I’m willing to bet your situation is more common than you or anyone else realizes in society, simply because we haven’t been trained to recognize it as a problem. I would talk to your wife about it and ask if she’s willing to engage in some couples’ counseling. If she’s not, that’s a pretty good sign your marriage might best end.

I mean, you can resolve your current problem with a single conversation. You say to your wife “hey, I feel like you are acting super checked out. What’s going on?” You will get one of three answers:

1. Yeah, I hate this, I want to end it.
2. I’m so sorry, I had no idea, I’ve been going through such-and-such, I’ll try to be better.
3. Something evasive or noncommittal.

If 3, you need to come back with “Hey, no, this is a real problem for me. We need to figure this out.” And press the issue until it resolves to 1 or 2.

The outcome with be either improved communication in your relationship (possibly facilitated via couples councilling) or a divorce. Or you can choose to do nothing, and live with the current situation as it is. But I wouldn’t suggest this.

I highly doubt its that uncommon to be in your situation. Likely your phone has picked up on something and is serving you targeted ads, but the ad industry has decided that those ads should target only women for some reason. You gotta open a dialogue with you wife if you can, if you can’t you might need outside help.

I’ve (40s M) been the victim in abusive relationships with women in my past. More common than you think.

It sounds like Gottman Rapaport therapy, which focuses on exploring how people can communicate and love each other better would be worth looking at? It’s not like tv couples therapy.

Delete the Gym. Hit the Lawyer. Lemmy up.

Just because the stereotype doesn’t quite fit your life doesn’t mean that there isn’t any help. Any psychotherapist or psychiatrist worth their salt would be just as capable of helping a man as they would be at helping a woman.

My wife went regularly to a therapist. At some point she convinced me to join, eventhough I thought I had no need for therapy… My wife is smart, she knew I would have use for therapy, and convinced me by asking whether I could join “to help her with her therapy.”

After very few sessions I realized that I definitely had some stuff to work through… And I can now say with certainty that going to therapy has been one of the best things I have done for myself and my wife.

There’s a lot of stigma around therapy, and especially couples therapy. Everyone we talked to immediately jumped to the conclusion that we had trouble in our marriage and that was why we went to therapy, even though that wasn’t the case. We quickly learned to say something like “oh, no no, it’s not because of each other. We go to therapy to learn to deal with the people who should actually be in therapy.” and that quickly shut people up.

People will probably have a similar stigma for your situation, because of the stereotype you mention. But it’s so worth it.

I would suggest starting some therapy yourself, but after a bit, try to invite your wife to join you. You can grow together.

Apparently a lot of couples where only one of them go to therapy end up splitting up… Because the person in the therapy grows, while the other is stagnant, it can lead to a lot of friction and frustration, to the point where one of them give up on the relationship.

Therefore I can only recommend going to therapy together. If you experience any stigma, talk to your therapist about it. They likely have some tricks up their sleeve you can use.

EDIT: Accidentally deleted an entire paragraph, which I have now rewritten.

I’m in a similar boat. I’ve been going to therapy for over 20 years. I’ve been with my wife for 13 years. She’s funny, creative, and widely beloved by almost everyone who meets her. At home, she’s emotionally hard to connect with. She’s never been to therapy and sees no reason to start because “nothing’s wrong with her.” She meets many of the stereotypes that we usually apply to men - can’t identify her emotions or claims she doesn’t have them, and doesn’t understand “why we have to talk about everything.” We’ve been to couples therapy a couple times and she generally hated it, saying the therapist made it seem like everything was her fault. I know I deserve a partner who will join me in processing hard stuff, but it’s been a very long road in trying to get there.

“emotionally unavailable or checked out or whatever” you need to figure out what it really is, first step.

Has it always been going on, if not when did it start?

If she’s - in terms of attachment style - avoidant, it’s very addressable. If she’s ready to end things, well that’s a different kind of addressable.

Why do the resources for wives not work for you? Can’t you just take the advice and switch the genders? My spouse and I are similar. A lot of the traditional gender roles are switched, so i just take the advice for the other gender and use it for our situation.

Uhh im in your situation but i love it haha, we mostly dont bother each other all day and then we sleep in the same bed. Yeah i guess it’s not for everyone but idk makes things easy for me, she never initiates so it’s simple, if i want sex i initiate. Idk we do talk and if either is upset we have no problem talking, but both of us just don’t like talking for the most part and it works well for us.

Fwiw, I feel this way with my girlfriend a lot. It’s not that she is entirely unavailable, but she does avoid being vulnerable very often. I feel like I’m the emotional one who will be completely honest and emotional and she will clam up

Good luck. Don’t sacrifice your happiness for stability.

If you’re open to a book that might help, consider this one.