Dear Roe,
I’m writing this with a mix of embarrassment and urgency, because I’m not sure how I’ve let things get to this point. I’m in my 50s and I’ve been with my husband for nearly 30 years. On paper, our life looks stable. We own a home, our finances are steady, we have adult children who are doing well. From the outside I think most people would describe us as “solid”. But emotionally, I feel like I’ve been living in a kind of quiet drought for years. My partner is not unkind, but he is completely closed off. As the children have got older I’ve realised how little life or connection we have beyond them. Our lives revolve around logistics and routine. If I don’t make plans, we do nothing. He doesn’t ask how I am beyond a passing “you all right?” and if I try to answer honestly – if I say I’m feeling low, or lonely, or disconnected – he either goes silent or changes the subject. Over the past few years, I’ve suggested counselling more than once. Each time he brushes it off, saying, “That’s for people who are in real trouble”. We go through the motions, we eat dinner together, we watch television, talk about practical things – bills, plans, the children, other people’s lives – but never about us. I can’t remember the last time he asked me what I wanted, or how I felt about our future, or suggested something new to do. We rarely have sex and I feel no desire. I feel increasingly like I’m disappearing inside a life that checks all the boxes but feels empty. At the same time, the thought of leaving at this stage of life and trying to start over and survive financially feels overwhelming and frightening. Is it possible to bring someone back into emotional engagement when they’ve spent years avoiding it, or am I holding on to something that isn’t really there any more? I don’t want to sleepwalk through the next 20 years of my life feeling like this.
It’s no surprise that these questions of emotional connection, fulfilment, and what you want your relationship to look like are arising as your children are adults. Parenthood can become all-consuming, so this phase of trying to reconnect with yourself and reimagine your life and marriage is important. It can also be difficult, even grief-filled, to realise how long it’s been since anyone – including yourself – has centred your needs, and asked what you want from life.
When entering this stage of self-rediscovery, it’s natural to want your husband to join you in this process. To be met with a lack of curiosity, commitment or engagement can feel not only like a rejection, but like a claustrophobic trap: are you doomed to remain in this state of stagnation forever?
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Your fear around this is understandable. An emotionally immature or stuck partner can quietly but powerfully determine the pace of an entire relationship. Growth within a relationship requires the capacity to fully engage, to tolerate difficult conversations, to reflect, to repair, and do the sometimes uncomfortable, clumsy, and vulnerable work of transformation. When one partner cannot or will not do this, this creates a ceiling: the relationship can only evolve as far as the least emotionally open person allows. Meanwhile, the partner who desires more finds themselves editing themselves, sublimating their desires, or doing disproportionate emotional labour just to maintain stability.
In straight relationships, this dynamic can often be shaped by gender socialisation. Men are less encouraged than women to engage with emotional life, to build emotionally supportive friendships, or seek help. As a result, women in relationships with men frequently take on the bulk of emotional and relational labour: monitoring the health of the relationship, initiating difficult conversations, organising counselling, and sustaining intimacy and connection through effort and research. This labour often goes unseen, dismissed as women being “naturally” more emotional or invested. It can leave the partner engaging in this work feeling exhausted, unappreciated, and like they’re desperately fighting for the survival of both the relationship and their individual spirit – alongside a person who doesn’t even acknowledge there’s a problem. It’s a hard and lonely place to be – and so difficult to keep fighting when there’s nothing there giving you energy back.
So for now, let’s focus not on doing more unreciprocated work on your relationship, and instead invest in yourself. What would it look like to let your life grow in the ways you want it to, without waiting for your husband? If you made a list of everything you would do if you were single, or if he joined you, what would those things be? Would you meet up with friends more, make an effort to meet new people, would you take up a hobby, or try something new? Would your daily routine be different? Would you travel? Would the way you connect with and treat your body be different? In what ways would your life expand? Think of those things, carefully and specifically – then start doing them. Your children and husband are all adults. No one is reliant on you for their survival, so reclaim some of that freedom, time, energy and head space for yourself.
As you do this, notice not just whether life feels fuller, but what becomes clearer. You don’t have to jump to, “Should I leave?” – you can start by asking, “What do I see when I stop abandoning myself?” You might find that by rebuilding yourself, you gain steadiness, perspective, and fulfilment, and your relationship feels easier. You may find that once you stop deferring to your husband’s comfort zone and instead start modelling the bigger life you want, he becomes emboldened to follow. Or you may find that once you stop over-functioning and compensating for his emotional absence, the gap between you feels bigger.
If the distance between you does feel larger, that does not necessarily mean the relationship is over. People can change, even after years of avoidance, but that change requires willingness. He needs to show up. Book a couples counselling session, and have one calm, direct conversation that names the seriousness of the situation. Something like, “I am not willing to continue living like flatmates for the next 20 years. I need emotional engagement, and I need us to actively address this through counselling and honest conversations. I’m not asking for perfection, but I am asking for participation. The appointment is at this time, at this place. I am attending. Are you?” Then see what his response is, and whether he turns up – literally and emotionally.
Give yourself permission to gather practical information, too. If finances are one of the things keeping you frozen, it may help to understand your actual options. You don’t have to do anything with this information, but knowing where you stand can help clarify what is possible.
Remember that there is no one false binary where you either stay forever or leave tomorrow. There is a middle ground called discernment. It is the process of becoming honest about what is here, what is possible, what is not, and what you are no longer willing to live without. It involves reconnecting with yourself, rebuilding your own life, naming your needs clearly, noticing his capacity to meet you, seeking support, and refusing to keep sleepwalking. There is nothing trivial about wanting to feel alive, known, and accompanied in your own life.
So begin there: not with the question of whether it is already over, but with the question of whether you are willing to fully come back to yourself. Once you do, the next answer often becomes much easier to hear. Good luck.
