With most of the relationships I see, it's been my experience that as humans we want to consider ourselves as good partners and lovers. We want to feel familiar and confident about how our partner likes to connect or feel loved. However, there are chapters in our relationship where it seems we are constantly striking out. And when this happens, we often subconsciously cope with the pain and disappointment of not showing up as the partner we'd like to be by doing some funky reactive behaviors (defense mechanisms) such as:
Numbing out and pretending we don't care.
Blaming the situation on our partner, “Oh, they're just impossible to please.”
Playing the martyr and telling ourselves stories that things will never change.
Directing our love and attention to other people (an expression of anger).
Tallying up all the ways that our partner doesn't show up for us- so why try to give when we should be receiving? (Entitlement and justifying helplessness.)
If this sounds like you... First. It's ok to feel sad and disappointed that you're struggling to connect with your partner. That is completely normal. It hurts to feel rejected. It's scary to feel relationally insecure. It is confusing to want to please someone and feel like we don't know how.
After you've let yourself feel the feels...
I want you to consider if it would be helpful for your relationship to have a completely transparent (and therefore vulnerable) conversation with your partner. It may sound something like this:
“I love you. I miss you. I want you to feel seen and loved in this relationship. Is there something I can do this week to show you that you matter to me?”
Now, if they say “I don't know,” OR have some aggressive pushback response, don't despair (if anything, this is a sign they're feeling similarly and the relationship needs some repair work). Take a deep breath and hang in there.
You could respond with something like:
“Can you think about it? Because it really matters to me”.
OR
“I don't blame you for being upset. But I want to do right by you”.
OR
Maybe you offer another bid (an expression for closeness) such as, “Can I take you out this week?” OR “what can I do this week to make your life feel easier?”
On the flip side of this, If your partner comes to you with this type of bid to connect, watch if there is a part of you that wants to punish or push them away. Notice if you've fallen into your own despair or indifference as a way to cope with the disconnect in the relationship. If so, you are at risk of self-sabotaging. See, instead, if you can take a deep breath and lean into the vulnerability of acknowledging you'd like to connect more too and that things could be different. Acknowledge their effort to change things and give them a simple path to get back to you.