Leslie Cane Articles

By: Leslie Cane: It’s normal to want to do whatever is necessary to keep your spouse from pursuing a trial separation. One way that we will often try to do this is to tell our spouse that they are wrong and that they will realize their mistake and come crawling back. (I admit that very early on, I did this, too.) This probably isn’t our finest hour. But we figure that desperate times call for desperate measures.

If it turns out that we are right, we are usually thrilled. But much of the time, our spouse doesn’t want to hear about this. You might hear a wife say: “I didn’t want to hurt or punish my husband when I pursued a trial separation. I honestly thought that our marriage needed it. We had become very cold and distant from one another. I felt that I needed a break. I wasn’t intending to end my marriage. Not really. I just wanted to pause it. My husband did not take this well. He told me that I would be miserable without him and that I would be back very soon because I would miss him. He also said that I would realize that my life is much easier with him in it. Turns out, he was absolutely right. Most of his predictions came true. I did miss him. I did realize that I expect a lot out of him and take him for granted. And I did want to come home earlier than I thought I might. My husband gladly took me back and I am relieved about this. But he will never let me forget that I am the one who wanted to leave. He’s practically gloating. I know that this makes me petty, but it bothers me how he’s acting. He’s so smug about it. I almost want to leave him again just to teach him not to act so superior.”

Being Right Can Also Be Destructive: Although it’s normal to want to point it out when we are right, it is so destructive.  Having my husband gone and feeling like he was so far away during our separation made me abandon the whole strategy of telling him what to think or feel. When I finally got my separated husband to come back, I practically bent over backward to show him how happy I was that he came home and how much I welcomed him back. I had no room in my actions for pettiness or punishment. Looking back now, I may have gone overboard to be overly-accommodating to him but I was so relieved when he came home.

Being Happy Rather Than Being Right: It’s important to remember that the whole idea when a separated spouse comes home is to set your marriage up for success. However, people often don’t remember this when they are hurt or feel wronged in some way. They usually feel that your leaving them was a rejection. They fear that you thought that you’d be better off without them. So the sense of relief that they feel when you come back is huge. And they often just can not resist letting you know this – but they are letting you know in the wrong way.

And although you can understand their motivations, you’re right to recognize that this is harmful to your marriage. So you may want to consider addressing it with something like: “I know that my leaving must have hurt you. It hurt me too. And I’m sure that’s one reason why you want to highlight the mistakes in my thinking. I understand that. But I want to let you know that it hurts me when you tell me how wrong I was. It feels like you are being critical of me. And that just naturally makes me feel defensive. I don’t think this is the best way to start our marriage upon my return home. So can we rewind and start over? How about you just tell me that you’re happy I’m home and I’ll agree that it’s good to be back. And then we can get down to the truly important stuff like improving our marriage. Because I think that we both want the same thing – I think that we both want to be happy. We are more likely to get that if we build each other up instead of tearing each other down.”

Hopefully, this will allow him to see that he will get more of what he truly wants from you – your love – by being sweet rather than critical. You may have to redirect him from time to time. If he resorts back to his old ways, you may have to say: “remember we talked about this and we agreed that you weren’t going to continuously bring this up?”

Over time, he will hopefully see that he gets the reaction he wants out of you more often when he is being positive. You often just have to give him the desired feedback when he is giving you the desired behavior. It takes constant reinforcement. But it often works.

It’s important that you set the correct tone when one spouse comes home from a separation because your marriage can be very vulnerable at that time.   You can read more about how I struggled with this myself on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com

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