Over time as the marital spark wilts or fades away, a lot of married men feel stuck in a drab relationship – this kind of relationship is not loveless, it just suggests they are sort-of bored with their woman. And do you also feel that your husband has started to get bored with you after many years of marital life? And when your marriage has gone off track, you need to make a conscious effort to improve it.
If you have no idea what to do when your husband is bored with you, the 5 basic tips are given according to common reasons men feel bored in a marriage:
(1) Find things you enjoy doing together:
As a wife, responsibilities at home and work may easily eat into your time more often than not, so you may feel that you do not have enough time and energy to do things you two are interested in. Even sometimes a few moments of leisure you have, are eventually spent in planning for your next working days.
No doubt, you need to break such an isolated circle that is detrimental to the marital relationship. And there are a lot of things you can do to get out of this circle. Specifically, try to think of the past activities that you enjoyed doing together (in particular, think about the things that you and your man would like to do together at the beginning of your relationship), and select a few that you still can try to do from time to time and arrange them in advance; even if it seems no longer possible to spend enough time in doing something you used to enjoy doing together, you might as well make a compromise, for example, if it seems impossible to go for a hike every weekend, you can consider taking small walks together in parks nearby routinely.
(2) Stop being lazy about your physical appearance:
You can’t deny a fact – your appearance provides important cues to other people about your inner qualities, and physical appearance contributes to the attraction. However, it is quite common for a married woman to let herself go in her married life after several years of marriage. Yes, after marriage (especially after you have had your children), it is probably unrealistic for you to make yourself look like a supermodel; in this aspect, you are just advised to improve your appearance for him as much as possible.
If you always feel that there is no longer a need to care about your appearance in front of your husband, he may easily take your sloppy appearance as a wrong sign that you are no longer attracted to him and hence feel no need to look nice for him, or another wrong sign that he is not worth your attention (thus he may feel that you are a bit disrespectful to him if he thinks so).
Although physical attractiveness is not the most important for a happy marriage, it always matters and your husband still chooses to judge you, first by your appearance from time to time. Therefore, try to consider giving your appearance a boost if you admit that you have already neglected your appearance for a long time. As to your appearance, there are always things that you can improve. For example, you might pick up some pieces of clothing to get a fresh look (specifically, you might try to wear a sexy bra to make your outfit look way cuter in front of him, you might often wear a dress that your man usually likes; you might wear a hot hairstyle when you are spending a night with him); or you might do more exercise to slim yourself down.
By creating a new version of yourself in front of your husband, you let him realize that you are willing to look beautiful for him, therefore many things can get better subtly due to such your positive and noticeable change.
(3) Improve your communication skills:
When your husband starts to be bored with you, your mutual communication tends to fail; and the relationship deteriorates even further due to lack of effective communication as well as all sorts of misunderstandings. To break this unhealthy relationship cycle, here are 5 simple tips:
- Allow him to communicate his needs:
It seems to be a platitude to emphasize the importance of regularly communicating with each other’s needs in a marital relationship, but many marital fights and silent treatment happen just because one spouse’s emotional needs are not being exactly met. So in order to better meet his emotional needs, make sure to allow your husband to express what he wants from you while communicating with him. Only if you can make him calmly communicate what he exactly wants from you, it will be easier for you to meet his needs.
- Listen:
Doing this seems so simple, it seems that you just need to make your husband feel like you are hearing him while he is talking to you; but if so, you may easily overlook a necessary detail – letting him clearly feel heard and understood. And if you can timely respond to him with the meaning of his words, it will be easy for him to feel heard. So during a conversation with him, try timely reflecting what he has said to you in your own brief words. In doing so, you can de-escalate an intense argument because of your attentive listening that makes him feel that you are sympathizing with his/her feelings.
- Use more “I” statements:
Don’t be impersonal when speaking to your man. For example, when you complain that your husband casually threw his clothes on the floor, you may say to him,” I would not like to find that you scattered your clothes about your house, I wish you could make a point to hang up them.”, rather than say” Pick up your clothes! Why are you so inconsiderate?” In this way, you can reduce the negative effects of what you say to him.
- Separate your emotions:
The worst time to broach a sensitive issue is when you are overwhelmed by negative emotions (e.g. anger, frustration, depression, sadness, and anxiety). At this critical stage, you should consciously reduce the negative impacts caused by your negative emotions during a conversation with your husband; and try your best to calm down yourself before bringing up a controversial issue with him; to take care of your negative emotions first, you might try to vent your emotions to others, like your friends or a therapist. On the other hand, when he is bored with you, just try to be simple and focus on the actual issue at hand during a conversation with him.
- Give positive feedback to him:
Marrying him means that there must be things you like about him. Sit down in a quiet place and try to make a list of them. At a proper moment, you may make a point of providing positive feedback to him by expressing your appreciation. Make sure to let him feel that he deserves your appreciation and respect, rather than let him feel like you are kind of positively obsequious to him. Doing so helps strengthen the relationship with your husband and thereby contributes to the peaceful settlement of future arguments.
If you want to learn more tips on how to improve communication in your marriage, you might go on to read the posts below:
4 annoying habits that cause communication barriers in marriage.
How to have effective communication in marriage.
(4) Quit nagging your husband:
If you find yourself stuck in a nagging rut, you should get out of it as soon as possible; obviously, it is a factor that causes his boredom. To help you break the nagging cycle, here are some basic tips:
- Be brief:
There can be two cases if you keep lecturing your husband: either he may have already got accustomed to walking away when you are lecturing him, or he may get into a heated dispute with you once your lecture makes him feel attacked and defensive. To avoid these situations, you should learn to state what you want in as concise a manner as possible.
- Avoid giving him ultimatums:
In many cases, your ultimatums come out of heightened emotions; however, after you calm down, you may regret that your remarks were exaggerated. Any major decisions should not be made in the heat of the moment. And giving ultimatums just escalates a situation that has already gone bad; furthermore, as your husband realizes that your ultimatums are often transparently empty, all you say may carry little weight in his mind. In particular, don’t go to extremes, and avoid saying those negative/biased words that can make him feel that you are completely opposing him, such as “You always…”, and “You never …” The more you are aggressive towards him, the stronger his defensive reaction to you will be. The correct way is to focus on the current situation you are facing, instead of making a fuss over the matter.
- Share more household responsibilities:
It is common for a husband to feel bored with his woman if he is constantly nagged to do household chores. And uneven chore distribution can erode the partnership of marriage from time to time. In fact, almost every couple attempts to divide chores evenly, but there is never an absolute evenness. The stress level in your marital life increases tremendously when one or both of you become unsatisfied with the allocation of household chores.
A good way to deal with uneven chore-splitting is to offer to share more house responsibilities; the more household responsibilities you share, the more household happiness and marital satisfaction you can achieve from your husband. Understandably, in a man’s eyes, a woman who would like to pitch in is more attractive.
For more tips on stop being a nagging wife, you might go on to read the post below:
Are you a nagging wife – How to stop nagging him.
(5) Seek his reasons:
In spite of your big efforts to revive your man’s interest by bringing out the best in you, maybe you still find him distant and you get frustrated with his apathetic attitude towards you; in such a situation, it is time to focus attention on him to explore underlying reasons. So let him know that you have realized that he has become increasingly distant, forgetful, unresponsive, and preoccupied in your relationship recently and that you wonder what happened to him to make him hold back his affection, and meanwhile, you are supposed to express your willingness to fix the relationship. If he blurts out the matter or admits the existence of his problems, try to discuss the possibility of working together to overcome them or at least change the status quo.
But if he always refuses to respond to your queries and refuses your attempts at fixing intimacy, probably he is facing a serious issue that should be paid special attention; for example, he may become withdrawn and moody because of his infidelity, his midlife crisis, his ailing parents, or a rough time at work; in this case, besides making further observation on his recent behavior, it is also necessary to learn how to spend your time more wisely when he is not beside you; moreover, sometimes he is just not in the mood for company.
If you feel that you are unable to reach out to him no matter how hard you try, don’t have to dwell on the pain and slide into depression; and you should also avoid having extremely negative thoughts (for example, don’t think about seeking out an affair to get even with him, doing it in this way can break down your marriage irretrievably), and just try to move on with your own life, continue to work normally and engage in your social activities as usual. Anyway, every man wants his woman to stay positive and optimistic; and your anxiety, depression, and restlessness only can push him further away when he is bored with you.
The final word:
There are times when a marriage hits a boredom rut. And a woman has to learn to get through many challenging relationship situations. As long as you are upfront with him about his boredom, the two of you can work together to bring happiness back into your marriage. And there are many things you can do to improve your relationship when your husband is bored with you, even if you are the only one who wants to try.
For more marriage-saving tips, you might go on to watch the video below to follow the comprehensive guidance that is offered by Brad Browning, a marriage coach with 12+ years of experience:
Maybe, you are also interested in other related posts below:
What should you do when your husband says he hates you?
What to do when he ignores you – How to react to his silent treatment?
Why your husband is distant – How to stop him from being distant.
How to attract your husband emotionally – 6 tips to attract him towards you.
What does it mean when you feel like your husband hates you?
9 tips on how to make your husband loyal – What he needs in the marriage.
10 tips on how to boost your husband’s ego – Stroke his ego.
How to keep your husband’s attention – Rekindle the fire in your marriage.
Why your husband is distant – How to stop him from being distant.
How to mend the marriage when your husband says hurtful words.
Why you feel bored in your marriage – How to overcome boredom.