A lot of wives can remember how their husbands used to open up.

He’d have an answer if she asked what was on his mind.

He’d talk about the business he wanted to start, or the family he wanted to have.

But after being together for a while, she starts to get one-word answers to the same questions: “Nothing.” Or, “I’m ok.”

And it can feel like being married to someone she doesn’t really know anymore.

It’s hard to see what changed from the outside, so a lot of wives make educated guesses.

Maybe he was putting on an act all those years ago, or maybe he just got comfortable and now he doesn’t feel like he has to share anything anymore.

If this sounds familiar, you might have even wondered if you did something to make him pull back.

Any of those explanations could be part of it, but generally it’s something else you can only see from the inside.

When I was dating my wife, I was basically an open book.

I’d tell her about my hopes and dreams and anything else she asked about.

And I remember thinking how I had nothing to lose by being honest. If we weren’t a good match, we’d just go our separate ways.

But things changed after we got married.

During those first couple of years of marriage, my thinking went from “we’re getting to know each other” to “now it’s my job to protect us.”

And the way I protected our marriage was by trying to not say the wrong thing.

If the answer I wanted to give wasn’t the answer I thought my wife wanted to hear, I tried to avoid it.

I’d stop bringing that topic up, or I’d dance around it if she said anything.

A lot of husbands do the same thing.

Every topic he decides is too hot to handle becomes one more subject he’ll give one-word answers about.

And every couple has disagreements and uncomfortable subjects, so over the years those off-limits topics add up.

Eventually every meaningful conversation can start to feel like walking through a minefield, because he’s trying to avoid anything that might cause pain, whether it’s for you or for him.

The irony is that what he’s doing to protect your marriage is also what’s making it feel lonely.

One of the most confusing parts of all of this is that he might still open up to a buddy or someone at work.

That can drive you crazy, because why would he talk about this stuff with someone else and not with his wife, the person who swore to stand by his side and face life together?

The answer is that it’s a different relationship.

He doesn’t have to worry about letting that person down because he doesn’t care about them the same way.

A lot of the time, a husband who talks to other people is looking for someone to back him up and tell him, “Yeah, that makes sense.”

He’s not really opening up so much as he’s getting things off his chest.

Just because there are explanations for your husband’s actions doesn’t make any of it okay.

You deserve to be able to have an honest and open conversation with him.

He’s treating your questions like a minefield because he thinks that’s helping, but that doesn’t mean that talking about anything serious is actually going to blow up in your faces.

I’m not going to pretend like it’s easy to change that, or that it’ll happen out of the blue.

But it might be reassuring to know that once a couple is able to get through one of those conversations, the next one becomes a little easier to face.

The minefield was filled in one topic at a time, and that’s the same way it gets cleared out.

So you can eventually get back to feeling like you really know each other, even if it’s been a while.