When Your Spouse Starts to Feel Like a Roommate

Do you ever feel like you and your spouse are living more like roommates? My wife, Melanie, and I did.

In 2023, Melanie and I attended a wedding. There’s something about attending a wedding that naturally makes you think about your own. It’s nostalgic. You remember when you were first head over heels in love. You think about the dating years. Talking on the phone, going to dinner or the movies, and spending as much time together as you possibly could.

The morning after the wedding, we woke up in our hotel room, and Melanie had the courage to tell me something I wasn’t expecting. We had drifted apart. She told me I had been spending so much time at work that I had been neglecting our marriage.

I was stunned.

I honestly didn’t realize I was doing it. At the time, I was a Captain with the Dunkirk Police Department, and I wanted to become Chief. I was studying constantly for the Chief’s exam, going to college, spending time being mentored, and trying to prepare myself for the opportunity.

I thought I was doing what I was supposed to be doing. But somewhere along the way, I had become very intentional about developing myself professionally while becoming less intentional about our marriage.

On the drive home, I asked Melanie a difficult question. Was she thinking about divorce, or did she want to work on our marriage? She immediately told me divorce had never been on her mind. I was grateful to hear that.

But as I continued driving, something else hit me.

I was spending all this time learning how to become a better leader at work, but I never really thought about bringing that same intentionality home.

I needed to learn how.

I searched for marriage podcasts and found One Extraordinary Marriage, founded by Tony and Alisa DiLorenzo. I started listening and immediately connected with their practical approach. The more I listened, the more areas I recognized where I had been falling short.

I introduced the podcast to Melanie, and she loved it too. Over the next three years, we listened together, read The 6 Pillars of Intimacy by Alisa and Tony DiLorenzo, worked through the workbook, and most importantly, started intentionally putting what we were learning into practice.

One of the things that stood out to me in the book was the idea of “roommate syndrome.” Alisa writes, “Roommate syndrome happens when you aren’t intentional about your marriage.”

That described us. We loved each other, but we had stopped being intentional.

We started paying more attention to our time together, our conversations, our connection, and the different areas of intimacy in our marriage. We weren’t assuming that because we loved each other, everything else would take care of itself.

And we began seeing changes in our marriage.

We believed in what we were learning so much that we started giving newlyweds copies of The 6 Pillars of Intimacy as a wedding gift.

Then, this past April, Tony and Alisa announced they were opening their certification program to people around the world who wanted to become certified coaches in the 6 Pillars of Intimacy^® framework. I immediately asked Melanie if she would be interested.

Her answer was an excited, “Of course.”

We went through the process together and became part of their first cohort of certified coaches. It’s something we’re grateful to be a part of, but becoming coaches isn’t the most important part of this story.

The most important part happened that morning in that hotel room in 2023.

Melanie was willing to tell me something I needed to hear, and I began to recognize something I hadn’t seen. Our marriage needed the same kind of intentional investment I was giving to other areas of my life.

Marriage can become routine. Work gets busy. Kids need us. Responsibilities pile up. Sometimes the person we once couldn’t wait to spend every waking hour with slowly starts to feel more like a roommate.

It doesn’t necessarily happen because we stopped loving each other. Sometimes we simply stopped being intentional with each other.

That’s something Melanie and I had to learn. And we’re still learning.

Your marriage shouldn’t get what’s left of you after everything else gets your best.