Feeling Like Roommates in Your Marriage? How to Reconnect

When a couple who feels like roommates walks into my office, I can usually tell before anyone says a word. They sit pretty far apart. Their bodies are tense, and there’s a coldness between them you can almost feel.

Then one of them will say something like, “We can’t talk to each other anymore. We don’t do anything together. We come in, we go out, we pass each other. We’re more like roommates than husband and wife.”

If that sounds like your house right now, you’re not the only one. Many couples come into my office feeling the same way. And feeling like roommates is very lonely. You can share a bed with someone and still feel alone.

But there is hope. Most of the time, a couple like this has fallen into some patterns that just haven’t helped them feel connected. There’s usually hurt stacked up over the years too, and that can take time to heal. Sometimes couples wait longer than I wish they had to get help, and that can mean more to work through. But I’ve seen a lot of couples who felt exactly like this find their way back to each other.

How couples end up feeling like roommates

Here’s what I’ve noticed. Couples rarely drift apart because of one big blowup. It happens through a lot of small moments.

Let me give you a pretty typical story. It’s a blend of many couples I’ve sat with, not any one couple.

They’ve been married 20 or 30 years. Early on, they were happy, because it was all new and exciting. Then the kids came. As the kids grew, they ran into some hard things. They disagreed about parenting, and money got tighter as the family’s needs and wants grew. On top of that, it just got harder to keep up with everything.

They had a few fights and disagreements (or a lot of fights and disagreements), and they never really sat down and resolved any of them. They swept the hurt under the rug and kept going. Maybe they even felt happy for a while, but that hurt lingers. Unfortunately, when the next thing comes up, it piles on top of everything before it. After enough unresolved conflict and disconnection, you start to wonder if this person really cares about you, or if they even like you.

The result is that each of them starts pouring themselves into whatever makes them feel good.

Often it’s mom who pours herself into the kids. This makes sense. She labored to have them, and now it becomes a labor of love. And inevitably, kids love you back. They smile at you and want to be with you, and for a long time you can do no wrong as a mom. (That can change in the teenage years, and that’s often when she starts to feel the loneliness too.)

Dad may start to feel like he’s on the outside of that. Parents sometimes aren’t on the same page about parenting either. When he tries to discipline, mom steps in because she feels like the kids just need love. Then she tells him he needs to spend more time with them. In his heart, he feels like he’s trying, but he comes in as the bad guy, or the damage is already done. Or it flips, and mom’s working hard to get the kids to do the right thing while dad just gives them what they want, because he wants to be loved too. Now you’ve got a good cop, bad cop thing going.

It continues. Dad pours himself into work, because that’s where he hears “good job.” He feels respected and appreciated and capable at work. He isn’t getting that at home. He’s getting pushed away, and Mom’s too busy for him. Their sex life drops. They stop going on dates. When he pushes for time together, it seems to make her more aggravated, especially if she feels like he’s not helping around the house. Eventually he stops pushing and fills that space with work, or golf, or friends, or something else. That’s where he gets rewarded, and it feels good.

Again, sometimes it’s flipped. Dad may be the one pouring himself into the kids while mom finds her place at work. Either way, the pattern looks about the same.

Here’s the tricky part. They still feel connected sometimes, because they’re in the bleachers together cheering for the kids. That feels like a real family, and that’s what families are supposed to do. But the kids are in everything (sports, clubs, extracurriculars), which makes the whole family too busy, and there’s no time left for the two of them. Is either of them saying, “No, we’re not doing that. We’re going to spend time with each other instead”?

That’s just a glimpse of what happens with couples. You may see yourself in some of it, but not all of it. A roommate marriage can happen a lot of different ways. But typically couples drift apart because they get too busy and don’t have good boundaries around what gets their time. They start feeling lonely, frustrated, stressed, and hurt. So they pour themselves into things that make them feel better, which happen to be things that pull them even further in opposite directions.

What a bid for connection looks like

If couples drift apart in small moments, what’s great is that’s also how they can come back. Small moments of connection! This is where I love talking about an idea from Dr. John Gottman called bids and turning toward.

A bid is pretty much anything one of you does to try to interact with the other or get a response from your partner. At least that’s how I explain it.

The example I use is a little old school. It’s similar to one Gottman uses in older versions of his teaching on turning toward.

A couple is on vacation at a beach house. He’s at the breakfast table reading the newspaper, not really paying her any attention. She’s standing at the window with her coffee, looking out at the ocean, and she says, “Hey, look at that boat going by.”

That’s a bid. She probably doesn’t care if it’s an incredible boat. She just wants him to respond. She wants some interaction.

Now think about his possible responses on a spectrum.

On one end, he could say, “Woman, leave me alone. You’re always bugging me.” That’s turning against her, and it could be even worse than that. Who has said worse? Raise your hand. I know I can’t see your hand, but at least you can acknowledge it for yourself.

Another possible response is that he says nothing at all and keeps reading. That’s turning away.

But what does turning toward look like? What if he just said, “Huh,” or “What did you say?” That’s actually turning toward. It’s at least an acknowledgment that she said something. A better version would be putting the paper down, looking, saying “Wow,” and picking the paper back up. Those are small, but they’re all turning toward her.

Now let’s look at one more possibility. The husband could put the paper down, look out the window, get up from the table, walk over, and put his arm around her. Imagine he says, “Honey, do you remember that boat we were on during our honeymoon?” And they start talking about their honeymoon.

Almost anybody would say that last one is the response they’d want. When I teach couples this, it sometimes helps them finally see what it looks like to be engaged with each other at a much more intimate, connected level.

In a busy house, bids usually don’t look like boats. They look like a comment while you’re both unloading the dishwasher, or a text in the middle of the workday. When life is full, those get missed. And after years of missed bids, you can end up with two people who have stopped reaching for each other, or stopped responding when the other one does.

Please don’t think you’re alone in this. This is universal. I miss bids too. Sometimes my wife will come to me and start talking about something that’s on her mind, and instead of really hearing what she’s saying, I go straight to trying to fix it, or I get frustrated about the problem. She was reaching for me, and I missed it. A better response would have been to look her in the eyes and say, “That sounds hard. Let’s talk through it together.”

One person can start

If you’re struggling to make bids or respond to them well, don’t fret. We just need to start somewhere. Something I tell couples a lot is that one person can start changing the temperature in a marriage without waiting for the other one to go first.

Maybe you’ve seen the movie Fireproof, or the book that goes with it, The Love Dare. The husband’s marriage is falling apart. He’s been looking at pornography, and his wife has started getting close to a doctor at the hospital where she works. When he finds out, he’s angry, and he goes to his dad. And his dad basically asks him, ” What kind of husband have you been?”

That’s where things start to turn for him. He sits down and starts reflecting on his own stuff. He starts to acknowledge his own faults and says, “I’ve messed up. I’ve pushed her away, and I’ve hurt her.” He owns it, knowing it’s going to be hard. Then he chooses to start doing small things that show her he loves her no matter how she reacts. It becomes a 40-day challenge that he almost gives up on in the middle. The hope is that she’ll turn back toward him. But that’s not really the point. The point is his choice to love her anyway.

I’ve seen something like that happen in my office too. Recently I watched a husband start listening more to his wife and getting softer toward her. He started apologizing. He wasn’t doing it perfectly, and he still exploded every now and then. But you could see these little efforts of reaching out. She wasn’t accepting them or able to receive them yet, but he’s still making the effort. It’s still early in the game for them.

Going first usually means looking at yourself first, and that’s where a lot of people get stuck. What I see a lot is confusion. One spouse says, “I don’t understand why they’re so mad. Why do they react like that?” They keep their eyes on what the other person is doing instead of looking at their own thoughts and actions. When I can get them to say, “Okay, maybe I did do something. Maybe I could have been better,” that’s usually when things start to move. Even if they can do that a little bit, hope starts to rise.

If you’re the one who’s tired of reaching

Maybe you read about one person going first and thought, I’ve been doing that for years. I’m the one who keeps saying “look at that boat,” and nobody puts the paper down. I’m tired.

If that’s you, that makes sense. Being missed over and over wears you down. Sometimes people get to my office, and they just don’t have it in them anymore. I don’t blame them. Anyone would have little left after trying that long to keep going and keep giving grace.

What I tell them is this. I’ve seen many couples come in feeling exactly like you do, and I’ve seen those couples make it. It’s difficult, but they come back. It takes time. Your spouse may never really have been taught that they need to change, or shown how. And if y’all have been doing this for 20 or 30 years, that’s a very long time. Habits die hard, but they can be changed. Retraining your brains and healing all that hurt could take a while, though.

One thing I’ve learned over the years is that what usually keeps a tired spouse going is seeing real change, and seeing it fairly quickly. That doesn’t mean your spouse becomes brand new overnight. It looks more like the small things in this post. They put the paper down once (these days, that’s usually their phone). They come back to the conversation they said they’d come back to. Those small turns are often what give you enough hope to keep going while the deeper healing happens. It doesn’t mean you trust them yet, or believe the new behaviors will stick. It just means something different is happening.

So if you’re willing, I’d ask you to give it some real time. Not forever with nothing coming back. Real time, with help, while you watch for those small signs. It may be two steps forward and one step back at times, but as long as there’s consistent movement forward, that’s important to acknowledge.

There are some things you can do from your side too. You can stop reaching harder in the same way, and instead tell your spouse plainly how lonely you’ve been and ask for just one specific thing. “I miss you” is a lot easier to hear than another round of frustration. You can also take an honest look at your own part, the way the husband in Fireproof did, without taking all the blame. Owning your part isn’t the same as saying it’s all your fault. Remember, how you interact is part of a whole system of interactions between the two of you. Your partner may be doing most of the damage, but how you respond matters too.

And please don’t carry this alone. Turning toward each other is where reconnection starts, but years of hurt usually need some help to heal, because it can be hard to turn toward someone you don’t trust.

Finish the conversation

Remember the couple who kept sweeping things under the rug because they never had time to sit down and resolve them? A lot of that starts with conversations that get cut off and never picked back up.

Real life is going to interrupt you. The kids need something or the phone rings, and the conversation gets cut off. That’s okay. Have a lot of grace for each other in those moments.

The intentional part is coming back to it.

When one of you tries to connect and it’s a bad time, don’t just let it drop. Say something like, “Hey, I’m busy right now, but I really want to talk to you. Can we set a time tonight or tomorrow?” Then when that time comes, put your phones down, close the bedroom door, and really talk it out.

I also encourage couples to set up regular check-ins throughout the week, and regular date nights where the phones go away. This is really hard for couples who already feel disconnected. You already don’t talk. You already don’t feel close. That’s exactly why it has to go on the calendar. It may feel uncomfortable, but making yourselves sit down and spend time together is important. You might need a game or some conversation starters to get things going.

When that scheduled time comes, you have to follow through. A lot of the couples I work with struggle with trust because they don’t see follow-through. I had a couple recently where he told her, “Let’s talk about this later tonight.” Then they got into an argument; he didn’t want to talk anymore, and he never came back to it. To her, it felt like he didn’t care and wasn’t even trying to change. She even called him a liar. I don’t think I’d go that far, but that was her impression after he chose not to keep his word.

What he could have done was come back and say, “I know I said we’d talk tonight. But I’m really frustrated, and I don’t think it would be healthy to talk right now. We’d just end up in an argument. Can we have this conversation another night?” He’d still be following through and turning toward her, even while he’s frustrated.

Most couples don’t know to do that until someone tells them. They just don’t think about it.

Coming back from roommates

I had another couple recently where we went back through their past and looked at how they’d drifted. They’re doing much better now. The reason is that they’re being intentional. They’re choosing one another and turning toward each other’s bids, and they’re putting time together on the calendar and protecting it.

That’s what I want for you. A marriage where you feel connected again, where there’s affection and kindness and some joy and peace in your home. Where you don’t feel lonely anymore.

So let me leave you with a question. What would it look like to turn toward your spouse just once this week, even in a small way?