Is there No Intimacy In Your Marriage? Find out what you can do about Lack of Marriage Intimacy.
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We receive many questions from married couples who are struggling to find happiness together. Often many of them have begun to wonder if the reason they’re unhappy is because they married the wrong person.
The ideal marriage is one that creates a partnership for life. However, facing the rest of your life together when you believe you’ve married the wrong person can be disheartening and depressing.
Below is a question we received from Andrew, a man in just this situation. He’s concerned that he may have made a mistake when he married his wife and unsure of what to do about it. My answer follows.
Reader Question:
I married the wrong person. I've been married for 12 years. And I now realize that I settled for my wife. She wasn't really what I wanted. It was convenient to marry her, and to be honest, convenient to stay with her. However, as I've grown over the years, I find myself truly unhappy in our marriage and have come to the conclusion that I married the wrong woman. I have really nothing in common with my wife: conversation interests, political, religious, hobbies, nothing. No matter how much I try, I cannot get interested in her conversation. We now have a 7 and 6 year old, to complicate this further. Recently, we have had to separate due to my work, and I was bored one evening, and spent some time with another woman, who I am now having an affair with. I never thought I would be cheating on my wife, but I don't regret this, and find myself trying to figure out how to handle being married to the wrong person. Does this make me a horrible man?" -Andrew
Andrew is in a bad spot. Not only is his marriage suffering, but he’s also now compounded the problems by having an affair. It’s not surprising he’s questioning his marriage, but it’s good that he is.
My Answer:
I hear, “I married the wrong person” regularly, from both men and women. When people are unhappy in their marriage they look for reasons to explain why, the easiest target is the other person.
Rather than see things they don't like about their partner as things that could change, most people feel they just need to change partners. With that line of thinking it's then very easy to develop the belief that you must have married the wrong person in the first place.
Part of the problem with Andrew’s belief that he "married the wrong woman" is that it feeds the misconception that there’s the "right" person or “perfect” partner out there somewhere and that, when you've found your true love, you’ll be happy forever.
As romantic a notion as this is, it’s simply not true.
Songs, books, and movies would all have us believe in the happily ever after. And there is a version of that for many people – but it takes WORK to keep it going. They leave that part out.
Relationships take work – all of them.
Relationships also change over time because people and life change over time.
In all relationships we're either growing together or growing apart. If we don't regularly feed a relationship, invest in it, and make it grow, we can become unhappy, no matter how perfect the other person seemed at the beginning.
No, Andrew, you're not a horrible man. But you are a man cheating on your wife and that needs to stop.
Nothing you’re facing with your wife will be made better by introducing a third person into the mix and betraying your vows.
You may be right when you say, "I settled for my wife."
However, even if that was true then, it doesn't have to mean your marriage cannot become happy and successful now. You’ve built a life together and in 12 years have likely found reasons to love each other.
Talk to a couple’s counselor, by yourself to start, and learn the ways you can change your marriage and find the happiness you’re seeking in it, rather than outside of it. Here are some of the benefits of couples counseling.
There are many reasons why it can feel like the person you married was the wrong one. Most of the time that feeling arises when you realize that you no longer feel the way you did at the time you exchanged vows. Or perhaps you feel like you never really loved your partner in the first place.
What people often fail to recognize is that feelings within a marriage do change over time and that’s completely normal.
That original new-love feeling doesn’t last forever, and it’s not supposed to.
In a healthy relationship those feelings deepen into an even stronger, but different, love that’s the necessary foundation for a family and life together. That doesn’t happen without work though.
If you’ve begun to feel like you married the wrong person, it could be because you’ve grown apart and no longer feel the closeness and intimacy a strong relationship needs.
This is generally a result of,
And each of these (and others) can be fixed.
Every successful relationship requires attention in the form of time, effort, and communication.
Unfortunately, it’s far easier to recognize the need for those things than it is to make them a reality.
If you’re worried you’re with the wrong person it’s quite possible you’ll feel differently once you and your partner start working together on making changes to your marriage.
Before your give up, spend some time thinking about the following:
So, next time you’re thinking, “This is too hard, I think I married the wrong person,” take a step back and look a little closer.
Is it the person or the amount of effort that’s really the problem?
Do you believe you married the wrong person? Share why you believe that in the comment section below.
Editor's Note: This post was originally published on June 30, 2012, updated on October 16, 2018, and then again with new information for accuracy and comprehensiveness.
Is there No Intimacy In Your Marriage? Find out what you can do about Lack of Marriage Intimacy.
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Guys if you have tried and it's not working and there are kids involved call it a day. You are responsible for how they turn out and if all they witness are arguments and unkindness they are more likely to replicate that in their own relationships in the future. I speak from experience ( having grown up hearing my mum shouting "I'm only here for my kids"). Kids needs to know that things do not always have to work out, that it's okay to move away and be a better parent without the unnecessary burden. I'd wager anyone that insists on staying in a bad relationship do it because they are insecure and not for the good of the kids as they may try to convince the self.
Let's give each other some proper advice here and not pat each other on backs then sending each other back into senseless relationships
I agree. Staying 'for the kids' is a terrible idea. My parents did this. They have the 'perfect' marriage on the outside and have been 'together' for nearly 40 years. I am still having therapy to remove all the screwed up ideas I learned regarding what relationships were. I grew up in a house of abuse, screaming, swearing, slamming doors, or passive aggression, coldness, depression and stress. I spent years refusing to date because my idea of 'marriage' was absolute hell and therewas no way I wanted to experience that myself! My parents wuold have got on far better as co-parenting friends living seperately with people they were actually compatible with.
Do not use your children as an excuse!
I feel like I married the wrong woman too. There's nothing that she did in terms of action that has made me think this, it's her personality. I have noticed that the way she talks and acts in general is annoying. I can't explain why other than her tone. I feel so terrible because she litterally is the sweetest person I have ever met. But over the years I have found myself not even wanting to talk to her because I don't want to hear her talk so I just go on my phone when we are both home. I wouldn't mind if the problem was her actions cause I could just talk it over with her and tell her what she did bothers me, but the problem is her actual personality. I don't know what to do because this is actually personal if I bring it up. I know she is happy which I'm glad but marriage is a two way street and I am honestly boarder line miserable because I want to connect with my wife emotionally but the way she talks is litteraly too annoying to even want to start a conversation.
She was fine when we first started going out. I fell in love with her, but then all the sudden the way she naturally acted started to change. I told her that she was changing and she told me she felt like she was too and she said it was because she was happier with life. I was happy that she was happier but I also was broken because I fell in love with her "other" self. Like hard. I couldn't let her go because I was head over heels for her. So I kept at it and I noticed that things started to get consistently better and I was really happy because I wanted this to work. I ended up asking her to marry me and I was really really happy to marry her. However, 1 week into our marriage, her personality started changing again. My focus since then was to be a loyal husband to my wife but it's been a little over 2 months now and 95% of the time I don't want to have a conversation with her because I don't want to hear her talk. The other 5% are strange times where she naturally goes back to her "first self" and I absolutely love it. But for the majority of it i am really unhappy. I want to be with her because she is the sweetest woman I know but I litterally do not want to listen to her talk because most of the time the way she talks is annoying. I feel terrible because I want to be a good husband to her.
If anyone could help that would be great.
So are you okay with your wife watching beautiful men (who don't resemble you) on the computer? I don't think it's right, for either partner to be married and commit adultery with their eyes, which is what checking out porn is in reality. But how would you feel if your spouse was watching better looking men than you continuously? Do you judge yourself by your own criteria? Because I've noticed that many men who harshly judge women based on their looks (and justify it) are usually SERIOUSLY lacking in intelligence or some other essential quality found in decent males. Which is evident by your rant that men should be allowed to commit adultery with their eyes. So you have no problem with your wife committing adultery with HER eyes? Imagining sex with someone else while she is having sex with you? If you at all have a problem with this, you seem to be lacking empathy.
So are you okay with your wife watching beautiful men (who don't resemble you) on the computer? I don't think it's right, for either partner to be married and commit adultery with their eyes, which is what checking out porn is in reality. But how would you feel if your spouse was watching better looking men than you continuously? Do you judge yourself by your own criteria? Because I've noticed that many men who harshly judge women based on their looks (and justify it) are usually SERIOUSLY lacking in intelligence or some other essential quality found in decent males. Which is evident by your rant that men should be allowed to commit adultery with their eyes. So you have no problem with your wife committing adultery with HER eyes? Imagining sex with someone else while she is having sex with you? If you at all have a problem with this, you seem to be lacking empathy.
Only a female male hating feminist with a chip on her shoulder and axe to grind would post a response like this. The holier than thou response putting oneself on a pedestal so high that no man could ever reach her is worse than porn.
Good luck hun have fun being single the rest of your life or going through a whole host of temporary partners before your old and ugly. Truth is both men and women watch porn, talk about sex, and watch the other sex, etc. To deny that just shows your gender bias. Now you may disagree that porn and masturbation (because that's what he's really doing) are disgusting, but it actually a healthy way of releasing tension without actually cheating on the spouse that you've grown bored with. So grow up yourself, put on your big girl panties and deal with it.
You're just upset because I'm right.
I knew I married wrong man over a Year's I met him at a hospital where we both was working he was married to someone else. He told me a lot of lies he been married twice with six kids. He was struggling financially as well as mentally. All I want is a divorce. I hate my relationship with him