—
You fought for her.
You met her, you fell in love, and you fought to win her love.
You did this instinctively by courting her, wooing her, sharing your thoughts and dreams with her. Connecting with her.
Then life happened. Marriage and work and children all competed for your attention. The day-to-day routine dulled your senses. Stress took its toll. Without even realizing it, your relationship became the collateral damage of a busy and demanding life.
It’s a familiar story. But if it goes unchecked, the damage builds up. There is disconnect, apathy. And eventually loneliness.
Because she will feel the cold draft of the relationship before you will.
Roughly 70% of divorces are initiated by women. Many men say they are blindsided by this. It has been give a name, Sudden Divorce Syndrome.
Except there’s nothing sudden about it. It’s usually a slow death.
She’ll tell you she needs more. She’ll tell you that she feels alone. Or disconnected. This is her, asking you to fight.
Resist the urge to chalk it up to nagging or a demanding wife. To ignore it is to tell her you can’t be bothered. To brush it off is to refuse to fight.
It is her feeling unheard. Forgotten. Dismissed.
It is her feeling like her needs are a nuisance. An annoying fly that you swat away in frustration and agitation.
It is her feeling like her role in your life has become nothing more than functional.
It is her feeling like she is sending up flares and you don’t notice as you go about your day.
It is her feeling like she’s fighting for the marriage, begging you to join her. Only to realize she’s all alone on the battlefield.
She wants you to fight. To do the gritty work of staying engaged in the marriage. It’s not glamorous or sexy, but it’s real. It’s necessary.
If you don’t listen or if you minimize it or ignore it—
She ends up feeling rejected. Unimportant. Forsaken.
The feelings of emptiness suffocate a marriage. Alone. Tired. Years of trying to be heard, years of trying to connect. Her words muffled by the roar of a busy life. Talking. Pleading. Yelling. Only to get a shrug. Or a passing glance. Or platitudes.
Then—she feels nothing. The lack of feeling takes over where love used to reside.
Eventually she becomes silent.
And silence is not golden.
Too often men interpret that silence as contentment. She’s not nagging or complaining or saying she’s unhappy, so things must be good.
Silence is the distress signal. Silence means she’s either given up or is on the verge. She is going into self protection mode. She is steeling herself.
You may feel content, even happy. Things are peaceful, on the surface. But the routine you find so comforting could be her cold reality.
She needs more.
She needs to feel like you still find her worth the fight.
She wants you to care enough to hear her when she says she needs more from you. And to hear it as a desire to strengthen your relationship, not as a criticism.
She will feel alone, long before you do.
She will feel the loneliness and disappointment sink into her bones before you realize anything’s wrong.
She will think of all the times she tried to tell you. She will feel the sharp pain of not being worth the fight with every plea of hers that went unnoticed or brushed aside. You heard her. Her request for more connection, or her asking you to help her fix what is hurting your relationship… chance are you didn’t realize it was not just a wistful notion. That it was a desperate cry.
You didn’t realize that there’s only so many times she’ll ask before she gives up. And in that place will be bitterness or emptiness.
She needs you to wake up and see that she can’t live in a numb place of detachment.
Feeling alone when you’re next to the person who swore they’d love you forever is the most empty place to be.
If you see the light go out in her eyes you might be too late. There will come a point where no amount of fighting will fix what took you too long to see was broken.
Don’t let this happen.
If you allow complacency to take over where passion should be you are flirting with losing her.
Apathy is the death of relationships.
You have to fight for her.
Fight in the I will stop at nothing to keep us together and I will bend and twist and step outside of my comfort zone and do whatever it takes kind of way.
You fight for what you had and what you still want. You fight so that you don’t lose her.
It’s not bringing home flowers or buying her expensive jewelry. This fight can’t be purchased at the mall.
It’s showing up. Emotionally and physically. Over and over.
It’s not giving up.
It’s refusing to accept just existing together.
It means calling her out if she’s not putting up a fight too.
It means not just giving in or appeasing her. Don’t become a “yes” man. That’s just a different form of apathy.
It means honesty.
It means telling her what you need from her.
It means being able to tell her what you want. And if you don’t have the words, tell her you’re trying.
It means pulling her back to you when she tries to pull away.
It means not dismissing her requests for going to therapy with her.
It means figuring out your ancient hurts and issues that are affecting her. And insisting that she figure out hers.
It means getting back to what you fought for when you met her. When she made your breath catch and your senses come alive, when she was the reason you woke up and wanted to take on the world. Find that feeling. It may be buried under obligations and hurt and maybe even bitterness. But if you can find any of it still residing somewhere inside of you, then you can’t give up on her. You fight.
Fight to show her that you will never leave. That you will never give up on her.
Don’t be the guy who didn’t fight. The one who has regrets because the person he loved now loves someone else. The guy who realizes too late that he needed to fight for the relationship.
The landscape is littered with the broken hearts of the too little too late.
Be Lloyd Dobler holding the boom box over your head. Be the fool in the rain. Be the guy who didn’t just let her go because it was too hard. Be the guy who gets to spend his life with the person he loves, not the guy watching her walk away with some other dude.
If you listen hard enough, she’s been telling you how to fight. She’s been telling you what she needs and what she wants. And if she’s not telling you? Ask her. And then tell her what you need for her to fight for you. But don’t let it die because you took the path of least resistance. Don’t go gently. Don’t be the guy who is blindsided.
If you love her, fight for her.
—
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I guess crying while reading this is a pretty clear sign that my relationship is doomed.
Women are incredibly selfish.
Geez, some of the comments here make me cringe and want to apologize for my entire gender. Yes, marriage is a two-way street, but I (the husband) can only control the car I’M driving. I thought this was some pretty decent, if general, ‘driver’s ed’. It’s not like an article of this length can possibly be anything more. Reset your expectations people, and try to see it for its intended purpose: A call to men to reengage before irreparable harm has been done to their marriage. And then say, “Thank you.”
The reason why women are more likely to divorce is because they don’t have anything to lose in divorce but aman is likely to lose the kids and pay alimony he is more likely to commit suicide and kill the women because his life is not worth living.
The phrase it’s cheaper to keeper is based off the fact that men are forced to make it work when they don’t even want it to work and then when they get divorced that’s what causes the problems
https://goodmenproject.com/ethics-values/gender-inequality-fighting-womens-rights-think-giving-men-equal-rights-shmn/
As a woman, I found this article awful. Sorry, but I’m with the men on this one in their critique of it. If the article was written to appeal to men, clearly it has failed dismally. It reads like a lecture to men on behalf of women, and makes me want to cringe in its sentimentality. Small wonder then, that so many of the comments written here are by men who feel defensive and want to challenge it. Where is the challenge to the woman to reflect on her own process and what she brings to the relationship? Outside of… Read more »
Rosy,
Check out Suzanne Venker’s site.
http://suzannevenker.com/
While I don’t necessarily agree with everything, I do think she has a lot of great advice for women on how to relate to men.
Another resource is to read Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s,
“The Proper Care and Feeding of Marriage”
It is a great book with excellent advice to men and women on how we should each try to related to and understand one another.
I was the one who initiated my divorce.
Warmest Regards.
Thanks Jules – that’s really kind. I will look into both resources. Warmest wishes to you too.
This entire site is a misandry based site.. if you notice it’s not really for men it’s for men to serve women… it’s really an anti masculinity site.
https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/3-ways-i-committed-to-supporting-my-husband-and-how-i-benefitted-as-much-or-more-than-he-did-dg/
Gretchen,
This is a woman who speaks from a place of selflessness and gratitude as oppose to entitlement.
You are disgusting human being, and you should be ashamed of yourself.
Gretchen Kelly is obviously a man hater.
Sigh. You cannot post any “what women want” article here at all without the flood of knee-jerk responses that all boil down to: Any article that wants men to do anything is inherently unfair because it’s not an article about women doing anything. The word “perspective” has no meaning here, it seems like. If you write an article from one perspective, it has to do with that one perspective–it is not a statement on anything else. If women need X, that doesn’t automatically mean “men are bad” or “men are at fault” or “but women don’t do this either.” That’s… Read more »
Re: “It means not dismissing her requests for going to therapy with her.” It’s funny how that turns out sometimes. After a long time of pleading with her that our relationship was on the brink of disaster and needed some serious overhaul, pleas that were routinely dismissed or ridiculed, suddenly one day she came home and stated that we were going into therapy. Because this this person had worked wonders with a friend of hers. But when my girlfriend discovered that the therapist wasn’t going to side solely with her, but was also interested in hearing out my side of… Read more »
The John Cusack character to deploy is not Lane Dobbler but Martin Blank. Walk over the hill, see that the city, bay and far flung landscape is on fire and revel in the clear moment of realization that nearly everything you have been told is pure sh*t. Work, country, marriage, love – all tripe pandering to a Happy Hollywood postcard to get you to fit in. Never attempt to guess what is running through the head of a soma , if she is not adult enough to use words then let her deploy her passive aggressive motives elsewhere. In a… Read more »
I fought my initial defensive urge because I know there’s always at least a grain of truth in every conversation. There is something to think about from this (which is why I think my wife sent it to me). I know she feels this way and I’ve been doing things to combat it. It’s difficult. Like the perspective of this article, what I feel I’m up against is what I call ‘movie style love’. I’m not a Lloyd Dobler with a boom box – never was, but the early days were spent spending time together. Figuring each other out was… Read more »
You are so very right. That is all. From a woman who refuses to forward it to her man.
Have you ever listened to a man before, Gretchen?
It seems that quite a few men responding in this thread are angered by the author’s pov. I hope some can understand the specificity of the issue this essay comments upon rather than reacting. Of course women have much to learn amd answer for in relationships. Of course there are women who are abusive jerks or unconscious users, etc. Of course men are wonderful and tremendous contributors. Of course there are men who need compassion and protection. All of that being true, there are a great many men who can learn a great deal from what has been written here.… Read more »
Elisabeth,
I would hope that (some) women are also able to see where the responses are coming from, as not just a knee-jerk reaction to critizism.
You even say yourself: “Show us our errors as we show you yours.”
But when we do it’s so very easy to simply dismiss it as anger.
So where do we go from there?
Here’s a story that in my opinion was equally raw and revealing, both for men and women, but it didn’t garner a single response! I kinda wonder why?
https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/empowered-women-empowering-men-suppressing-dg/
Because the previous article was to explain that a specific woman didn’t understand what a man needs in some cases, where this article hopes to explain what some women need from men who haven’t understood what exactly they need.
In the first case, a woman admits that she was taking the wrong approach in a relationship. Why is it so hard to admit that a man might be taking a wrong approach in a relationship?
Sometimes each gender has the wrong approach.
You should be ashamed of yourself.
Also, read Gretchen Kelly’s last article. She believes men should listen to women but women don’t have to listen to men. GMP publishing articles by an obvious man hater shows that they do not really have compassion for men. Kelly believes men are lower than women and that men’s experiences have no value and men should never be allowed to voice their experiences and their hardships. I bet she believes my rape does not matter since I’m a man. I need to just shut up and listen to women because men do not count. It is so sad that anything… Read more »
You couldn’t be more wrong , I have known her for over 20 years, she would fight for you too. Read the piece again , she speaks a a woman because she is one, this could have been easily written by a man with some pronoun changes and has the same message, fight for the one you love
Gretchen Kelly believes that men are responsible for the every problem in a relationship. It is clear she hates men and thinks women are better.
“She will feel alone, long before you do.” Are you really sure about that? Why do you think so many men seem to stop trying to fight for the relationship, stop trying to bring up what’s important to them, what kind of relationship they want? Are we just stupid and lazy by default? I don’t know but I have a hunch that I think applies to at least some of them. Becoming a “yes” man means that he’s got used to not being heard. Not because he wanted to, not because he didn’t try, but because the agenda is set… Read more »
Gretchen, it is time to hold women more accountable.
Agreed. Men do so much more in this age : housework, gardening, looking after kids – stuff that our fathers never did. And women have careers, and rightly so. You can’t just lay the problems at the guy’s door – in this new age both men and women have to make forays into areas that were previously the other’s domain 2 keep the relationship fresh.
Really powerful. In fact, it hurt a little to read this. But you know what they say about the truth <3
In a bygone era, women, as housewives, were a disposable commodity. Once their usefulness was expired a man could simply leave her, buy a corvette, sport a comb-over, and find a little tart that fell in love with his penis-mobile and fulfill all the sexual fantasies that he had not achieved in marriage-mostly because his wife spent 90 percent of her life exhausted from doing everything else. Yes, he may have been also. Yes, his dreams may have not matched with reality, but he went in seeking a façade that could not possibly be maintained. Men left women because it… Read more »
Powerful, true stuff! A couple years late for my marriage, but hopefully it will help others.
Wow, another article on GMP that assumed that women are always right and men are always wrong. I am tired of women not being held accountable for the errors they make in marriage. I am sure this author would automatically blame me for my wife’s violence and assume it was my fault for the divorce. This is an outrageously offensive article that does not show any compassion for men’s experiences. I thought this website was supposed to help men but it is clear the purpose is actually to bash them and make them feel like lesser beings.
Thank you – this is just what I needed : )
This is so beautiful. It put my feelings into words that I have so desperately been trying to convey over the years…..and now there is the silence and the ache.
Amanda,
May I ask if your husband has asked that you do any thing to make the relationship work better for him? Has he ever stated what his needs were? Do you know what his needs are? Have you EVER asked him what his needs are AND how you can meet them?
“The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.” – JACK LONDON As I read this piece, this quote by novelist and author Jack London kept coming to mind. I will come back to this.. The author is sharing the perspective of a floundering marriage from the female perspective. As usual, men are the blame for all that is wrong with lousy marriages, women lives, and anything else you wish to throw in (broken toilets, cancer, air pollution, road kill, etc). But,… Read more »
Actually, if you go back and read it, I specifically said that you (the men) should tell her what you need from her. That you should call her out if she isn’t fighting for you. That you should insist that she fix her issues that negatively affect the relationship. I (being a woman) naturally wrote this from a woman’s perspective. And because the “Sudden Divorce Syndrome” and the statistics I quoted seemed to suggest that a woman’s perspective could shed some light for the men who have been “blindsided.” I think shaming and dismissing anyone’s feelings, man or woman, is… Read more »
“Actually, if you go back and read it, I specifically said that you (the men) should tell her what you need from her. That you should call her out if she isn’t fighting for you. That you should insist that she fix her issues that negatively affect the relationship.” Yes, as I stated…you devoted about 3-4 sentences to this. Yes, women do file 70% of the divorces in America. So what? There was a piece in Huff Post several years ago where 50% of married women stated they did not love their husbands AND knew so on their wedding day.… Read more »
The death knell of every relationship is when the woman decides intimacy (not sex but the emotional and spiritual intimacy of a connected marriage, without complaining about the small shit such as toilet seats, toothbrushs, the trash, and on and on) with her husband is at the bottom of the priority list. When men don’t have that then the woman just becomes another stressor in their day.
Having watched my parents marriage, I know for a fact that men can have their own issues with intimacy and not making themselves vulnerable and open enough for true intimacy. When you claim that “every relationship” has problems because of something the woman does, you display a huge prejudice. Had you been brace enough to admit that both men and women contribute to intimacy issue, it would have been a different story.
Hello Erin.. OK. You make a fair point…as does the author. But, just what is it that is so wrong today that women cannot even admit that they can be equally at fault for the demise of a relationship? This is the issue I have with so many of these types of pieces, especially here on GMP. The tone of this piece is one of lecturing to men. It presupposes that we men are the cause of her unhappiness just because SHE asserts as much. DJ made a very fair and pretty objective observation. He got NO reply from Gretchen.… Read more »
Women are prone to the same human failings as men. I see tons of men and women alike who have a hard time admitting that they are responsible and at fault for the demise of their relationships. Admitting these thins makes us feel out of control and vulnerable. So men and women alike find it easier to blame the other or to always ask for the other gender what they can not do themselves. I see so many men on GMP push back against pretty much any article written by a woman or one that asks them to consider a… Read more »
Congrats to you. Your reply made the “Comment of the Day” Where did I say married women were takers Erin? I expressly said people who were entitled, be they men or women, are not givers. They are always takers. All people fall short of God’s perfection. There are no perfect humans. I think the reason there is so much push back here on GMP Erin by us men is that there is so much negativity directed at us men here. There is nothing wrong with constructive criticism. Mature adults can handle constructive criticism. Too much of what comes at men… Read more »
Ugg..sorry for all the typos. I’ve been using an iPad lately. I guess I thought that was what you where saying about women being takers since you talked about the sacrifices husband make. I actually don’t think people are handling constructive criticism. That’s the exact problem. And believe me, I see it with women too when I visit other spaces with more women. Not just here…but I see it here too. An article addressing men about their wives takes nothing away from the issues men face in turn. I get the impression that you see this article as taking away… Read more »
Women definitely contribute to problems in marriages. It is not just men.
Did I not say that men and women are both responsible in my last sentence? Why are acting as if I didn’t? I was not the one that claimed that men only contribute to issues in relationships. It was Ted who made the blanket statement that women alone are responsible for the death of a relationship.
Way to generalize. I read this article nodding my head because the ongoing issue I have in my marriage is that I would like more intimacy, including sex. And yes we have sat down and discussed this many times.