Naming what's happening

The kitchen at 1am. The dishwasher is finishing its cycle. She went to bed three hours ago without saying goodnight, which has been the pattern for four months and which I've been pretending isn't a pattern. I'm standing at the bench with a glass of water I don't want, and the thing I've been not letting myself think arrives anyway: something is wrong. It's been wrong for a while.

Most men in long marriages don't arrive at "we have a problem" through a single event. They arrive through the slow accumulation of small things they've been minimising for months or years.

The signs you've been minimising

Three or four of these, persistent for six months or more, almost always mean a marriage is in trouble.

• The dead bedroom. Not "we're tired with kids". Months without intimacy, no conversation, no plan.
• Parallel lives. You eat at different times. She watches her shows; you watch yours.
• The silent dinners. Phones at the table. Single-syllable answers.
• The "we're like flatmates" frame. When friends ask, one of you laughs and says it. The line is the truth dressed up as a joke.
• No fighting. Counterintuitive. Fighting is engagement. The argument that doesn't happen is louder than the one that does.
• Outsourced emotional life. She tells her sister things she used to tell you.
• Affection as performance. Hugs that end fast. Hand-holding only in front of in-laws. The body knows.
• The scoreboard. You can list everything she hasn't done in the last month. Neither list gets read aloud.

Read that list slowly. As a temperature check. If three or four are honest descriptions of your last six months, the marriage is asking you to look at it.

The cliches that turn out to be true

• "We grew apart." Often true.
• "It's the kids." True for the season the kids are little. False as a permanent excuse.
• "We're just busy." True for a quarter. False for a year.
• "We don't talk anymore." True. Logistics is the lowest layer of conversation.
• "She's changed." Probably true. So have you.

The cliche feels lazy because it's compressed. The compression doesn't make it false.

The honest read

Sit somewhere quiet. Take ten minutes and answer four questions on paper:

1. When did I last feel close to her? The most recent honest moment.
2. What am I doing in this marriage that I'd be embarrassed for her to see clearly?
3. What's she doing that I've been pretending not to see?
4. If nothing changes for two more years, what does the marriage look like?

The body knows before the mind does. Naming it is the first time the mind catches up.

Why naming it is the first work

The temptation is to skip ahead. Decide. Action it. Don't.

Until you've named it cleanly, anything you do next is built on a half-true premise. The work in this module is just to look. Not to act.

Stop minimising. Stop performing. Start looking.

Further watching

• Contempt: The Sulfuric Acid of Love | Dr. John Gottman's 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse
• How To End Criticism In Your Marriage | Dr. John Gottman's 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse