The Secret Reason Some Couples Feel Lonely in Marriage

One of the great pains that a person can experience is to feel lonely in a marriage. In principle at least, a marriage is supposed to be not only a relationship but an intimate relationship or perhaps the quintessential intimate relationship. And then to feel less than that or even the opposite of that to feel disconnected, isolated is incredibly painful for uh for anyone who experiences it. Now there are many many reasons why that can be your situation how it how that came to pass but I want to speak about one cause which is the reason I'm speaking about this now not that it applies to everyone and you may realize this is not your situation and if it is I'm sorry you can click away and find something else but one cause why people feel very alone in their marriage and it's very common a rel I I would say it's relatively common and it's never talked about like people don't even I think most people don't even know this is a thing is when there is a not lack of compatibility like you're thinking of lack of compatibility like you know uh I want to go for uh pizza and you want to go for Chinese food that's not what I mean lack of compatibility what I mean is two people are wired differently wired training neurologically. Okay? I'm not a doctor, not a a neurologist, not a psychiatrist. So, everything I'm saying here when I when I use words like neurological wiring, I I mean it in the most colloquial sense, but what I mean is this. Listen, we all know that different people are wired differently as far as like the types of things they pick up on. Some people are more, let's say, linguistically gifted. Other people struggle with words. Some people have like an artistic eye where they they are very keen with with with aesthetics. Other people are clueless about that kind of stuff. Okay. So, everyone's wired a little bit differently. Now, imagine you have a situation where you have a person who's wired for what we would often call introversion. Meaning to say like this um typical profile of such a person, highly sensitive. Okay. So that means they have incredible intuition which is often a very like attractive feature of theirs like this spooky uh ability to pick up on things and intuitive and uh like almost like ESP, right? But then like along with that is this incredible sensitivity to like I can't be in a room with too many people. Uh I I have no patience for small talk and chitchat. they just get drained just from regular human interactions. Um, you know, that that type of profile also could even be like sensorial sensitivities like um, you know, the tag in my shirt is bothering me. And I'm not talking about a kid. I'm talking about like a full grown adult being like orary because uh, my tag is bothering. Okay. So, you have like that's and that's a way that a person's wired. In other words, what I'm saying is that's not like a choice. That's not like somebody is choosing to be that way. They're literally wired that way. That's what their brain and nervous system is like. All right. And then let's say you have that person is married to someone who is either of the opposite extreme, meaning what we'd call conventionally an extrovert. So they thrive on being with people. They they really enjoy social interactions. It energizes them. It fills them. They enjoy the chitchat for them. like the the meaningless there's a judgment you my bias is showing but like to them it's not meaningless you know the house's the weather conversations those that's very meaningful to them because that's the way they they experience connection. Um at any rate so imagine you have two people wired the opposite way and now they're married and how do they get married in the first place? Well, you know, there's a lot of ways that people end up with each other. And you know, unfortunately or fortunately, it's a lot easier to get married than it is to stay married. So, a lot of you have a lot of odd couples. In other words, like people you wouldn't expect to be together, but they're together for for whatever reason. But now, what happens is like this. They're wired differently. They have two totally different energy levels, two totally different ways of experiencing and processing reality. Um, so they have completely different and it's not just enough that you're talking about a man and a woman. That's different enough already. Okay, talk about differently wired, but you have on top of that this whole level of we are literally experiencing two completely different realities because you're seeing it in your way. Not and I don't just mean that that every two people are different from each other, which is also true. I mean that you have somebody who is wired for needing quiet, uh being easily overstimulated, um being very in their head on one side and then you have another person who's wired for social interaction and connection and and and and talking about feelings and now these two people are supposed to make each other feel loved. So what do you think happens? I'll tell you what happens is that at first both of them have the best of intentions and they're trying to connect to each other but because they speak different languages they end up being very disappointed very frustrated and after a while they stop trying and after a while could be few months could be a few years but eventually they they it's not worth the heartbreak. Every time I try to express myself, you look at me like I'm a Martian, right? Um it's almost like you know the story of the Tower of Babel when uh after the flood. So humanity wanted to protect itself from a future flood. So they built the tower and it says that that uh what happened is that because this wasn't a a very u righteous project. It was actually it was a heretical project. They wanted to fight God. So they uh so God undermined the whole plan. What did he do? He made them have different languages. So on the building project, somebody would say, "Hand me a hammer." But in his language, that meant a screwdriver. And the guy asked for a hammer and he would hand him a screwdriver and he'd be like, "Hey, idiot. Can't you you didn't don't you don't even know what I asked you for?" And they'd start fighting. You know how stressed out people are on job sites, right? It's always a fist fight at every constructions, you know, and that's when they speak the same language. So, at any rate, why am I saying this? Um, imagine you're in a marriage and someone is saying in their language, I love you. I care about you. I want to connect to you. But in your language, that's not at all what it sounds like. Now, you're going to say, when does that happen? Well, I'll give you a perfectly good example. Perfectly good example. Somebody says to their spouse, "Good morning." Yeah. Go on. No, no, no. That was it. That was my example. Now, don't get I'm not trying to trigger you. Don't get enraged. And I'm not sure which side of this uh discussion you fall on, but do you know that for some people, good morning actually is a declaration of love or or at the very least of I care about you. You're you you you you are important to me and to other people it's a confusing statement. What does that mean? Are you telling me to have a good morning? Are you saying it's a good morning? I I'm tired. I'm trying to get out of the house. I didn't have my coffee yet. Is this like some social ritual? What what am I meant to respond? What is what is good morning? What what information are you sharing with me? And you would say good morning anyway. So it sounds kind of prefuncter. It doesn't sound like there's any real new information being shared over here. And so you're watching me and you're saying, "That's infuriating." Well, yeah, it is. You're right. That's why I'm making this video. That is infuriating. When one person is saying, "I care about you. I'm going to be thinking about you today." That's what they mean. And the other person is hearing, "I'm here to bore you and confuse you while you still haven't even fully woken up." Okay, that's now I just gave an example where the um I haven't really given labels or names to these people. I could call it neurode divergent and neurotypical. I could um yeah for convenience sake. So if you want to call it that, the person who says good morning is the more neurotypical person. The person who's confused and annoyed by that is the neurode divergent person. All right? So I gave you an example where the neurotypical person was was trying to express care and consideration and love and warm feelings. The neurode divergent person was totally just clueless about it. But I'll flip it now. I'll flip it. I'll give you another example. Uh a spouse comes the other spouse and says, "Want to know something fascinating? Um do you know that um the GMPP of um I don't know of Rapaet is uh larger I don't know some geeky fact that they just found out that they're geeking out on right or did you know that there are 200 different species of uh codfish I'm making up random stuff. Okay. Now, for one person, and don't get infuriated, and don't get triggered, and don't get mad at me, okay? Especially this reminds you of your life, okay? Not don't shoot the messenger. For one person, when they're sharing with you there's 200 different species of codfish in the in the North Sea, that means, "Hey, I think you're cool. I like you. I want to tell you cool stuff and vibe with you." to the other person. It's I What are they hearing? They're hearing, "I haven't said hello to you. I haven't asked you how's your day, and I'm ramming a bunch of useless, weird information down your throat, and I don't even care if it's interesting to you." So obviously someone's going to get their feelings hurt if not both parties because one person there is making an overture. They think they are making an overture for connection. The other person is not fe reading it that way. They're reading it like an intrusion or and then so they shut it down and they're like yeah okay whatever. Yeah. Okay. They show that they're not really so excited about this. Well, eventually the other party says, "All right, they don't say it out loud, but they think in their mind like,"All right, well, I tried to connect with you. You didn't think it was very interesting. You shut me down. So, how how often can I be the fool? How often do you want me to put myself out there?" And they just, you know, retreat to their little uh lair and that's it. And immerse themselves in work or in hobbies or in technology. That's a big one nowadays. If the people in my real life are not responding to me, okay, fine. So, there are screens and I'll just go immerse myself in the screens and the algorithm is pretty darn good at figuring out what's interesting to me and you know, so there you go. And then the isolation becomes even more cemented in this relationship. So, if you're still with me, you may, you know, if you're still with me by this at this point, you probably are one of these two parties of this marriage. Um, either you're the person who is the neurodeivergent or introverted or whatever you want to call it, sensitive person, and you're frustrated because you're trying to connect, but the other person doesn't understand what connection is. or you're the neurotypical or extroverted person uh and you're feeling super lonely because you don't understand why this other person doesn't do normal things like say good morning and stuff like that or how was your day uh and why they won't go to uh why why they won't do fun things with you like you want to go to hey so and so's having a picnic let's go oh I don't like picnics it's too sunny and the ants and I don't like the wind. The breeze bothers me and then I'm going to have to talk to people and I don't like it's it's weird for me to eat a sandwich while sitting on a wooden bench. That's just it. You want do you want peanut butter and jelly? We could just make peanut butter jelly here and sit in the kitchen. It' be nicer and the air conditioning is nice, right? And you're like, "Well, that wasn't really a point. I wanted to go hang out in the park." Oh, but it's too hot to go to the park. Okay, so let's not dwell on the problem. Let's talk about the solution. The solution is well you have you have a couple of directions you can go. One is you can give up on your marriage. That's an option. Two is you can stay in it but just give up on ever finding fulfillment. You can say okay so it is what it is. The third thing is and I hope that you'll consider this. I think this is the best option. I do have a preference. I think option three is the best is to say can I learn to speak Martian. I call it Martian because it's like completely foreign language. It's not even like if you are a native English speaker and you learn to speak Mandarin because like that's at least two human languages, right? No, I'm talking about Martian. Now I learned to speak Martian. I don't know. I don't know if that's how they speak Martian. Imagine it like the AOL dialup sounds like the modem connecting. Can you learn to speak Martian? Because here's the thing. Hashem, God Almighty, in his infinite wisdom, makes matches and he puts people together. And you have to think that part of the reason why Hashem would put two people together who are so differently wired is not to torture them and make them be lonely in their marriage, but perhaps to give them an opportunity to become bilingual. So what I would encourage you to do is to first at least open up the empathy portal in your brain to start to think about the fact that it is possible that your spouse has been making well if if you're not ready to even consider this possibility then you're probably nothing more I have to tell you but at least consider the possibility that your spouse who you think has rejected you and is cold and has shut down and all that stuff. While that may be partially true, I want you to consider the fact that it is also probably true that they have made countless efforts, overtures, attempts to engage you, but they were speaking a foreign language and it was lost on you. So, you didn't know they were engaging you. You thought maybe even they were ignoring you. You're going to say, "No, no, no. They were really ignoring me." Well, at a certain point they're kind of ignoring you because they've attempted so many times to engage. They didn't know your language. You didn't know their language. So then they kind of gave up. So there is some truth to that that they're ignoring you because but it's not as a punishment. It's not like silent treatment. It's like um exhaustion. It's like I don't even know what to do here. I've tried everything and I get no response. Well, yeah. And that's where it remains. For most people, that's just where it remains. And they just remain disappointed and frustrated for the rest of their lives. But I can tell you from personal experience that I've seen in many many cases where if you can even begin to consider the fact that the other person has been making attempts to connect to you and that you can then start to realize that they are completely differently wired and what constitutes connection meaningful connection to them is very different than what constitutes meaningful connection to you um then things can change. I I had a conversation recently with someone who um it was interesting because this is typically typical in most cases you'll hear a a husband will a wife will complain about a husband in this way but in this case the husband complain about the wife and said she doesn't go out she doesn't socialize she doesn't like to have fun all she does is work and uh that's the only thing that she gets excited about is her work and he says I'm feeling lonely and bored so So I said, "Okay, well, you know, you have the option, like I said, you have three options. You could end it and walk away. Another option is you could stay in it and just accept that you're going to be lonely. Option three is learn her language." I said, "If you really want connection, if you're sincere about that, go talk to her about something that she finds interesting." He's like, "What?" I said, "Her work. You told me she's interested in her work. So go talk to her about her work." The guy laughed. He's like, "But like that's that's the thing that's like that's the wedge. That's the thing that's taking her away from from our marriage." Well, no. It it's not taking her away. You got to understand something. Nobody will will repeatedly, willingly, repeatedly engage in activities that they are terrible at. People just do what they're good at. That's okay. You force yourself here and there to do the things you hate, but for the most part, where are you going to put your most time and energy and focus and the things that you're good at? I said, so she's good at her job. So that's why she comes alive when she talks about her job. Now, she's not good at connecting with her husband. That's why she naturally doesn't put forth a lot of energy there. She's kind of exhausted, disappointed, probably very disappointed with herself. You want to connect with her. You say that you purport to want to connect with her. So, I got a great idea for you. Instead of forcing her to smoo about small talk, which she's not interested in, and she's not good at that. She doesn't know how to do that. She doesn't know how to play that game, go to her and talk to her about the job. And in fact, I said, there's no games here. Everything can be very transparent and above board. You can go to her and say to her, "Honey, I'm not inherently interested in your job, but I want to be close to you because your job is important to you and it's an area where you shine and I find you fascinating. I want to hear about your job because it tells me about you. It lets me know more about you." And then let her geek out and talk about her job. But then at least she knows that the reason that it's interesting to you is because you're getting a connection to her and you're actually teaching her to be bilingual. So um takes a lot of patience, takes a lot of selflessness, especially because the pain, the trauma of feeling neglected and alone is so difficult to bear. But if you can rise above that, put that aside for a while and try to let go of expectations, let go of the rules, the unwritten rules that you have about what constitutes valid connection and learn the way that your spouse is ready to connect. I can tell you that I've seen miracles, wonderful people who are married for even 20, 30, 40 years who really thought they were completely irrevocably entrenched in a negative pattern of lack of fulfillment and they became bilingual and they learned how to understand each other's worlds and found great satisfaction. So try it out. Let me know if uh if this works for you.