Addressing Emotional Distance in Your Relationship
Do you wish you were connection was stronger with your partner?
You used to be able to tell your partner anything, but something’s changed. Over time, you learned what upsets your partner and you started avoiding those topics. Now you aren’t as open as when you first started dating. And some of your positive feelings have turned off.
If you want to see if you can turn your feeling back on and strengthen your connection, then it’s worth seeing if the emotional distance is part of the problem. In doing so, we will explore what emotional distance means and looks like in relationships.
While you may not return to the spark you had at the beginning of your relationship, you can develop a new, deeper level of emotional intimacy with your partner. You do this by BOTH working on your own reactions and behaviors that are distancing, so you are more emotionally present, open, and playful with your partner.
What is Emotional Distance?
Before we address emotional distance, we must first understand it. Many couples get emotional distance confused with marriage differences. Having a different goal or interest than your partner doesn’t mean you have emotional distance. People can have different interests and ideas, yet still have a great connection and intimacy.
Emotional distance is a pattern of interactions. It is an emotional response to a perceived emotional threat and doesn’t occur without conflict either internally or externally. In other words, emotional distance is co-created in an attempt to avoid conflict or feelings of hurt and rejection.
Every couple develops some emotional distance the longer they are together. Most people try to work on their partner’s distancing behaviors instead of their own. Typically, the more you try to get your partner to understand your point, the more you end up pushing them away.
Almost everyone enjoys a little distance from time to time. It only becomes a problem when it erodes the foundational friendship between a couple. To this extreme, you may feel little or no positive feelings for your partner. But once you recognize how you play a part in the problem, you can begin doing something about your own distancing.
How to Address Your Own Emotional Distance
Next, think about what thoughts or feelings contribute to your distancing when talking, interacting, or disagreeing with your partner. It’s so much easier to observe what your partner does or doesn’t do that triggers you to pull away, and it’s much harder to observe our own distance. But becoming a good observer of ourselves is the key to addressing our own distancing tendencies and finding new choices.
Grab something to write with and record which of the following ways you distance, whether it’s pulling away internally or behaviorally. Some examples of emotional distance are:
Accommodating your partner to keep the peace
Using work, hobbies, substances, or an affair to avoid conflict with your partner
Turning to your kids for emotional or social needs more than your partner
Pretending to agree but doing what you want behind your partner’s back
Avoiding topics that upset your partner
Being present physically but tuning your partner out
Also, record the reactions and behaviors you have that trigger emotional distance between you and/or your partner. Here are some ideas to stir your reflections:
Taking differences and others’ moods personally
Being critical or thinking you’re the better partner
Giving advice or diagnosing your partner
Trying to prove your point and be heard
Complaining in an attempt to get your partner closer to you
Being urgent and pressuring the other to talk
Being self-critical and thinking no one wants to be with you
If you record any of these ways of distancing, then you are probably contributing to the emotional and/or physical distance in your relationship.
What’s one small action you are committing to taking?
Marci Payne, MA, LPC
Licensed Professional Counselor in Missouri
I help women who are contemplating divorce discern what’s possible for the future of their marriage, so they can feel confident in whatever they choose. Learn more about individual, online therapy in Missouri here.