Understanding partner time, self-abandonment, and the loss of connection.
Have you ever found yourself lying next to the person you love, wondering why it still feels like you’re alone?
The conversation fades, the laughter’s gone, and even time together feels like distance.
I have, and I want to tell you about it.
For the last few months, I’ve been living with a personal mantra:
I will tell the truth to myself and about myself.
It sounds simple, but it’s at times, it’s not. Getting to what’s true about ourselves is rarely straightforward. A lot of what we believe to be true is often just perception, emotion, or meaning-making layered over years of experiences and unmet desires.
One of the trickiest areas for many men I’ve encountered to discern what’s true is around partner time: how much of our partner’s time we get, how much we think we need, and what it actually means.
I know this one personally.
For years, I felt alone in my marriage to Zelda. We were together, but not really together. I longed for connection, for laughter, for the ease and playfulness that used to come naturally. I convinced myself that the fix was simple: we just needed more time together. More long, deep talks. More date nights. More shared moments. More sex.
So I pushed for it.
But even when we spent more time together, I still felt alone. The distance didn’t shrink. The ache didn’t fade. If anything, more time just seemed to highlight how far apart we were inside. Further, Zelda was more annoyed, and it’s no wonder, because being together started to feel like following an exhausting maintenance schedule that was no longer fun, but heavy.
It took me years (decades, really) to learn the truth:
Partner time isn’t connecting when you’ve abandoned yourself.
If you’re feeling that same ache, doing everything “right” yet feeling further apart, you’re not broken. But you may be trying to connect from a place of disconnection.
Why Partner Time Feels Empty
When men reach out to me, many of them are caught in the same place I once was. They’re lonely, starved for connection, and quietly despairing that their wives seem uninterested, distracted, or emotionally distant. They’re often latched onto an idea about why, like her hobbies, cell-phone use, time with the kids, etc. Sometimes, they’re also convinced she’s having an affair and are sneaking around reading her journal, tracking cell phone records, and snooping to see if there’s someone else. In their mind, they expected more time and attention, and aren’t getting it, so something must be wrong… with her.
They’ve tried everything they know. More effort. More communication. More “togetherness.” Often, some pretty unhealthy stuff, too, like pouting, silent treatments, or numbing out.
Sometimes, all of that will produce a little bit of change and more partner time.
And yet, nothing changes.
That’s because time together doesn’t create connection; presence does.
You can spend hours beside your partner and still be miles apart if your energy is needy, anxious, or resentful.
I didn’t see that at the time. I was chasing Zelda’s attention the way a starving man chases crumbs. I thought if I could just do enough (fix enough, love enough, show up enough) that she’d open up to me again.
But that energy isn’t attractive; it’s heavy. It doesn’t draw a woman in; it pushes her further away.
Underneath it all, I wasn’t really choosing her.
I was trying to get her to choose me, and more specifically, so that I could use her choice of me to fill the void I hadn’t filled myself.
I wasn’t seeking connection; I was seeking permission to feel valuable, and no woman can grant that to a man who’s abandoned himself.
The Polarity Problem: When You Stop Choosing Yourself
Polarity is the natural current between grounded masculine presence and open feminine energy. When it’s alive, it feels magnetic, effortless even. But polarity dies when a man starts abandoning himself.
That’s what I did. I traded my self-respect for her approval, my peace for her participation.
I was so afraid of losing the relationship that I lost myself inside it.
I thought being a good husband meant keeping the peace, sacrificing my needs, and doing whatever it took to stay “together.” But what I didn’t see was that every time I made myself smaller for the sake of harmony, I was silently training her to stop feeling me.
A woman can’t relax into a man who’s erased himself.
You can’t be her safe place while you’re unsafe with yourself.
Polarity isn’t restored by convincing her to want you more; it’s restored when you want yourself more.
Choosing Yourself First
To repair polarity, we have to choose ourselves first. Something most married husbands and fathers learn to stop doing as they take on role-based identities that come with marriage and fatherhood. We stop because we’re led to believe that any focus on ourselves is selfish. Then we wonder why we start feeling so empty and awful.
Here’s a trustworthy statement: Choosing yourself isn’t selfish; it’s essential.
It’s not about walking away or becoming indifferent. It’s about coming home to your value and worth, and living in those with integrity. It’s about remembering who you are when you’re not performing a role or seeking approval.
When I finally began to choose myself again, everything changed.
I stopped waiting for her to validate me.
I stopped trying to manage her moods.
I started investing in my body, my purpose, my friendships, and my peace.
I started showing up with quiet confidence, not hidden resentment.
The irony? That’s when things with Zelda started to shift.
She didn’t respond to pressure or pleading, only to the man who had reappeared; one who’d chosen himself would and knew himself to be worthy of the life he desired.
When I began to come alive again, she could finally exhale. Because I was finally home in myself.
Choosing yourself doesn’t instantly make everything easy. It simply makes you real again, and reality is where true connection begins.
Rebuilding Connection Through Presence, Not Proximity
Once I stopped measuring love by minutes spent talking or together, I could finally create meaningful moments again.
Presence is the real currency of connection.
Ten minutes of full attention beats ten hours of distracted coexistence.
I learned to stop talking at her and start being with her.
I stopped trying to “make something happen” and instead, let myself be still and curious.
Sometimes that looked like sitting on the porch after chores, sharing a coffee or cocktail in silence. Sometimes it was a walk at sunset, no agenda. Sometimes it was just catching her eye and letting my love be seen without words.
Partner time became sacred again, not because it was scheduled, but because I learned to be fully present for it by being at home in myself.
Where to Start When You Feel Alone in Your Relationship
To summarize, when you feel alone in your relationship, the temptation is to double down on fixing; to talk more, do more, or spend more time together. But most men discover that what they actually need isn’t more togetherness; it’s more wholeness.
Here’s the order I’ve seen bring men out of confusion, resentment, and loneliness; not as a formula, but as a path back to presence and power.
1. Stop Trying to Fix “The Relationship.”
You can’t repair connection from panic or pressure. Every attempt to negotiate your partner’s attention or affection communicates, “I’ve lost trust in my own gravity.” Breathe. Step back. Let things be still long enough to see what’s actually true.
2. Tell the Truth to Yourself and About Yourself.
Start where all transformation begins, with honesty. Not performative honesty or confessions to her, but the kind that strips you bare to yourself. What do you really feel? What do you truly want? What are you afraid to admit? Truth burns away fog, even when it hurts.
3. Reclaim Your Daily Practices.
Get your energy flowing again through movement, discipline, and creation. Lift weights. Take walks. Build something. Journal. Travel. Play music. Breathe. Get outdoors. These aren’t distractions; they’re how a man reclaims rhythm and restores his sovereignty.
4. Speak Your Desire Without Making It a Demand.
There’s nothing inherently needy or weak about desiring time with your partner (I currently want more time with mine!) But how you hold that desire matters. Togetherness born of freedom feels expansive. Togetherness born of emotional dependency feels suffocating.
When you say, “I want more time with you,” let it be from a place of fullness, not as a request to be completed, but as an expression of what you love. Then let go of the outcome. Desire voiced in freedom invites; it doesn’t corner.
5. Reconnect With Brotherhood.
Self-abandonment is nearly always a bedfellow of isolation. Isolation keeps you in the echo chamber of your fears, insecurities, and limiting beliefs. Find men who can see you clearly and call you up instead of rescuing you. Brotherhood is where you remember you’re not crazy, not broken, and not alone.
And it’s where you stop believing you’re the only one carrying this weight.
6. Clarify What You Actually Want.
Write it down. Be uncomfortably honest. What kind of relationship do you truly want? What kind of man must you become to sustain it? This isn’t about fantasy or blame; it’s about clarity. Most men suffer not from lack of love, but lack of direction
7. Choose Yourself and Live It.
I’m a big fan of choosing the woman who chooses you. But that position has zero credibility if we don’t first choose ourselves. We must! Once you’re clear, act like it. Stop waiting for her reaction before you lead yourself. Be the man who keeps his word to himself, not the one who bends with every mood in the house. You don’t attract respect. You create it by living with self-respect.
8. Rebuild Connection Through Presence, Not Performance.
When you re-engage, do it from grounded curiosity, not desperation. Listen more, speak less. Stop reaching for results and start offering curiosity and attention. Presence is the bridge she’s been waiting to feel again.
9. Set a New Standard for Authenticity.
Never trade truth for harmony, or you’ll just be without both. Speak clearly about what you feel and what you want, even if it unsettles her. The goal isn’t comfort (yours or hers); it’s connection rooted in reality. Love thrives where truth is safe to live.
10. Decide From Wholeness, Not Hurt.
Once you’ve done this work, clarity comes naturally. You’ll see whether the relationship invites you higher or keeps you small. From that place, any decision — to stay, to speak more truth, or to part ways — will come from peace, not pain.
The Courage to Stop Self-Erasing
As men mature, the conversation changes.
There comes a point where peace at any price isn’t peace at all—it’s self-betrayal.
You stop pretending. You stop hiding what you want, need, and believe to keep someone else comfortable.
That’s not aggression; that’s authenticity.
Being honest about what kind of relationship you want—one that invites you to live open, powerful, and fully alive—isn’t a threat to love; it’s the only way to sustain it.
It took me years to find that courage. Years of walking on eggshells, silencing truth to avoid conflict.
But when I finally began telling the truth about myself—what I desired, what I valued, what I could and couldn’t live without—I felt alive again.
Not defiant.
Not reckless.
Just honest.
You can love your partner deeply and still tell the truth that may unsettle them. How they handle that truth is theirs to sort out, not yours to control.
A relationship that can’t hold your authenticity isn’t intimacy; it’s dependency in disguise.
“Yeah, But… You Don’t Understand… My Partner Is Dismissive-Avoidant.”
I hear this one all the time.
“Yeah, but you don’t get it, Sven. My partner’s dismissive-avoidant.”
Or:
“She just shuts down.”
“She doesn’t want to talk about anything emotional.”
“She walls off whenever I get close.”
Brother, I do understand. I lived that story for years. And, the vast majority of my clients describe their partner as avoidant.
And I’ll tell you something that most people dancing around attachment language won’t: your partner’s avoidant tendencies are not the root problem.
They’re a symptom of discomfort with intimacy, authenticity, and vulnerability. All three are required for real connection. When your partner flinches or withdraws in the face of those, they’re encountering their own edge with being seen.
Here’s what that means for you:
If you don’t know how to self-source happiness and well-being, you’re creating a negative emotional pressure and a strong disincentive to be vulnerable, because she can never give you enough of what you don’t really need.
If you tiptoe around their discomfort, you collude with their avoidance.
If you use “they’re avoidant” as an excuse to mute your truth, you train them to believe you’ll always adapt to their fear.
Don’t do that stuff.
Own what you want in the relationship, clearly, calmly, and without resentment.
Not as an ultimatum, but as a declaration.
“I want to be close.”
“I want to share time and energy.”
“I want to build something together that feels alive and connected.”
Say it once.
Say it as truth, not as a plea, or a threat.
Then release your grip.
Because here’s the line most men cross without realizing it:
Declaring your desires is healthy.
Demanding that your partner fulfill them for you is dependency and unhealthy.
If your well-being depends on their reaction, you’ve already handed them the pen that writes your emotional story.
That’s why it’s vital to fill your own cup first and to create your own sense of peace, joy, and fulfillment before re-engaging the relationship.
When you’re full, you can speak truth without pressure.
When you’re empty, even honesty feels like a demand.
So yes, honestly and kindly acknowledge your partner’s avoidant patterns, but don’t organize your life around them. Their discomfort isn’t an emergency; it’s a mirror.
Hold steady.
Be clear about who you are, what you value, and what you’re creating.
Invite them to meet you there, not because you need them to, but because that’s where love lives.
“Yeah, But… At What Point Do You Say Enough Is Enough?”
There’s a question men rarely want to ask, but it lives in their chest: At what point do you say enough is enough?
Here’s the truth I’ve learned after decades of marriage, coaching hundreds of men, and living it myself:
There’s nothing noble about self-erasure in the name of being “together,” it’s emotional suicide.
Many men come to me ready to call it quits. They’re exhausted, disconnected, and hopeless. But most of them haven’t actually led yet. They’ve never clearly expressed their desires, needs, or truth. They’ve never chosen themselves first. They want an undefined thing and they want her to be responsible for it, and are often resentful that she’s hasn’t produced it yet.
(Hint: To a woman, this is just as frustrating and unfair to experience as when a woman says to us that we should “just know” what she needs and endlessly supply it.)
These men are feeling awful and wondering whether or not they should “fish or cut bait” and move on and find another partner before it’s too late.
They’re trying to make that decision from emptiness. never noticing that they’re empty, which tacitly means it is her job to fill them.
Here’s an honest question:
How do you imagine you could confidently know if you’re done until you’ve met and accepted yourself fully?
That’s why the first step is always to create your own happiness first.
Get to truly know and accept who you are, outside of a relationship. Do the internal work to become the kind of man you’d unquestionably love to follow. Get grounded. Get clear. Reconnect with your power, purpose, and joy.
Then ask yourself, as a happy, full, complete man, whether this relationship invites you into more of your best, or slowly erodes it.
A whole man can finally see whether he’s in partnership or captivity.
That clarity doesn’t come from disappointment and resentment; it comes from steadiness, calm, and peace.
And from that peace, you’ll know exactly what to do next.
“Yeah, But… What’s the Point of Relationships Then?”
Every time I write something like this, I hear the same question:
“Yeah, but if relationships aren’t about meeting each other’s needs… then what’s the point?”
It’s a fair question, and one I used to ask myself.
I once lived inside the same popular narrative so many of us were raised on; what I call The Jerry Maguire Myth:
that I’m incomplete, and a partner completes me.
It sounds romantic. It even feels noble. But it’s a lie that keeps good men and women powerless.
Because if that story were true, it would mean every single person who isn’t partnered is somehow incomplete, and condemned to a lesser life until they “find their other half.”
That’s not a powerful message. That’s not love. That’s emotional codependency disguised as destiny.
The problem isn’t wanting connection; connection is beautiful. The problem is mistaking connection for completion.
Here’s the test I use when people say something is a “need” their partner must meet:
Ask yourself, what happens if that need isn’t met?
If you’ll literally die without it (like air, water, or food) then yes, that’s a need.
But if what dies instead is your sense of peace, validation, or security, then we’re not talking about a need; we’re talking about a dependency.
And dependencies turn someone into a resource and another into a consumer, and generally always end the same way: the depletion of the resource and the resentment of the consumer.
Two people trying to fill each other from emptiness will always leave one another drained.
You pour from your half-full cup until you’re empty, hoping they’ll refill you, but now they’re empty too.
That’s not partnership. That’s mutual exhaustion dressed up as care.
I’m not saying don’t have needs. I’m saying learn where your needs actually come from.
They don’t come from outside of you. They come from your relationship with yourself, your Creator, and your capacity to source from within.
And when someone insists that emotional needs must be met by another, I invite them to wrestle with a few simple questions:
- If your partner has what you need, where did they get it?
- If they got it from you, doesn’t that prove you already have it?
- If they got it from somewhere else, why can’t you get it from that same source?
- And if you can’t, what belief about yourself is convincing you that you’re cut off from it?
Those questions expose the real issue: not a lack of love, but a lack of ownership.
When we cling to the idea that other people have what we need, we divide humanity into two groups: the haves and the have-nots.
The haves hold power. The have-nots live in dependency, chasing their next fix of validation or affection.
But here’s the truth: powerful people don’t want to be in relationships where they have to rescue someone to feel valuable.
And no one can respect a person who refuses to see their own strength.
That’s why relationships built on “mutual need-meeting” collapse into endless negotiation, deciding whose emptiness matters more this week.
That’s not intimacy; that’s arbitration.
So to say it clearly… I’m not against having needs. I’m against outsourcing them.
Because when you fill your own cup first, you stop showing up as a beggar and start showing up as a creator.
You stop demanding love and start radiating it.
And from that fullness, you can give freely and receive freely without the weight of expectation.
That’s a mature partnership; two full vessels exchanging overflow, not two empty ones trying to survive on borrowed drops.
When you live this way, “partner time” stops being about getting your needs met and becomes about celebrating what’s already whole.
You’re no longer negotiating who gives or who gets, but begin co-creating something greater than either of you could experience alone.
So no, I don’t believe the primary purpose of relationships is to get your needs met.
They’re where two whole people meet to share the life they’re already creating.
That’s not less romantic.
Quite the contrary. That’s love with deep roots in freedom.
Partner Time That Actually Connects
When a man reclaims himself, every moment of togetherness transforms. Partner time stops being an attempt to fix something and becomes a natural overflow of who he is.
He stops chasing connection and starts radiating it.
He stops waiting to be chosen and starts choosing himself.
He becomes the kind of man whose presence creates connection.
And in that presence, polarity and attraction begin to return—not because he demanded it, but because he embodied it.
Your Next Step: Create Your Happiness First
If that’s the kind of connection you want, grounded, free, and alive, start by rebuilding the foundation inside you.
If you’re feeling disconnected, longing for deeper connection with your partner, or questioning whether to stay or go, start here:
Create happiness first.
The men I see transform their relationships are the ones who stop trying to get more from their partner before learning how to give more to themselves.
That’s why I created The Awakened Purposeful Man Challenge — a 30-day experience designed to help men get back into alignment with purpose, power, and peace before trying to “fix” their relationship.
You’ll learn to reconnect with what truly drives you, dissolve resentment, and rediscover the grounded energy that makes polarity and attraction inevitable again.
Start your shift today:
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