Published on 12 August, 2025
Skye Tan is an ex-journalist, current pastor and perennially, happy mum to two. She loves people and the mad dance of life and growth, and tries to help others get their waltz on despite life’s seasons.
Loneliness has been called a modern-day pandemic. Pair busy lives with increased screen time, add in shallow emotional maturity and unmet expectations and needs, and we have a recipe for drifting apart…even if the couple stays married.
While no one intends to foster loneliness, it unfortunately creeps in quickly when either spouse neglects the other. Since we all enter marriage with rightful expectations of love and support, not feeling seen or supported can be very disorienting and disappointing.
Sometimes, we only realise our own lack of emotional maturity when we have close relationships. Perhaps in your family of origin, you were never modelled physical affection or intentional affirmation. Perhaps the conversations at home were 99% functional and practical, or it was rare to have fun together. So it’s only when you are creating your own family that you realise you don’t really know how to do this differently.
Emotional unavailability can be a painful experience for your loved ones. It feels isolating or even rejecting to know your spouse is not emotionally there for you.
Here are some helpful pointers to ascertain your level of emotional expression:
– Do you find it hard to discuss your feelings? Or to find words to describe them?
– When you are going through a hard time or struggling, do you find it hard to let your spouse in on it?
– When your spouse shares his or her struggles, do you find yourself tongue tied? Perhaps you will advise him or her to ignore the problem or try to offer a practical solution but you don’t have the words to soothe his or her heightened emotions?
– If your spouse shares feedback on something you did or did not do, do you feel defensive or attacked?
– Do you find it hard to apologise sincerely?
These checkpoints are not meant to make you feel bad. But since awareness is the first step for a change, it is important to understand yourself.
Drifting apart may be gradual but it is always a product of a lack of intentionality. The good news is – you don’t need to live a lonely life. You can take intentional steps to reconnect with your spouse.
Instead of communicating to correct, communicate to connect.
To foster togetherness, we should learn to forgo communicating to correct and instead communicate to connect. Even if something did go wrong, when you harp on it and what your spouse did wrong, it only serves to create a me-versus-you scenario. In a marriage, you want to feel like you’re both on the same team!
For Melanie Wong, a mother of two children and whose husband travels frequently, communicating to connect also means choosing to “always staying in touch” despite the distance because “it’s important that we continue to be apart of each other’s lives, we do not want to reach a state of being independent of each other and start to drift apart or realise we can ‘do without’ each other”.
They also worked out that video notes are a great way to stay connected to the children too and her husband would send three video notes – one for her and two for the kids – daily when travelling.
Communicating to connect is a daily choice we make. Don’t assume busy-ness has to mean silence or emotional distance!
An emotions wheel is a helpful tool to pick up vocabulary for emotions, and expand your own ability to recognise the emotions your spouse and yourself go through.
There’s only so much conversation if our vocabulary is limited to just “good” and “angry”. Are you frustrated, disappointed or anxious? Did you feel humiliated, inferior or hesitant? A simple google will give you access to an emotions or feelings wheel that can quickly upgrade your emotional vocabulary!
A simple way to practise this is to make it a point to talk about your day. Melanie shares that even when her husband is away, they try to end their day with a call. If there is time zone difference, they send a video note at the end of the day.
These small gestures help keep the parent who is staying home with the kids from feeling like “I have to do everything on my own.” It also communicates to your spouse that you still want him or her in your day, even if you are physically apart.
Such small but daily acts can help to maintain emotional connection and deepen your marital bond and trust.
No one can connect with someone who’s not emotionally present. Often, we can be quick to find solutions when our spouse shares a problem. But contrary to helping, it can actually result in the person feeling dismissed and unheard.
Listening with your heart means that you listen to the emotions the other person is sharing and responding in care towards them. It also means staying attuned to your spouse even if no words are used.
You will learn to pick up when they are “off” or need comfort, and even look past their words to try to understand what is happening internally. Won’t this be a wonderful way to be loved?
It is possible to grow to be attuned to each other over time as you keep your heart soft and open emotionally to each other.
Conversation in marriages can be very functional, especially when kids come along! There are days or years when it feels like the majority of our words are about groceries, childcare and school.
But if we don’t plan for connection, one day, the kids will grow up and we may realise we have little to talk about with our spouse.
So even in the busyness of life, look for ways to connect. It could be after the baby goes to bed, or in the morning after school drop-off or a quick lunch when work appointments end up near each other.
Keep trying to create time to be together. After all, it’s in this togetherness that you keep loneliness out of your marriage.
Even healthy marriages need support once in a while. If you are going through a rough patch in your marriage, reach out to one of our counsellors.
Skye Tan is an ex-journalist, current pastor and perennially, happy mum to two. She loves people and the mad dance of life and growth, and tries to help others get their waltz on despite life’s seasons.
