Leslie Cane Articles

By: Leslie Cane:  It’s an unfair irony: Sometimes it seems like the more motivated you are to reconcile with your separated spouse, the less motivated he is to reconcile with you.  You try to push, he pulls away.  You ask to see him more, he makes a point to see you less.  When you finally get frustrated and demand to know why he was avoiding you, he may proclaim that you are coming on too strong.  This can be a hard truth.  On the one hand, you may have a natural inclination to panic and to feel that you need to keep reminding him of your marriage and of yourself.  On the other hand, when you do this, he clearly gets annoyed and pushes you away.  You may know that you have to try another tactic, but you don’t quite know how.

A wife might say: “I am really struggling right now. I am so afraid to lose my marriage.  My husband moved out six weeks ago. With every week, I get more and more afraid.  He started out promising that he would see me often.  This lasted for about a week and the visits got less and less.  At this point, I have to pester him in order to be able to see him.  If we are going to talk on the phone, I am the one who is going to call.  But he’s clearly not thrilled to be talking to me.  The more he brushes me off, the more desperate I am to get his attention.  So I start asking to see him more.  Yesterday, he told me that we needed to limit contact for a few days because he just needed some space.  I asked him why he needs space because we are married.  Then he blurted out: ‘this is most of the problem right now.  You are so pushy. I don’t get a moment’s peace and you will not take a hint.  Maybe if you gave me some peace, you’d get more of my time.’  So now it’s obvious that he doesn’t want to interact with me as much. And I admit that I am pushy sometimes.  But only because I have to be in order to get a reaction out of him.  I don’t know how to be not pushy.  How can I just sit back passively when I’m going to lose my marriage? Am I just supposed to watch as everything that I love slips away? I’m not supposed to try to save it?”

This truth regarding this issue can be really harsh to understand.  I had a very hard time getting it through my head during my own separation.  But when your husband is resistant to your attempts, often the best thing that you can do is to stop whatever unsuccessful strategy that you’re using. I know that this is counterintuitive.  Because what you really want to do is to try harder.  He doesn’t pick up your calls?  Well, you’ll keep calling over and over again.  He doesn’t hear you?  Well, you’ll talk louder or more forcefully.  But what you don’t realize at the time is that you are digging a larger hole for yourself.  The more he pulls away, the harder it can be to direct him back.

I know that it’s very hard to back away.  I know that it’s very hard to put the phone back in the cradle when you very badly want to use it to call once again.  But in my own experience,  being able to do this saved my marriage. If I had not backed off, I do not believe that I would still be married today.  My husband was literally avoiding me like I had a communicable disease. The more I tried to get his attention, the less attention he would give me.

I know that it’s hard to back away when you feel so desperate.  And sometimes, you literally have to take it day by day or hour by hour.  You have to consciously get yourself out of the house, you have to go out with your friends, and you have to remove the temptations to revert back to old ways.  Basically you have to make it very hard for you to carrying out the pushiness.  In my own case, I went to a different town to visit because I knew that this would mean that I wouldn’t drive by and that I would be too embarrassed to repeatedly call with other people around.  And thankfully, he responded and he called me.  He reached out to me, which hadn’t happened before.  This was probably one of the biggest reasons that I was able to keep going.  I saw that it was working.  I saw that it was the right thing.

After that, I had to balance things.  When things would turn positive and my husband was receptive, I would get all excited and I would over step again.  I had to constantly check myself.  But I learned to look at it like this:  We were separated and if there was a behavior (like overspending) that I absolutely knew drove my husband crazy and was a big reason for the distance between us, I would stop.  In truth, my pushing was that behavior – just like overspending might be for someone else.  So even though the pushing was understandable, to my husband, it was a very undesirable behavior and a potential deal breaker.  So I knew that I had to stop.  It was not easy, but it made all of the difference. I honestly think that it is why we are still together today.  There’s more on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com

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