Hi,
I'm Dr.
Denise Webb,
Clinical psychologist.
Welcome to my video series on emotional neglect.
In this video,
I'm going to talk about emotional neglect in a relationship.
10 red flags.
In a moment,
I'm going to describe 10 signs that emotional neglect is silently undermining your relationship.
But first I want to start with explaining why the way you and your partner deal with each other's feelings is so very important.
Emotional neglect in a relationship is the absence of enough emotional awareness and response.
It might be invisible to everyone,
Even the couple themselves,
Yet it's painful.
Both partners are hurt by what is not there.
In a now classic 2004 study.
Researcher John Gottman found that the difference between couples who thrive and those that divorce is the frequency with which couples meet each other's requests for emotional connection.
When it comes to relationships,
Feelings provide the connection,
The warmth,
Fire and the glue.
It is vital that couples reach out and respond to each other emotionally.
So what happens if you or your partner simply isn't capable of requesting or responding to the emotional needs of the other?
Beyond that,
What if it's no one's fault?
Now I'm going to talk about the emotionally neglectful relationship.
If I had to describe an emotionally neglectful marriage,
In one word,
It would probably be lonely.
It's as if you have someone right beside you.
Yet they're a thousand miles away,
Emotionally.
You can see them,
But you can't feel their presence.
You can talk to them.
But you can't talk the way you want to talk.
You're with them,
But you feel alone.
It's almost as if there's a wall between you blocking you from them and them from you.
A wall that you can see through,
But you can't get through.
That wall is made up of emotional neglect.
So how does emotional neglect creep into a marriage?
Actually,
It doesn't exactly creep in.
Instead it strides through the back door silently and stealthily undermining communication,
Connection,
Compassion,
And warmth in your relationship.
Usually emotional neglect is brought into the marriage through the childhood of one or both of the partners.
When one or both partners come from a family that's not aware of feelings,
And under-attends to them,
Which is the very definition of childhood emotional neglect.
That partner naturally continues that process as an adult.
Being unaware of their own and their partner's feelings.
And under-responding to them.
Growing up with emotional neglect makes you blind to your own emotions,
The essential ingredient that is absolutely necessary.
To connect in a real way with your spouse.
This blindness also extends to your partner.
You may have difficulty noticing and responding to their feelings as well.
This may result in an emotionally lonely partner.
You and your partner both brought the emotional blind spot into your relationship.
Then a somewhat different problem ensues.
Because neither of you can see what's missing.
Neither of you may realize what should be happening and what you should be feeling.
With no one able to call out the problem.
You are in danger of slowly,
Painfully drifting apart.
Until the growing wall of emotional neglect distorts your vision of each other and the positive healthy feelings that brought you together slowly drain away.
So it's important now to address the issue of blame.
In most families.
That are emotionally neglectful,
Blame has no place.
No child asks to be emotionally neglected.
And most parents have no idea that they're emotionally neglectful.
That's how emotional neglect works.
The emotional blind spot just transfers silently from one generation to the next.
But while no one is responsible for the emotional neglect they received.
Once we're aware of the problem.
We are responsible for the emotional neglect that we give.
Once we see it in ourselves,
We become the change agent,
The change agent.
We become responsible for stopping the cycle.
No one says it's an easy fix.
But the problem of emotional neglect in a marriage can be resolved.
The skills.
Emotional intimacy and connection are learnable.
You can learn it as an adult.
So now I'm going to give you the 10 red flags that emotional neglect is silently undermining your relationship.
And I encourage you to think about yourself and your own marriage as I talk about these.
You may be unaware that you have these going on,
Especially if you both brought emotional neglect into the marriage.
So the first one is that you and your partner misread each other's true feelings about each other.
Actions.
Thoughts or intentions very often.
I've seen many couples,
Because I'm a couples therapist,
And I see mostly couples who have childhood emotional neglect that they've brought to the marriage.
And it very often happens that the couples I see really misread each other.
Because you're not able to see the emotions of your partner,
You are very,
Very likely to misread their intentions.
Misread their actions,
And ascribe the wrong motivations to them.
And it happens a lot in emotionally neglected,
Emotional neglect couples.
The second thing is that as a couple you avoid bringing up difficult things so as not to upset the other.
This is due to a shortage of emotion skills in the emotionally neglected person.
If you don't have the emotion skills.
To deal with difficult or conflictual or painful things.
You really just have one coping skill and that's avoid it.
And this is what.
These couples often do.
Understandably.
The next one is that you haven't figured out how to argue productively.
Again,
It's that lack of emotion skills.
The next is that your conversations are mostly focused on facts.
Or logistics.
And this is an avoidant technique.
Sort of a strategy,
I guess,
But it's not a conscious strategy.
It's,
Again,
It's a coping,
A way of coping with not being comfortable having meaningful or emotional conversations.
The conversations tend to be on the surface.
And not about emotional.
Or meaningful topics.
The next red flag is that your spouse is not the first person you want to tell when something great happens.
Or when a problem comes up.
The next is that if you do seek comfort from your spouse,
They often say the wrong thing.
And again,
This is that sort of disconnection that happens.
Couples where there's emotional neglect because that emotional glue that binds you together isn't there and perhaps the emotion skills are lacking so that somebody doesn't know the right thing to say to the other.
The next red flag is that you don't feel like you're a team taking on life together.
It's hard to work together when you're not aware of each other's feelings.
The next red flag is that you often feel alone.
Even when you're with your partner.
This happens quite a bit and it's because of that lack of emotional When you're emotionally connected,
You can be a thousand miles apart and still feel close.
And the next thing is that it can be difficult to find something to talk about together.
You might go out to dinner hoping to feel romantic and have a great time and instead you kind of struggle to talk about surface topics or find something to talk about.
And that,
Again,
Is that lack of emotional connection.
The next is that positive emotions like love,
Warmth,
Or emotional bonding feel awkward only happen during sex.
And it's strange how with emotional neglect.
Don't just lose,
You don't just end up with the negative feelings being pushed away.
For many people it's the positive feelings as well feel awkward and difficult and hard to endure.
Because it feels like too much,
Because that was the message you got as a child,
That feeling emotions was too much.
So if this sounds like it may be going on in your marriage.
You're probably wondering,
What now?
First,
If some of these ten apply to your marriage,
Consider the possibility that emotional neglect is at work.
Then remind yourself that blame is unhelpful and unnecessary here.
No one chooses to be emotionally neglected.
Now keeping the Gottman research in mind.
Think of the emotional connection that your marriage needs in a new way.
Instead of thinking of it as a thing that you either do or don't have.
Think of it as an action.
A process of give and take that you and your partner can actively do.
Ask your partner for emotional support.
Or to share in a happy,
Sad,
Or painful moment.
Even if it's difficult,
Just do it.
Watch for times when your partner is requesting an emotional bond with you.
Like they look sad and they need a hug.
They seem lonely and need to talk.
They seem hurt,
Need to be soothed.
And then make a special effort to provide it.
So it's ask,
Give,
Take.
Give.
Take.
Each time you do it,
You are removing the invisible pain from your marriage.
You are filling that emotionally empty space between you.
You are healing the emotional neglect.
One step at a time.
And finally,
Instead of being silently hurt by what isn't there,
You will be connected and enriched by what you have created together.
So if you have found this video helpful,
Please let me know in the comments below.
I want to know your thoughts and feelings about it and I will be sharing much more about how to heal emotional neglect in a relationship You won't want to miss it.
Thanks for watching.
