“My Wife Emotionally Abandoned Me When My Father Died”
Over time, intimacy faded from our relationship until we became, essentially, sexless for years. This was deeply painful for me, yet I quietly accepted it, believing that relationships evolve and that the emotional foundation we shared would compensate for what was missing physically.
Two years ago, my father passed away. I was extremely close to him, and losing him shook me to the core. Because I am our sole provider, I couldn’t take any time off from work, and so I learned to navigate my grief in the moments between responsibilities. It was slow, unpredictable, and consuming. I sought therapy and tried to process the waves of sorrow that became part of daily life.
During this time, my wife became irritated – frustrated with my grief, with what she called my “irrational” thinking, and with how long everything was taking. When we gathered a year later for my father’s memorial, a moment I had hoped would bring some peace, she remained distant. Afterward, she criticized details about the ceremony, telling me it was “all about me” and, in her eyes, “a failure.” I tried to explain that I needed gentleness and support, but once again I was told that my grieving had gone on too long.
Eventually, I reached a breaking point and I left home. For the next year, she no longer travelled with me, something that frustrated her deeply. She found a job to stay occupied, and there were weeks when we barely spoke. We attempted couples therapy, but even with a professional present, our conversations felt as though they never reached the emotional truth. I tried to express how unheard and unseen I felt, how desperately I needed empathy from her only to be told that everything I was feeling existed solely “in my mind,” as if I were living in an alternate reality.
And yet, time softened things. A year later, she wrote a moving letter apologizing for several things, including how she behaved at my father’s memorial. Slowly, we began finding our way back to each other. I have been home more often, and we have spent more time together these past months. In many ways, things are improving – moving “in the right direction,” though intimacy is still absent, and from her side, there seems to be no desire to revive it.
I have no doubt there is love between us, but I am struggling. I cannot seem to forgive what felt like abandonment during the hardest moment of my life. I cannot forget the pressure she put on me, insisting that my grief was taking too long, or the pain of hearing that my father’s memorial – a deeply personal moment – was a disappointment to her.
If I felt invisible during such a vulnerable time, what will happen the next time life becomes difficult? How can two people truly build a future together if they cannot listen to one another’s pain or accept that feelings — even uncomfortable ones — are real?— Feeling Invisible
As important as it is for people in relationships to listen to each other, it’s just as important for you to listen to yourself. I hear you asking the right questions, but you should be asking them of yourself. Yes, what WILL happen the next time life becomes difficult? How can you build a future with your wife when she doesn’t listen to your pain or accept your feelings? What do you do when even communicating with the help of a therapist leaves you feeling as though your emotional truth is never reached? How can you trust someone who dismisses your emotional needs and shows a profound lack of empathy?
I think you know the answers here but you’re addressing the questions to me because you need someone else to confirm what you know to be true. I want you to know that your truth matters. The way your wife makes you feel is an important indicator – the most important indicator – of whether there’s a future for you together. If you aren’t feeling loved and heard and supported, what are you even doing with her?
Listen, I know as well as you do that eventually this relationship is going to end. I don’t want to focus too much on that part; it’s inevitable at this point, if you have any sense. What I’d like to focus on is how you rebuild your life in the aftermath, and what lessons you take from your marriage into your future (and potential future relationships). I would encourage you to continue working with a therapist independent of your wife.
I hope you’ll give a lot of thought to your priorities – in life, but especially in relationships. It sounds like with your wife you prioritized a shared lifestyle that revolved around building your travel career, and there are important qualities in a relationship that you overlooked or disregarded. What you’ve lacked – an emotional connection, physical intimacy, companionship, and respect – are important ingredients of a successful long-term commitment.
I would also encourage you to work with a therapist on the whys of your simply accepting such terrible, dismissive behavior from your wife. You took a very passive role in your marriage – like quietly accepting the absence of physical intimacy, telling yourself that “relationships evolve” – while actively building your business. Personal relationships need attention and nurturing, too. You can’t take a passive role in a marriage and expect it to grow any more than you’d expect your business to grow as you remained disconnected from it.
Your father’s death and now the seemingly inevitable ending of your marriage have given you, and will continue to give you, the opportunity to explore your “emotional truth,” and you don’t need your wife to help you reach it. Use this transition to explore the depths and heights you can reach on your own. The emotional foundation you thought would compensate for the missing physical intimacy in your marriage didn’t exist, but you can build it for yourself, and if you do, the future you hope to build will be stronger, happier, and more fulfilling regardless of with whom you share it.
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If you have a relationship/dating question I can help answer, you can send me your letters at [email protected].
I realize the OPs wife distanced herself from OP in many ways and there may be no regaining the trust or intimacy, but I offer these comments in general not specifically to OPs situation. As a person who struggled with grief after gruesome, drawn out death of beloved father at age 30, I say the following with deep appreciation for OP’s feelings. However, I learned also that grieving folks need to spread the needs around so that a single other person is not carrying the burden of someone else’s unresolved grief. Significant others are not trained in grief counseling and should not be seen as informal therapists. Join a grief group, or start therapy, or reconnect with relatives who are also grieving, Grieving has many twists and turns and it is impossible for anyone else to keep up with the grieving person’s needs. We will all feel unseen in the fullness of our grief.
I’d love to hear the spouses side, having left their career to support the LW certainly was a lot to give up. That can seriously harm the self esteem and deeply effect the relationship.
That’s a gruef process in itself that the spouse endured for the LW.
Then spouse is criticized for not being supportive enough during the grief process if LW.
Maybe a review of what the spouse has sacrificed would help LW see the spouses struggle when LWvwas grieving and the apology in a better light.
One thing that gave me a pause as I was reading this letter that the LW mentions/implies it several times that he was the sole provider etc. but then in the beginning: “Our relationship is built around my work in the travel industry and her involvement in many aspects of my business.”
Because that sounds to me like she was actually working with him/for him and the LW minimises/outright denies her contributions? Just a thought but it made me question his account a bit.
There’s more to be told. What was the wife’s relationship with LW’s father like? It doesn’t seem that she mourned him one bit and there is usually a reason for that. Maybe that’s why she’s been cold about it. It could also be related to their lack of intimacy, both physical and emotional.
And why didn’t they get a new therapist if that one wasn’t helping? Sometimes you have to dig around for the right professional. This relationship is unique and it has challenges but it doesn’t have to end if they both are willing to work openly together.