I am glad to have found a place where I can talk about some stuff. I hope someone here can help me. My husband and I have been married almost 4 years and for the most part we have a pretty good marriage. But I have been noticing somethings lately that bother me so bad and I don't know what to do. He doesn't talk much. I do. So when he talks I think its a conversation but then if I try to say something he will roll his eyes. I've tried to talk to him about his nonverbal communications and like I said, he doesn't talk much. But now when he rolls his eyes, I find I am rolling my own eyes in response because I'm so sick of him rolling his eyes and I think here we go again. So I am finding myself not wanting to talk to him much anymore and now we don't talk much and our house is so quiet all the time and I feel so alone, like he really doesn't like me or want to be here. There is no interaction, like we just live together and don't even know each other.
There's that. Plus he procrastinates to the point I go crazy. I don't know what to do about it anymore because if anything is going to get done, I'm the one who needs to do it. Please help.
: Flutterby Sun Mar 15, 2015 - 13:06:30
I am glad to have found a place where I can talk about some stuff. I hope someone here can help me. My husband and I have been married almost 4 years and for the most part we have a pretty good marriage. But I have been noticing somethings lately that bother me so bad and I don't know what to do. He doesn't talk much. I do. So when he talks I think its a conversation but then if I try to say something he will roll his eyes. I've tried to talk to him about his nonverbal communications and like I said, he doesn't talk much. But now when he rolls his eyes, I find I am rolling my own eyes in response because I'm so sick of him rolling his eyes and I think here we go again. So I am finding myself not wanting to talk to him much anymore and now we don't talk much and our house is so quiet all the time and I feel so alone, like he really doesn't like me or want to be here. There is no interaction, like we just live together and don't even know each other.
There's that. Plus he procrastinates to the point I go crazy. I don't know what to do about it anymore because if anything is going to get done, I'm the one who needs to do it. Please help.
When you talk and he rolls his eyes, did you interrupt him? My dh HATES that and I know I can do it. I joked that I got the point before he landed the plane...but I have to work on being patient and listening to him finish up what his thoughts are, even if I think he is taking longer than necessary to make his point.
I think you would benefit from reading the book The 5 Love Languages by Gary Smalley. It will help you explain to him that communication is your love language. Its mine too...quality time, with quality conversation. His is NOT. His is the last one on my list and mine, the last on his. We have to work to meet each others need, but its good because it makes us deny self.
Good luck and God bless!
I agree with MeMyself, and the book suggestion too.
Otherwise, you may have to "escalate" this to make him know its a big deal. Sometimes, people and marriages get stuck in a rut, and it can take one of the partners shaking things up to make an improvement.
See where a marriage book or really sitting your husband down and explaining this gets you. Make it clearly known you really want this changed in an unambiguous way. If that doesn't work, ask your husband to speak with a pastor or counselor with you about this. I know that isn't fun, but its better than a slowly deteriorating marriage.
Ephesians 4
26"In your anger do not sin": Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, 27and do not give the devil a foothold.
Please make sure this doesn't just get kicked down the road to rot and fester any love away. If this isn't addressed and you spend the next 2-3 years lonely with an unhealthy marriage, so many bad things can spring up. People start making mean or irrational choices or snap in a bad way. Don't allow a foothold to form by allowing an unhealthy or unhappy thing to slowly ruin the possibilities of a great and happy marriage.
Your issue is something that can be addressed and fixed. Please act deliberately and do so. Marriages is absolute dire straights with long term issues can and are repaired. Yours can be too.
Blessings and Good Luck.
I don't know how to use this site and just lost my post and I'm running out of time.
Myself, I don't think I interrupt, but I do have opinions and that's when he rolls his eyes is when I have one. I think it's good to talk about our opinions though and I should not have to keep mine to myself. I have talked to him about my feelings and he seems to be more interested in me for a day or two and then stops. He only touches me when he wants sex, and his rolling his eyes makes me really uninterested in sex so we don't have a good sex life.
I will look for that book.
anx, I am trying hard to not let the devil have a foothold. I want this to get better and I've talked to husband about this and about procrastination but it's like he's oblivious to how his actions effect me. Like last night. I had told him in the morning I needed to do laundry because I work all week and he stays home working on a degree and he has time during the days to do his own laundry but I was up until midnight folding my one load and I had to be up at 6:00. And he is so slow to talk in conversations one time I timed him and it took 6 minutes to respond to my question. I know I can't change him but I also know I can't cope with barely even feeling like roommates.
Thank you both for your help.
: Flutterby Mon Mar 16, 2015 - 09:25:55
I don't know how to use this site and just lost my post and I'm running out of time.
Myself, I don't think I interrupt, but I do have opinions and that's when he rolls his eyes is when I have one. I think it's good to talk about our opinions though and I should not have to keep mine to myself. I have talked to him about my feelings and he seems to be more interested in me for a day or two and then stops. He only touches me when he wants sex, and his rolling his eyes makes me really uninterested in sex so we don't have a good sex life.
Oh, I 100% agree that your opinion is valuable and counts! I would feel very disrespected by the eye roll too, don't get me wrong. I just know that I can struggle with waiting for him to process it all and rush in...and he rolls his eyes and I know that I need to slow down and listen in a way that meets his need to be heard.
I will look for that book.
Good! It really helped me...my dh didn't read it, and wont, but I was able to use what I learned. God bless you!
My wife and I did counseling and we discussed a lot of the communication you described. Communication in some marriages can be really difficult and other couples seem to speak the same language and think alike.
From your second post describing not a good sex life and already feeling like roommates, I highly suggest counseling. It's a place to work on communication and both understanding the other person and feeling underatood. A trusted pastor may work. We worked with a Christian councilor that actually didn't really talk about God other than praying with us once. God is a touchy subject in a Christian marriage that isn't working in a healthy way.
I think the procrastination from you husband is a big part of this. He knows things aren't working, but can't make the next step to fix it. We all have our faults, and you can for now step up and force the marriage in a healthy direction. I think once things are working better your husband could step into a healthy role. for now I suspect he feels stuck with no clear path to a fix and us likely procrastinating on this as well.
In the mean time, learn all you can from books, good advise, and Godly counsel. It will take all of those pieces together to make this work. I definitely think you can fix it, but it won't be fun and will be awkward and difficult at times.
Blessings
Edit: the 6 minutes between responses is something that my wife does as well. She has changed that a little bit, but she isn't "wrong" for being like that. Her entire family when they have a serious discussion has long pauses between talking. I was on the debate team in high school and talk about technical topics for a living, so it is VERY weird for me. In the end, both of us moved toward the center. I needed to slow down and she needed to keep engaged and speed up a bit when talking. I talk enough to the point where she can shut down if I'm not very careful. We couldn't come to that by ourselves however. We needed a counselor to help us communicate and understand better what was going on and why. You both need to understand your individual contributions to the problem that you can fix, and also understand why the other person acts the way they do so you can work around and through that.
I would also suggest Gottman's "The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work: A Practical Guide from the Country's Foremost Relationship Expert", and I think he has a newer book with a similar focus as well. It's a more "technical" book than love languages, which I appreciated since it spoke to my technical side. I think love languages is a better fit for other people however. I ended up reading something like 15 books anyways, so you may want to get both.
Also, Gottman's "The Relationship Cure" is essentially his attempt to do counseling through the format of a book. Its not perfect, but we did it and it helped some. If your husband isn't initially interested in counseling, it might be a good program for you.
A friend of mine has the book The Love Languages and I can borrow it but she said she can describe it to me in 15 minutes if we get together so I'm going to see her tonight or tomorrow night.
Anx I don't think I want to suggest counseling right now because I don't want him to think I'm just complaining about him so I want to just try to figure out what I can do from my end to improve things. Your wife sounds like my husband and like you, I'm trying to be really patient but I think maybe it might be that I'm like you where my ongoing monologue might shut him down especially if I am expressing opinion. I don't think he likes my opinions.
And sometimes he surprises me. Last night I came home from work and found he had made the bed nice, done a load of laundry and put mine with his, and he made supper and before I went to bed he told me he loves me. He is a good man, he just has some frustrating qualities I need to learn to live with.
I like the idea of counseling in the format of a book so maybe I will try that too. Since I'm saving money on The Love Languages, I can maybe afford "The Relationship Cure."
Thank you both for your help. It's so nice to be able to talk about this with someone.
Be patient with him. I am an irritable person and deal with depression. I'm sure I can be hard to get along with. But I still love my fiance and love spending time with him, even if I need alone time. God brings healing to all relationships. Even a simple Christian movie, going to church, or reading a passage from the Bible can bring healing.
Chosenbyhim, I do honor my vows. If I didn't I wouldn't be here. I am NOT looking to leave my husband. Honestly where did you even get that idea from.
Kuraisto, thank you for your reply. We do volunteer at the church together, attend church, watch movies, etc. We spend time doing things we like together. We just don't talk while we are together and I find that worriesome. Our silence is not uncomfortable but I am just missing connecting with him verbally and hearing about his day and telling him about mine and having intelligent and intimate conversations which we don't do anymore.
: ChosenbyHim Tue Mar 17, 2015 - 19:41:51
: Flutterby Tue Mar 17, 2015 - 19:37:19
Chosenbyhim, I do honor my vows. If I didn't I wouldn't be here. I am NOT looking to leave my husband. Honestly where did you even get that idea from.
it is a sin for you to be posting this about your husband here on this forum. And if you think not then go get him and show him what you did and see what happens.
It is not sin to post here. It's no different than going to a friend and talking about personal matters with them but I do not want to talk to anyone here because I don't want anyone in our personal lives knowing what is going on in our marriage because it's not their business but I still need help in figuring things out. It is not sin. That is very strange thinking. I am not dishonoring him by talking and seeking godly counsel. I would be dishonoring him if I were to destroy his reputation but that is not what I'm doing here. I thank you to not bother replying if you are not going to help.
I found out about the five love languages and think we both are high in quality time but I think we both define quality time differently because he likes doing things together outside the house and I like conversations whether they are about personal things or about a separate topic.
But here's an interesting thing that happened yesterday. He talked to me! He said he thought about me all day when I was at work and we talked about that and it came out that he's feeling disconnected from me too so we talked about a lot of good things and we both admitted our part in it and agreed we have just let some unhealthy patterns into the marriage. I feel much better because now we have agreed what we both did by withdrawing from each other and we are both committed to not withdrawing anymore. Neither of us wants to be lonely in our marriage.
I am still going to check out the book anx suggested "The Relationship Cure" because I think it's important to strengthen our marriage as much as we can. Thank you all for your help and your understanding.
: Flutterby Thu Mar 19, 2015 - 08:54:31
I found out about the five love languages and think we both are high in quality time but I think we both define quality time differently because he likes doing things together outside the house and I like conversations whether they are about personal things or about a separate topic.
But here's an interesting thing that happened yesterday. He talked to me! He said he thought about me all day when I was at work and we talked about that and it came out that he's feeling disconnected from me too so we talked about a lot of good things and we both admitted our part in it and agreed we have just let some unhealthy patterns into the marriage. I feel much better because now we have agreed what we both did by withdrawing from each other and we are both committed to not withdrawing anymore. Neither of us wants to be lonely in our marriage.
I am still going to check out the book anx suggested "The Relationship Cure" because I think it's important to strengthen our marriage as much as we can. Thank you all for your help and your understanding.
That sounds very positive. I think that we as women, need to always remember that men in general dont have the need to talk as much as we women do, and thats why we also need female friends as well. We tend to want to talk out our feelings and problems, while men tend to withdraw if they are worried or bothered about something.
Chosenone I had to look twice at your name because at first I thought you were a different person with a name like yours who I don't want to post here but your name is a little different. I have men in my life who are typical men and don't talk as much as women or about as much about feelings and things like women talk about but my husband goes far, far beyond that and people even tell me that having a conversation with him is hard because he won't talk. I understand what they mean because his parents are like that too and I have a very hard time conversing with them either and don't know what to say to stimulate conversations even about generic things that are not personal at all. So it runs in their family to be very silent. I'm sure I drive them all crazy because I am a chatterbug. I don't dare drink coffee around them because then I won't shut up for like 3 hours. Anyway, I would not care if my husband talked to me the way a woman does but I want some sort of connection about something even if it was to talk about the news of the day or what he studied that day or something.
I was so happy when he talked to me the other day thought because it's usually me who starts a conversation and then does almost all the talking and since he does not participate much or respond much, I finally started to shut down and just not talk either because he seems like he's not interested anyway. So I do my talking at work now and don't talk much at home but I guess it made him see how when I talk, he feels connected with me and now I just have to show him that when HE talks it makes ME feel more connected with HIM so it works both ways and when he doesn't talk, I don't feel connected.
He is a good man and I love him and we have a good marriage I think, even if I get lonely sometimes in it, but I do have a couple of good friends and I can get my talking needs filled while I'm at work and maybe have to learn how to balance that out while I'm at home.
Flutterby, I am happy for you both and I even felt the Holy Spirit when I read your two latest posts! There was a great joy that entered the room. I need to realize how to connect better with my own fiance and God can help teach me.