Checked Out: The Silent Collapse of Connection in Modern Marriage

A woman’s perspective on listening to men, breaking cycles of pain, and healing through relational responsibility.

I have two options: pre-register my bias with you at the top of this post, or give it a bit more of a think and try not to have any bias surface. I am going to opt for disclosing my bias: I a a female living in a household of men, I have a very pro-male bias, and I’ve made a study of prickly, strong male personalities since my sons were born. I didn’t realize this self-study proclivity until I looked back this year at the pile of books I’ve enjoyed: Shackleton’s “Endurance,” Stephen Ambrose’s “Undaunted Courage” (Lewis and Clark), Edmund Morris’ “The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt,” Richard Rhodes’ “The Making of the Atomic Bomb” (Oppenheimer and Bohr stand out here), Theodore Rockwell’s “The Rickover Effect,” and Captain Charles Wilkes’ US Exploring Expedition.

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Marriages are suffering because it’s damn hard to be human and raise humans. There is plenty of blame to go around for the suffering. It’s not all THEIR fault. It’s not all YOUR fault, either. Someone has to have enough courage to see what they’re bringing to the situation - how we might be contributing to the cycle of pain. Someone needs to develop enough energy to reach escape velocity and slip out of the poor-me orbit long enough to have true compassion for the other person, and from there the healing can begin. But someone has to be the first variable to shift in the system of equations.

For whatever reason, I feel compelled to speak on behalf of men who are in pain. Maybe it can help someone feel heard? I’m a woman, so I may get quite a few things wrong here, but this is what I have seen in my own experience and in listening to my men.

Men don’t want to see their spouses in pain. A man wants to be the protector, the person who can lead the family and shield it from harm. Men like to rescue, to solve, to lead. When mean, spiteful words come out in an argument, recognize it for what it is—being defensive because there is a pattern set up that triggers this response.

On the other hand, I fully appreciate that it is beyond painful to be a woman, down for the count and in misery, only to be hurt where it hurts most by the person who she counted on to love and protect her. I hear you. But the man is also suffering from a sense that it’s not safe to be “wrong,” to have made a mistake, to have missed the boat on something. He feels judged and inadequate. He’s misreading your energy or your tone, or both. He assumes he’s made a mistake, again, and is getting tired of feeling like he’s always the bad guy, getting scolded. And when you move on, he feels like you’re being self-righteous, once again being the martyr (so that even in your suffering, somehow you’re wrong!).

This Klein bottle of endless circular wounding sounds insane, right? But I feel like it’s the underbelly of the argument we rarely get a chance to truly examine because it’s so freaking difficult to be honest and communicate clearly without causing more harm. We’d rather grow the scar tissue and hope for the best. But this stuff comes back to haunt us if we don’t find ways to clear the infection.

Men want to be respected, appreciated, and validated, just like we do. They don’t love talking about emotional stuff, so they let things go when we inadvertently have a tone, or are impatient, or whatever—we just don’t know that we’ve caused some pain because they tend to move on. We women, on the other hand, tolerate a lot of crap until we’ve had enough and then it seems like we’re coming out of nowhere with something small that should not merit such a reaction. The men are missing our context, and we’re oblivious to all that they’ve had to deal with and look past.

Or maybe it’s not about males and females at all? This is what my 20 year old son says. People can be poor communicators.

“Why is my massive bowl-of-chip-eating suddenly causing you to crash out?”

“Because I haven’t been direct about what’s been bugging me?”

“It’s information transfer. Be direct. Say what you mean.”

What can we do better? Listen to understand the other person first, no matter what. Culture has tried to inculcate us with the logic that self-compassion is the way to healing, but in my opinion this self-orientation is a dead-end. It just causes us to focus on our own plights, situations, dreads and misgivings—what we need—creating a binary world where there is only one way to “win” and that’s for you to satisfy my conditions for happiness. If you don’t, my only option is to check out emotionally and numb the hurt so you can’t hurt me again.

Focusing on others with unconditional acceptance (not agreement, but acceptance for who they are) allows us to create an energetic system of love and compassion that has enough room for everyone. We’re not operating out of a scarcity mindset when we extend love to others. Somehow this orientation is generative. We gain far more than we lose.

But how do we get there? Try to get in the present. When the person you’re angry with comes into the kitchen, for example, pause and actually study something about them—the buttons on their shirt, their shoelaces, anything, really. Soften your gaze. Imagine them as a young child. Take a very deep breath, counting in for 3 or 4, then a little more at the top, then out for 6 or 8 as you draw your belly back to your spine. This is a vagal nerve reset, allowing your body to shift from the sympathetic fight/flight response into the parasympathetic space of rest/digest.

Next, try to understand what specifically is making you so angry or wounded. Often we are interpreting the words or actions of others based on a filter developed over time—we’re wearing glasses with a colored lens that causes us to view things in a way we’ve become conditioned to. An internal message may accompany this view: “I’m not important/good enough” to be loved or cared for and the actions we’re upset by reinforce this view, serving as additional evidence.

Ask yourself, what else could be going on? What could be driving the person to be behaving this way? What are they defending themselves against? How are they hurting? What filters are coloring their perception of the situation? If you can bring yourself to ask any question, particularly ones starting with “What” you’ll be able to start peeling away the layers of misunderstanding and apprehension.

How do you measure progress in communication? This is a tough question. For me it might be how quickly my husband and I can intervene to avoid escalation. We’re still annoyed and angry, but how quickly do we catch it and recover? The next phase might be in the middle of a disagreement, I’m able to pivot and get curious about what’s really going on—discover the missing context. It takes practice but eventually you can detect the energy in a conversation before words are even spoken. This advanced energetic detection system allows you to clear the space of clutter before opening up new topics. My husband recently did this. He picked up on my energy and asked about it. He was sensing the wrong energy (it wasn’t about him at all) but his radar went off and I was able to explain what was really going on (I was in pain and exhausted about another interaction entirely, nothing to do with him).

Being fluent in detecting energy can help us be masterful partners, parents, sisters, brothers, coworkers, teammates, coaches, teachers, and leaders. The men I’ve studied were not always good at this, and in fact many of them agonized in isolation over their wounds finding solace in battling the wilderness and uncharted waters. Instead of going into retreat, consider searching for ways to understand your man to open up a whole world of healing within your family.

Estrangement is a huge issue right now for parents and children, exacerbated by the widespread use of antidepressants and stimulants which essentially numb emotions and shut down these vital signals that something is off. Compassion for others allows us to shift from a win-lose mindset to synthesis, wisdom, and joy where there is room for everyone. In my experience and opinion, a focus on self-compassion tends to be an isolating misadventure because it fails to acknowledge responsibility for our contribution to an energetic system.

This all got put into practice this afternoon in our house. My younger son is irritated that his socks keep disappearing. The older son says the socks were in the “communal sock pool” and thus were…communal. To end this cycle of frustration and sock drama, the older son collected all of the socks in the house, washed them, and offered to go buy neon pink socks for himself so there would be no further “Socks of Theseus.” The guys were direct and confrontational, but in a healthy way. I’m listening and learning how to communicate this way!