Understanding the Lonely Marriage
A lonely marriage doesn’t always look broken from the outside.
Often, it looks organized, even peaceful. But the peace is bought through her silence, through her over-functioning, through the unspoken agreements that she will absorb the emotional consequences of his passivity.
These women (usually) often live in a chronic state of quiet hypervigilance, not in danger, but always anticipating. They track moods, manage schedules, cushion the children, and fill in the gaps where emotional connection should be.
This creates what I call the functional freeze: she’s not in acute distress, but she’s not alive either. Her nervous system has adapted to a steady low-grade disconnection, which over time becomes her new normal.
Many women confuse unhappiness with loneliness. They’ll say, “I’m not even sure what’s wrong. He’s not mean, he just… isn’t there.” Helping you tease apart those nuances is essential to what I do. Unhappiness often points to circumstantial issues (stress, disconnection, routine). Emotional loneliness is existential, it’s about being unseen, unmirrored, and unheld in your most human moments.
When you name loneliness as the problem, we can begin working with the grief underneath, rather than chasing surface-level “marriage fixes.”
Common Presentations in Therapy
Clients in lonely marriages often present as:
Flat, fatigued, and self-blaming (“I should be grateful, he’s not awful”)
Hyper-functional and over-responsible
Emotionally intelligent but conflict-avoidant ( or has just given up bringing up the issues with her spouse).
Experiencing ambiguous grief, mourning the version of the marriage they hoped for
They may oscillate between guilt and resentment, self-doubt and longing.
The Invisible Weight: Emotional Labour & Mental Load
Much of your exhaustion comes from the invisible work of keeping the relationship afloat. Emotional labour includes:
Anticipating and managing your partner’s moods
Remembering and initiating communication
Organizing family logistics and emotional tone
Carrying the weight of repair after conflict
In many cases, you don’t even realize how much you’re holding. When we name it, when we say, “It sounds like you’re doing all the emotional heavy lifting”, something in clients’ bodies softens. That moment of validation is often the first brick out of the wall of shame they have built around the resentment.
My Tip:
Ask yourself, “If you stopped managing the relationship for one week, what do you imagine would happen?”
