11 subconscious signs your husband is pulling away

Things just aren’t the same anymore.

You used to be each other’s world, but now you have a feeling that your husband is pulling away.

He’s different from the one you exchanged “I dos” with and you’re worried he’d break up with you soon.

I know it’s scary but you shouldn’t panic. You can still do something to pull him back in. You just have to spot the subtle signs and take the necessary steps sooner.

To help you along, here are 10 subconscious signs that your husband is indeed pulling away from you.

1) He hasn’t been making the first move lately.

There’s no two ways about it. He’s become a lot more passive in your relationship lately. Every time you interact with him, it’s because you took initiative first.

You’re the one planning the dates.

You’re the one thinking of what movie to watch.

You’re the one giving gifts and massages.

Sure, the two of you might still talk and hang out with each other a lot. But you get this gut feeling that if you stop making the first move and instead wait for him to act, he won’t do anything.

You’ve been carrying the relationship for a while now. You know that if you stop putting in effort, you might as well be roommates.

It’s especially alarming if he used to always be the active one in your relationship.

His mind and heart is probably elsewhere. They can be in his work, his hobbies, or —god forbid—another girl.

But be careful. You have to look at the context before you start accusing him of being unloving. It’s possible that he’s just lazy or he’s going through something.

2) He’s now always “busy”.

It takes him ages to reply to your texts, and he says he’s busy but deep inside you know it’s not really true.

You know your man for a long time so you know when he’s actually busy and when he’s just using it as an excuse.

You saw him give this excuse to others a million times in the past, so you know when it’s just BS.

Maybe you’ve even figured out when he’d be free to chat. But he doesn’t respond on those times either. He just leaves you on read now.

And it’s not just texting, he uses the same excuse to everything—from your request that he comes home early so you can cook together to your date nights.

Again, this alone isn’t necessarily enough of a sign that he’s pulling away. After all, maybe he’s just lazy. Some men get lazy when they’re comfortable with the relationship.

However, if he’s the type of guy who has always prioritized you and now it seems like he’s finding ways to be away from you, something’s up.

3) The relationship is no longer his priority.

It’s unrealistic to think that you and his relationship with you will be his priority all the time. He still has a life of his own to live, after all.

However, that doesn’t mean it’s okay when he puts your relationship as the last priority!

It might be fine if he’d rather hang out with some friends he hadn’t seen a while instead of staying at home with you to watch another crime documentary.

But it’s not fine when you’ve been planning a get-away somewhere fancy for something important—like for your anniversary—and he would cancel it because he has something else to do which you know isn’t really urgent.

4) He shuts you down with little provocation.

You aren’t exactly sure of when it started, but you feel like you have to walk around eggshells around him lately.

It feels like the smallest thing can set him off and get him ignoring you or walking away at best. At worst, he’d pick a fight with you.

You don’t even have to say anything controversial. If anything, you feel like you haven’t even said anything at all. It’s almost like he had come to hate the very sound of your voice.

The most probable reason why your man is like this is because he had come to resent you. It happens if the two of you have a history of getting into fights or arguments over a lot of things.

Sometimes it could be because he had expected you to act or think in a certain way, and he was exposed to ideas that made him resent what he expected of you.

5) He gets snarky and critical about the things you do.

He always seems to have something to say about you.

If you say you’ve been going to the gym, he’d make a joke about how you’ll just break a disc by being there.

If you say you’re making a cake, he might say that you should have someone make sure the house doesn’t catch on fire.

He might play it off as him being playful, and he might even call you out for being “sensitive” if you complain.

But here’s the thing. This is a sign that your husband is growing more and more distant to you emotionally. A man who truly cares about his partner will hate it when she’s hurt, and will quickly apologize if he did something to offend her.

Even worse, if he always seems to have something harsh to say about you—no matter how jokingly he says it—then chances are that he resents you.

When contempt has already entered your marriage, it’s time to reset it.

It’s not easy to do, especially if you’ve been together for a while.

If you want to start fixing your marriage,  I highly recommend a course called Mend the Marriage.

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When my marriage started to crumble right before my eyes, I panicked. I thought there’s no way we can go back to how things were. But I was wrong.

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6) He wants to change you.

You used to be perfect in his eyes, but now, it’s like he wants to change you so he can be happy.

He even compares you with others!

He makes remarks like “why can’t you be like your best friend?” or “you are now becoming crazy like Lisa.”

And it hurts. Nobody likes being compared with others. Or, at least, to be compared in a negative light.

This is a sign of disillusionment. He has some needs that remain unfulfilled and, instead of trying to understand exactly what that is, and then trying to talk it over with you properly, he instead makes these comparisons.

He either doesn’t care about how you feel, or he didn’t think that it might hurt you. He has pulled away so far already that it didn’t cross his mind to think about you.

Your husband is starting to get unhappy in your marriage and he’s trying to find a reason to stay. He’s no longer content with who you are and he’s expressing it to you hoping that you’d change.

This is heartbreaking.

Here’s what you should do: Don’t bend over backwards and change who you are just to keep him, especially if it’s something you don’t consider a bad trait. The way you dress, the way you talk, the way you laugh should be decided only by you.

However, if you think he has a point—let’s say you ruined his trust because you don’t follow through on your promises or you keep getting drunk every night—then you have to make those changes now before it’s too late.

How?

Earn back their trust by showing him that you can change.

If you want some help with what to say, check out this quick video now.

Relationship expert Brad Browning reveals what you can do in this situation, and the steps you can do (starting today) to save your marriage.

7) He keeps on asking for solo time.

Some people think that being together all the time is a perfect way to keep yourselves from drifting apart. Unfortunately, that couldn’t be any further from the truth.

All of us need some time to ourselves to recharge and keep in touch with our sense of being, or else we’ll end up getting bored of the relationship and resenting our partners.

There’s no hard rule defining how much me-time we all need, since different people have different needs. Nut for sure, you already know how much me-time is normal for your husband.

If he prefers to do more things solo than usual—he goes on a solo trip to Vietnam or he doesn’t take you to parties he’s invited to anymore—something is up.

This is a sign that he needs to take a break from YOU.

Ask yourself why. Have you been fighting a lot lately? Has your relationship gone stale?

If everything seems okay and yet he’s suddenly hungry for me-time, it could be a sign he’s interested in someone else.

8) He doesn’t seem to be listening anymore.

He doesn’t seem to give a damn anymore.

When you comment on your favorite TV show, he just gives a forced laugh, then moves on.

When you share your problems, he’ll say “You’ll figure it out.”, then moves on.

When you tell him about your day, he switches on the TV to watch football.

There are many reasons why this might happen.

It could be that there’s something distracting him, or maybe he’s angry at you for whatever reason and it’s his way of revenge.

It could also be a sign that he simply no longer cares for you as much as he used to.

Sadly, it’s hard to get the attention of a man who has reached this point. Nonetheless, don’t stop trying. Try to find a way to sit down with him and see if you can breach the topic of him having his head all the way up in the clouds.

If this won’t work, don’t nag or point a finger.

You can’t force someone to pay attention to you the way you want to. Just keep talking like usual and one day, when all your other issues are fixed, things will be the same again.

9) He’s become reluctant about opening up.

Men don’t always like to share their emotions. All too often, society expects for them to be strong and “manly”, whatever that means. Other men laugh at them for being vulnerable, and some women even join in on the jeering.

But most men open their hearts to their women.

When your husband had previously opened up to you then he suddenly begins to withdraw, then there’s something wrong.

It’s clear as day—he’s pulling away.

It could be that people he knows have heard about him being vulnerable to you and are bullying him for it. Maybe you laughed at him when he was baring his heart to you. Maybe he’s already found someone else to open his heart to.All things considered, you need to talk things through with him. If you had somehow hurt him, apologize and try to do better.

10) He’s stopped seducing you.

You know everything is alright when a couple can still flirt with each other.

You see, it’s pretty basic. When you’re no longer in love, it’s difficult to flirt. It feels forced and fake so no authentic person would fake flirt with their lover or spouse.

If you used to touch each other a lot, if you used to have a lot of great sex, and he stopped doing it, he’s probably not feeling it anymore.

It’s even clearer when you ask him into bed with you and he always has some sort of excuse to put it off— even if you wear the sexiest lingerie.

And when he does join you, the sex is boring and you’re left feeling completely unsatisfied…unloved.

Now, this isn’t necessarily because he has found another woman—even if you might think that’s why—but it does mean that there’s trouble in paradise.

11) He’s no longer playful.

Playfulness is, to me, the number one indicator of a healthy relationship.

Pet names, inside jokes, baby voices, cute surprises—these make the relationship fun. It also gives you a feeling that you’re living in your own world with your own language.

If he stops calling you pet names when he used to do it since the beginning of your relationship, then there’s no doubt about it. He is indeed pulling away.

Has he also stopped doing the cute things that make you laugh like maybe farting so loud in front of you?

Do you laugh less and less?

Is your relationship now starting to resemble the toxic couples in TV shows who just stay together for the kids?

If you say yes to all, then he’s definitely not as into your relationship as before.

Conclusion

It can be hard to see your husband pulling away.

These changes set in slowly, over a long period of time. They’ll creep into your relationship without you noticing them until you eventually get the feeling that things simply aren’t the same anymore.

So what do you do when you spot the changes?

You save the relationship.

Saving the relationship when you’re the only one trying is tough but it doesn’t always mean your relationship should be scrapped.

Because if you still love your spouse, what you really need is a plan of attack to mend your marriage.

When someone asks me for advice to help save failing marriages, I always recommend relationship expert and divorce coach Brad Browning.

Brad is the real deal when it comes to saving marriages. He is a best-selling author and dispenses valuable advice on his extremely popular YouTube channel.

The strategies Brad reveals in it are extremely powerful and might be the difference between a “happy marriage” and an “unhappy divorce”.

Watch his simple and genuine video here.