Walking on Eggshells in Your Marriage? Where to Start

The house is quiet, the kind of quiet where you’re listening for footsteps and trying to read the mood before anyone says a word. If there’s something you need to bring up, you either let it go, or you rehearse it in your head until you’ve found the safest way to say it.

A lot of the couples who come into my office describe home just like that. One spouse has learned to measure every word. Requests come out as questions: “Hey, I was thinking about this. Would you like to do that? How would you feel about it?” And somewhere in all that checking in, they ask “Are you okay?” more times than they can count.

If that sounds like your house, I’m sorry you’ve been living that way. Most people don’t end up here overnight, and they usually get here for understandable reasons.

I know some of this from the inside. There have been times I’ve walked on eggshells with my wife and with other people, too. Part of that is a fear of rejection. I really want to be heard and seen, and I don’t want someone to think what I’m saying is wrong or bad, or to misread it. I don’t like conflict, because I like to be liked. So when I think someone may not take something well, it’s hard for me to bring it up.

It shows up in business, too. I’ve second-guessed how to say something to an employee and taken a really long time to write one email. I’ve wondered whether to share a story with friends because I didn’t want them to think I was too self-absorbed. And I’ve had things I needed to bring up with a family member. It wasn’t that they’d done anything bad. We just preferred something different, and I wanted them to understand how it affected us.

The hard part is that holding back can make me seem less forthright and open than I am. I love being open. I’d like to be more open and transparent. I just don’t always like the reaction I might get.

I don’t think I’m alone in that. Everybody wants to be connected and liked. It’s human nature. We all wish we could say what we want and have the other person understand it well, so we don’t get seen as wrong. We all want to be accepted and to just be ourselves. But ourselves isn’t always good or selfless, and sometimes we are wrong.

That’s not the same as living with a spouse who blows up. But I understand the pull to stay quiet when you really want to stay connected.

How did we get here?

It’s rarely one big blowup. It usually starts early in the relationship. You brought something up, and your spouse got really defensive, got mad, yelled, or threw something. Then it happened again. Each time, things eventually calmed down and went away, and nobody came back to deal with it. It got brushed under the rug.

Over time, that becomes the pattern. I’ve had spouses tell me, “I’ve tried to bring it up every way I can think of, and every time it fails. I’ve tried the same way over and over, and it fails.” By the time they get to my office, a lot of them have given up. They aren’t trying to fix anything anymore. They’re trying to hold onto the status quo so there’s some kind of peace.

That’s the phrase I hear most often: “I just want peace.”

Why the quiet doesn’t bring peace

The hard part is that going quiet usually doesn’t get you the peace you’re after.

When things never get resolved, your spouse isn’t getting what they want either. So they get frustrated with you for going quiet. They fuss, they nag, and they get louder, trying to get some kind of response. You pull back even more to keep things calm, and they push harder. Neither of you is being heard, and the cycle keeps feeding itself.

Your spouse can often feel it, too. They can sense the fear and the holding back, even if neither of you ever names it. You end up living side by side, a lot like roommates, with the things you both care about sitting unspoken between you.

And since nothing ever gets resolved, it really does feel like you have to walk on eggshells. You’re never heard, and the things that matter never get settled. That’s the frustration.

Is this just hard, or is it unsafe?

Before we talk about what to do, I need to ask something important. For some people, walking on eggshells means a frustrating marriage that’s stuck. For others, it means something that isn’t safe. Those need different next steps.

As a therapist, these are some of the things I’m looking for:

• Are objects being thrown?
• Have hands been put on anyone?
• Is screaming and yelling a regular thing, not a once-in-a-while thing?
• Is there a lot of contempt (mocking, name-calling, talking down to you), not just a critical word here or there?
• Is there control, like checking your phone, restricting money, or cutting you off from friends and family?
• Is it getting more intense over time, and is it moving from words toward anything physical?

Control is worth paying attention to. It’s usually driven by fear underneath, and that fear needs to be understood. But it can also be a warning sign of more aggressive behavior down the road, and it can leave you feeling unsafe in your own home. If that’s part of what you’re living with, my post on trust vs. control goes deeper.

If you’re seeing those signs, your safety comes first. When there’s physical violence, I usually won’t see a couple together, because I don’t want the session to trigger more of it. I’ll meet with each person individually first. That individual work focuses on emotional regulation and boundaries, with a clear structure I ask them to stick to consistently.

If you don’t feel safe, have a plan for leaving and know who you’ll call. Get help for yourself, even if your spouse won’t. Part of that work is learning to say your boundaries out loud and deciding what outcomes will follow if they’re crossed. When it’s safe to do so, share those outcomes with your spouse ahead of time, so they know the reason when you follow through.

If you’re afraid for your safety, you can reach the National Domestic Violence Hotline any time at 1-800-799-7233, or text START to 88788.

Do you know what you want?

If your marriage is stuck rather than unsafe, this is where I start. And it’s a hard one. If you’ve been the one giving in for a long time, you may not even know what you want anymore. You’ve spent so much energy figuring out what your spouse wants that you’ve neglected yourself and forgotten.

So I ask people: what do you actually want? What do you care about? What do you like, and what don’t you like? Then we look at whether those things are reasonable and healthy, and whether they’re worth working toward. Usually the answer is that you should get at least some of them.

From there, it means not just saying yes anymore. It might sound like, “Hey, I have some things that I want, but I’m willing to listen to you and hear you out. I want to make sure we’re both getting our needs met, and that we figure out what would be most helpful for both of us.”

It also means letting your yes be yes and your no be no. That’s an integrity issue. When you say yes and don’t really mean it, it shows up later. The outcome: You don’t follow through, your spouse wonders why everything is so hard, and when they find out you never really agreed, it becomes a trust issue.

So at the end of the day, I encourage people to be direct. Say clearly, “This is what I want.” Even if your spouse doesn’t accept it, at least they know it, and at least they’ve heard it. A spouse who cares about you will often start to open up to it, even if they didn’t like hearing it in the moment.

I’ve had several spouses tell me something like, “He finally told me what he wanted because he got mad. I didn’t react well. But when I went back and thought about it, I started trying to do what he asked.” Being direct helped, even when it came out the hard way. It goes a lot better when it doesn’t have to come out that way.

Your voice matters

If you’ve been quiet a long time, it’s easy to start believing your voice doesn’t count. It does. You have real value.

I believe God created everybody to chip in and make the world a better place, and one voice was never meant to be enough. That’s true in your marriage, too. Your voice matters in parenting and in making sure the goals you set are met together. It shouldn’t be one person’s goals, one person’s ideas, or one person’s thoughts. You should both want to listen to one another.

Where to go from here

If you’ve been walking on eggshells, figuring out what you want is the first step. The next one is learning how to bring it up in a way that gives your spouse a better chance to hear you. I walk through that in How to Bring Things Up When Your Spouse Gets Angry.

If you’ve tried everything you can think of and you’re still stuck, it may be time to bring in someone outside the two of you. Coaching works best for people who want to change and are moving forward but feel a little stuck. I work with couples and individuals through coaching, wherever you live.

If the safety signs earlier in this post fit your marriage, please start with individual counseling with a licensed therapist where you live. If you’re in Georgia or South Carolina, our counseling team at Legacy can help.

What’s one thing you want that you haven’t said out loud in a while?