But when I look back, there were so many little moments that broke the emotional safety.
And I, for a long time, was really quick to pick up on the times that my husband broke my emotional safety.
Maybe I felt rejected after opening up and saying something to him, and then he didn't respond with the level of compassion and empathy that I had been expecting.
I could really point out and keep track of the amount of times and all the different ways that my husband had broken my emotional safety.
But what I hadn't been so keenly aware of was all the times that I broke emotional safety for him.
And it was like those moments where I criticized something that he liked, or I judged the way that he did something, or I corrected the way that he did something because I could do it better, or I judged him for his thinking or his choices because I thought I knew better.
And a lot of the times that I was breaking emotional safety, I didn't realize I was doing it because it felt small.
A lot of the times weren't big like that music horrible criticism that I just shared with you.
A lot of the times were really small.
Like, he would cook, and then I would be like, "Great, now can you clean too?"
Right?
I mean, it felt so normal to me maybe because that's the way that I had been modeled, so I didn't understand the sting under that.
Or I also didn't understand how to get what I would love in any other way except for by criticizing or calling out or judging.
But the truth was, every single time I did it, even when it was tiny, even when I barely recognized that it was happening, it was breaking down the emotional safety.
And so if you're anything like me, maybe you are keenly aware of the times that your husband has broken emotional safety for you.
But again, this is all about what you can control, and we can't control anyone outside of ourselves.
We can't control our husbands. We can control ourselves, and that is key because we are exactly half of the participants in our marriage.
And so how we show up in our relationships has huge influence over the culture that we share with our husbands.
So if you were to look at and really examine the ways that you may be breaking emotional safety in your relationship, that's going to be huge.
Because nobody can feel safe to really be their full authentic self and to open up and to be vulnerable if that emotional safety hasn't been established first.
Become a Student in the School of Your Husband
So allow him to be your teacher and become a student in the school of getting to know your husband so much more deeply.
That's how you're gonna start restoring the emotional safety, by committing yourself to deeply listening.
So the first one we talked about was deeply listening to yourself, really getting in touch with you and looking in the mirror.
The second one is deeply listening to him.
And becoming a student in the school of your husband.
That means really allowing him to be fully himself without judgment or criticism.
And that means even when you don't agree or don't necessarily like what he's choosing or doing.
It doesn't mean that you have to just suck it up and forever be okay.
But this is how you restore the emotional safety, is by giving him space to be himself.
That's what you wanna know after all, right?
That's why you're reading this, is because you wanna get to know him more deeply, and that means accepting all the parts of him, even the ones that might be uncomfortable or that you might not like so much.
But if you want your marriage to be a place where you can both be fully yourself, then that means making room for the full of himself as well.
3. Create Connection Through Authenticity and Respect
Now, the third shift is where you bring all of this together.
This is where you honor yourself, and you honor your husband.
Because if you just honor your husband, then you can start to lose yourself or start to feel like you're having to shut parts of yourself down or shut down your desires for that deeper connection that you want.
If you just honor your husband, which is what I did for a long time, and that is the main goal, you might come to a place where you realize that you have a really peaceful marriage, where you both get along great, but you don't feel deeply seen, and you don't feel deeply connected to him.
And then you bring together honoring yourself, the first one that we talked about.
Honoring yourself means making room for you to show up authentically in the marriage as well, because that's important too.
I know for me, I didn't want my marriage to be a space where just my husband can show up authentically.
I wanted to be able to show up authentically as well.
Authentically does not mean disrespectfully, no.
I can be authentic and still be respectful. I can be authentic and still recognize that he has autonomy and is his own person.
The Day I Stopped Hiding My Feelings From My Husband
I remember several years ago, I had one of those moments.
I had a conversation with my daughter that kind of broke me.
It was a little bit devastating to recognize a mistake that I had made.
And I'm sensitive, I cry very easily, and I had learned a long, long time ago that my tears were inconvenient and that they weren't really welcome, and that if I want to feel accepted and loved, the best way I can do that is by making sure everyone around me feels comfortable.
And so my go-to for most of my life was that if I cried, I ran away and hid that, and I came back when I was ready to have a smile pasted on my face again.
And so as I was processing my sadness around the situation with my daughter, my husband walked into the kitchen, and I was in the corner crying.
And my first response was to do what I had always done, to look the other way so that he wouldn't see my tears and look down and kinda hide them and maybe run into the bathroom and wash my face, right?
That was my instinct. That's what I had done up until that point.
And I realized in that moment that if what I want is my marriage to be the safe space where I am deeply known and deeply supported and where I don't have to go through things on my own, and I wanted to be that for him as well, I didn't want my husband to ever have to hide his sadness from me, then this was gonna be the day that I changed that.
And it was so deeply uncomfortable and mortifying, but instead of running away, I let him see my tears.
And he was so sweet about it.
I felt so much better just being able to cry into his shoulder and receive a hug.
I felt so loved and so supported.
But it became the gift that kept on giving because not only was it a really healing experience to be able to share that with him, but it set a new tone.
Where if I treated our marriage like it was a safe space to really be myself and bring my whole human experience into and share it, then that meant our marriage was a safe space for my husband to do the same.
And it wasn't long before he started to open up so much more vulnerably than he ever had with me before.
And so I started to make a point to open up authentically to my husband more than I ever had before, while simultaneously protecting the emotional safety between us.
Like it was one of the most important things to me in my whole life because it was and it continues to be.
And my husband and I now open up to each other so much more deeply than we ever had before that day.
Without needing to ask 20 questions to find out how his day at work actually was, without having to manufacture opportunities for him to maybe open up, without trying to manipulate a conversation or feel like I have to pry to get to understand him more.
None of that.
It's just two people who feel safe enough to be 100% themselves.
Creating a Marriage Where You Both Feel Fully Known
So just to recap, the shifts that you need to make in order to have that really rich emotional connection between you and your husband.
The first is coming home to yourself and really identifying how you've been holding back from participating and creating a culture in your marriage that is deeply intimate.
The second, by creating emotional safety and protecting that emotional safety with all that you've got.
That means really leaving any judgments, and criticisms, and corrections at the door.
In my opinion, there's just no space for that in a healthy and loving marriage.
And the third, bringing those two together and showing up in your marriage with authenticity and utmost respect.
Those are the ingredients to creating a marriage that feels like a real sanctuary, where you can both bring your full selves and rest your souls and replenish your fire and share your ideas and dreams and fears and passions.
And where your marriage becomes a place of never-ending discovery of who you both are and who you're becoming.
Where you can both grow and evolve, and you both become closer because of it, witnessing each other becoming who you were put on this earth to be.
And I care about this so deeply because I know what it's like to feel like you have no agency, to feel like you're just stuck in this marriage for the rest of your life, where you're never gonna be fully known and therefore not fully loved to the degree you wanna be.
And I know what it's like on the other side, where your marriage really is your safest and favorite place on Earth.
Ready to Feel Fully Known in Your Marriage?
And that is exactly the work that we'll be doing inside of Fully Known™.
Excavating your heart, maybe for the first time in your life, and really getting to know yourself and fall in love with yourself.
Learning exactly how to create emotional safety in your specific relationship and bringing it all together to create a relationship built on authentic connection and deep knowing.
Because I want you to experience what it's like to have a marriage where you don't have to choose between being respectful and being yourself. Where you can both feel safe enough to be fully known and deeply loved.
The waitlist for Fully Known is officially open!
Enrollment will begin in January, so if you're gonna want the details and updates about Fully Known and when it becomes available, you'll wanna get on the waitlist.
Thank you so much for being here today, and until next time, keep showing up authentically and choosing connection because you get to have both.
Xo,
Laura Amador
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