In each of the cases I have seen, the wife has had a full plate of hurt and has shut down under the weight of it. Sometimes the hurt can be old, and she is just now coming to the place where she is starting to emotionally process it. Or, sometimes she has gotten stuck in the healing process somewhere along the way.

As I mentioned earlier, you or your spouse could also be emotionally on overload because of a life transition. Life is fast paced, change is constant, and sometimes our emotions get tangled along the way. Some changes can be good, like having a new baby or buying a home. Yet they still wear you out emotionally. From losing a job to losing a loved one, crisis situations can put a big strain on you individually or together. New babies and seeing those babies leave the nest are some of the hardest emotional transitions in the phases of marriage.

Physical Overload. Life is full of work -- hard work. And some phases and stages seem to require more physical labor than others.  Babies and toddlers require a ton of energy. Many jobs leave us with aching backs and sore muscles. Sometimes our bodies are just so worn out we can’t connect like we want to.

Mental Overload.  For those couples who are balancing lots of responsibilities like work, school and kids, mental overload can really take its toll. Juggling lots of responsibilities uses up brain-space. Learning how to manage a new responsibility also uses up mental energy. You or your spouse might have so many things to mentally process, you don’t have much left over with which to engage each other. Lots of TV watching is a symptom of mental overload in our house. One or both of us is just too mentally worn out to be creative enough to do things together.

Spiritual Overload.  Usually, being spiritually overloaded is more akin to being spiritually “under”-loaded.  I see this with husbands more than wives, and it usually starts somewhere else first. For example, a really good-hearted man who was out of work for a time got into some debt. He began working very hard to get out of debt. He took every side job possible and worked long hours. His growing family motivated him want to work hard to provide for them. 

This husband's efforts and motivations were essentially good. But in the process of taking on all this new responsibility, he stopped being the spiritual leader of their marriage. He stopped reading his Bible and attending a small group. Time and time again he came up spiritually empty when his family needed him, so now he avoids those situations and thrusts himself into the area of life he knows he is successful - work. 

Spiritual overload might also take place when a spouse is unsaved or is walking in disobedience. Any disruption to your spouse’s connection with God will in some way affect their connection with you and your family.