What Does Abandonment Look Like After Decades of Marriage?

According to marriage research spanning decades, abandonment after years of marriage does happen. But what does that look like, and how do you know if you are abandoning your spouse or vice versa?

This article will help you identify whether you or your spouse is experiencing symptoms of abandonment in marriage. The good news is there is hope, even if you see yourself or your spouse in the following descriptions.

Three types of abandonment in marriage

Time

The first, and perhaps easiest, type of abandonment after decades of marriage is time.

It is easy to let the duties of life crowd out your partner’s interests and take over your ability to see him or her over time. A few things that can cause time abandonment are busy career schedules and overworking, parenting a challenging child, and conflicting priorities. One example is placing more importance on a personal hobby or friendship instead of your spouse.

One way to ensure you are not unconsciously abandoning your spouse is to ask yourself this question regularly: “Am I choosing a preferred activity or person over my spouse on a regular basis?” Another way to look at it is to recognize how many minutes a day you check in and talk to your spouse about something other than the business of marriage.

The business of marriage includes topics such as kids’ schedules, calendars, and financial updates. If you and your spouse spend your time talking exclusively about these matters, you’re both missing out.

Try to set a regular time each week when you can spend a few hours talking about something other than the kids’ schedules and calendars, daily chores, and household roles. Make sure you’re focusing on each other’s needs and wants, too. Taking an interest in each other’s emotions and having fun together regularly helps combat abandonment.

Emotional

A sneakier type of abandonment in marriage is emotional abandonment.

This time of abandonment is when one or both spouses neglect the other’s feelings, lose respect for their opinions, and generally disengage or forget to ask heart-level questions regularly.

It may be that your marriage struggled in this area for years, too. It’s particularly common when one or both spouses were raised in families of origin who had unhealthy emotional processing or neglected to acknowledge the importance of emotional intelligence.

Emotional neglect can look like one spouse dismissing the other spouse’s feelings regularly, not allowing the spouse to feel his or her feelings and express them in healthy ways, or avoiding conflicts and conversations that would bring up any uncomfortable emotions for either of them.

Another area where emotional abandonment can seep in is when a couple has lost a child. Depending on how they navigate their grief, they may not leave space or be emotionally equipped to help their spouse in healthy ways. If you recognize any of these patterns, it’s important to talk to a trusted counselor.

Your marital health is worth it, and it’s not beyond saving. But having a third party – especially a trained psychologist who understands how to help you process emotions better – is imperative to know how to explore the emotional chasm between you.

Communicative

This type of abandonment may seep into an otherwise healthy marriage over time if the couple isn’t intentional.

While every marriage experiences seasons when communication is difficult or slips through the cracks, the lasting effects of communicative abandonment can impact the other two areas: time and emotional neglect. It’s important to prioritize healthy communication between you and your spouse.

The difference between healthy communication and unhealthy communication may surprise you. Here’s an example. If you have a conflict with your spouse, you both sit down to talk it out, and one of you wants to come to a resolution right then but the other is fine with hitting “pause,” that alone would be difficult.

But when you add to it that the spouse who wants resolution grew up in a family of origin that didn’t meet their needs for emotional attachment, such as listening to her when she was upset or asking questions about why she was upset, it can cause her to react to her spouse’s need for more time or space in an unhealthy way.

She may have the unrealistic idea that her spouse should always be able to come to a resolution, or it indicates her lack of worth. She may try to “follow” him until he caves and continues to talk through the conflict to get to a point of resolution.

This may, in turn, cause him to deflect, avoid her, harbor resentment, or feel that she is being too clingy. This can lead to communicative abandonment.

Getting help

So, to avoid communicative abandonment or any other type, one of the best decisions any couple can make is to start meeting individually with a trained counselor.

Our offices have counselors who can help you as an individual as well as marriage therapists for couples. Reach out today to find someone who can help you work through any level of abandonment trauma.