“Why does our marriage feel mundane?” One couple’s journey to dismantling emotional barriers and growing in love

A new year often begins with momentum. We rush forward with plans to make, work to return to, children to settle and responsibilities waiting. There is always something to be done.

From the outside, things look steady and good.

But over time, even the strongest marriages can start to feel mundane. This is one of the great, unspoken struggles of modern marriage.

We are so busy building a life together, but slowly losing touch with each other in the process.

If this is how your marriage has been like, why not take the new year as a chance to reconnect/start over?

“Nothing seemed wrong.”

Looking back, my husband Raymond describes those years as highly functional.

“When the kids were younger, life was all about logistics,” he says. “Fetching them, feeding them, washing up, homework, packing bags, checking schedules. Everything was about what needed to be done.”

Evenings were full, but predictable: “Homework done? Bags packed? What activity do you have tomorrow?”

Emotions only surfaced occasionally usually when unresolved issues about parents or long-standing tensions bubbled up and created frustration. Most of the time, those topics were avoided.

“They were uncomfortable,” Raymond admits. “So we stuck to caring for the family and handling responsibilities. And it felt like we were doing fine.”

Raymond and Jenny with their young children in 2006.

On the outside, we looked like a good Christian couple. We were serving, parenting, staying married, doing life together.

“Nothing seemed wrong,” he says.

For over 20 years, our conversations would revolve around functional aspects of the family and hardly about our dreams, feelings or day. We loved each other deeply. But that was precisely what made it hard to name what was missing.

“Emotionally, there was a huge void.”

For me, that sense of “nothing’s wrong” was deeply unsettling.

There were many evenings when I noticed Raymond looked worried or weighed down. I would ask, gently at first, “What’s on your mind?”

His answer was almost always the same.

“Nothing. It’s okay.”

When I probed further, he would grow frustrated.

I wasn’t trying to interrogate him. I was trying to connect.

What I longed for was someone to share my frustrations with, the hard days at work, the exhaustion of parenting, or the emotional load I was carrying. When I shared, it often felt like I was burdening him. And when I asked about his day or how he felt when colleagues treated him unfairly, the answer was still “nothing”.

I began to wonder if I was the strange one. Was I alone in feeling this way?

Raymond reflects on it now with clarity. “I didn’t recognise then that Jenny had a need to connect emotionally,” he says. “So I couldn’t even recognise the cues.”

His mental model of marriage was the one he grew up with: You do life together, you push through, you provide, you raise the kids, you serve in church, you care for parents.

Doing life together in 2014.

“What’s there to talk about?” he says candidly. “Work is work. Life is life. Just get on with it.”

The idea of emotional connection felt foreign. In many ways, we were living out what we had learned.

For many of our parents, love was expressed through duty, sacrifice, and staying together. Feelings were not discussed. Raymond worked hard for our family. He was a great dad who would wake up early in the morning to help me with the milk bottles when the children were younger, he would also help to put the kids to bed in the evenings. He was hardworking, diligent and would help with housework. What more could I ask for?

I wanted emotional connection, but it often seemed like I was asking for too much, especially from a good man. 

When trying to talk didn’t bring us closer

We did try to talk about feelings. But those conversations often ended badly.

The more I pressed for connection, the more Raymond pulled back. The more he withdrew, the more anxious and frustrated I became.

“The more she asked, the more frustrated I became,” he says. “Talking about it felt painful.”

For him, speaking without a solution only made the anger worse.

“When I can’t see a way forward, talking about it just reminds me of why I’m angry,” he says. “And then I get even more frustrated.”

For me, not talking at all felt like rejection. If he was clearly hurting and still refused to share, it was hard not to interpret it as distance.

So we did what many couples do.

We stopped trying.

After 15 years of marriage.

We retreated into practical matters like children, schedules, responsibilities because those topics were safe. Functional conversations kept our marriage in order. Over time, we realised something painful but important: A marriage can run very smoothly, and still feel emotionally thin.

Living out what we inherited

Both of us grew up in homes where love was expressed through duty, sacrifice, and perseverance. Feelings were rarely discussed. Needs were not named. Being responsible was a badge of honour.

“In my family, you showed love by doing your part,” Raymond reflects. “You didn’t complain. You just carried on.”

Emotions were not modelled as something to engage with at home or in church. Difficult feelings were often pushed aside.

So when we married, we brought those patterns into our marriage with us. We didn’t drift apart, but marriage felt extremely mundane, as if we were room mates in the same home.

After 10 years of marriage, I found myself praying out of desperation. “Lord, what does it really mean for a husband to love his wife? Why do I feel so alone when I’m married to a good man?”

I questioned if this was what marriage ought to feel like, mundane and emotionally flat. I shared this with Raymond, who seeing how frustrated I was, agreed we should do a couple retreat, not to go for sightseeing, but to intentionally slow down and create space in our busy lives, to rediscover the connection we had in our dating years.

Space to slow down, and just to talk about our disappointments, and our hopes.

Breaking generational patterns of emotional distance

As Raymond reflected on his upbringing, he began to recognise how much he had inherited and unknowingly passed on.

“My dad never talked about emotions. He provided. That was love,” he shares. “So that became my model.”

But God was inviting him into deeper work.

“Learning to connect emotionally with Jenny also changed how I relate to God,” Raymond says. “My faith feels less about doing, and more about being more grounded and vulnerable with God.”

Marriage became a place of discipleship.

When emotional maturity grew, it didn’t just affect our marriage. It shaped how we parent, how we lead, how we handle conflict, and how we pass on faith.

The Teo family in 2025.

“I realised I had more things to say about how I felt,” Raymond says. “I just never had space to access it.”

We learnt the difference between functional communication (running a household), and relational communication (sharing our hearts).

Some of the simple questions that helped us were:

• “What was the most meaningful part of your day?”
• “What’s been weighing on you lately?”
• “How can I support you right now?”

“Marriage oneness isn’t just about staying married,” he says. “It’s about being connected emotionally, spiritually, mentally.”

That was true for us. When we created emotional space, spiritual and relational growth followed.

A word to husbands: Rethinking leadership

“For a long time, I thought being the leader meant providing financially, making decisions, and staying strong emotionally all the time,” Raymond reflects. “But leadership in marriage is more than that.”

Peter Scazzero writes in Emotionally Healthy Spirituality: “You cannot be spiritually mature while remaining emotionally immature.”

“How do we lead emotionally in a marriage?” Raymond asks. “How do we lead our wives by being emotionally connected with them, in a way that strengthens her, and strengthens the marriage?”

Emotional leadership, he has learned, does not mean weakness.

“Emotions are not weakness. Dealing with them is actually empowering.”

It begins with humility, recognising that the way we know how to love may not be the way our spouse experiences love.

A word to wives: Pray for your husband

Longing for emotional connection is not too much. These desires reflect God’s design for oneness – to be seen, heard, and loved not only in action, but in heart.

At the same time, it can be wearying to carry unmet longings for a long season. When those needs remain unspoken or unheard, they can quietly harden our hearts, and we can become sarcastic, or show passive frustration.

This is where prayer is key. Pray for your husband, not as a way to fix him, but as an act of hope in the Lord. God is the One who works in ways we cannot control. We cannot change our husbands, but we can entrust them to the Lord who desires that they too grow in maturity and love.

It also helps to remember that many men were not taught how to access their emotions.

Why we created the Seasons of Marriage Couple Journal

The Marriage of Seasons Couple Journal was born out of this very journey.

For many years, our marriage ran on good intentions and strong responsibility. We loved each other, stayed committed, and did what needed to be done. But without intentional space, and the right questions, we didn’t know how to connect emotionally.

What we learned is this: marriages don’t drift because couples stop caring. They drift because there is little space to pause, reflect, and listen, especially in the middle of full and demanding lives.

As we began to slow down, to reflect together, our understanding of each other deepened.

We created the Marriage of Seasons Couple Journal as a way to hold that kind of space for other couples.

Jenny and Raymond published this couples journal to help husbands and wives move forward together emotionally. This journal is available in English and Chinese from Tenbutterfingers.com.

We realised that marriages go through seasons: Seasons of young children, career demands, caregiving, transition, loss, and change. Without intentional space, couples drift apart emotionally even while staying together physically.

This journal is not a workbook. Neither is it a how-to manual. But a space.

A guided space where couples can:

• Reflect on their year together
• Remember their shared story
• Share what’s often left unsaid
• Reconnect emotionally

As a new year begins, many couples will step forward with fresh plans and full calendars. We set goals for our work, our health, our children, and even our faith. Yet rarely do we pause to ask what kind of year we want for our marriage and how it will grow.

God’s design for marriage has always been more than partnership or productivity. Scripture speaks of oneness, as a deep union that is not just functional. “A man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24).

Our hope is that couples will not settle for a marriage that simply runs like clockwork, but will grow thrive because we are shaping what gets passed down. As we grow in oneness, we offer our children a different inheritance: one where love is displayed in a deep union of physical, emotional, mental and spiritual intimacy as God intended.

For couples who would like to begin creating that space, the journal is available here and through our workshops.

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