Leslie Cane Articles

by: Leslie Cane: I once spoke with a wife about getting her husband to come back home after their separation. He had been staying with his brother for the last three months. The wife had been laying on the guilt and the pressure in an attempt to get him to come back to her, but so far, that hadn’t worked. The husband was barely taking her calls anymore and the two of them had agreed that they would reevaluate their marriage at the end of the separation. Unfortunately, neither of them had defined when that day might come, but the wife felt confident that, if the husband had to decide tomorrow whether to come home or to leave for good, he was unlikely to come home.

I have seen women (myself included) get their husbands back after a separation. But, many of them don’t use the tactics that this wife was using. In this situation, it is almost always to your advantage to play to your strengths and the positives of the situation rather than to your weaknesses and the negatives in the situation. I will discuss this more in the following article.

Getting Your Husband Back After Your Separation Often Requires That He Realizes Many Things While He’s Away: Here’s something that you must understand. While your husband is away from you during this separation, he’s going to be evaluating the health and desirability of your marriage. In other words, he’s going to be asking himself if he should remain in the marriage or if he’s happier with the way things are during the separation. In short, he has to decide if he’s happier with you or without you.

If he is wavering on this issue, then he will usually ask himself if the issues that are causing him doubt or are making him hesitate can be improved or worked through. Of course, you need for the answer to all of these questions to be a resounding yes. So, you need to be very mindful of how he’s regarding you right now.

You need to set it up so that when he thinks of you, he has a smile on his face and a yearning in his heart. You need to show him that you are willing to work with him on any issues that you might be struggling with. Some women will attempt to do this by constantly discussing “the issues” that are dividing them. In my observation, this is often not the best idea. This will only draw his attention to these things in a negative way and make you seem almost desperate.

You are generally much better off just attempting to focus on the positive and to show him with your actions and not your words that you are willing to meet him halfway. Because honestly, if things have progressed to the point where he has initiated a separation, then it’s not a given that he’s really completely listening to the same old messages. Very often, you will need to change both the tone and the context of your message to get him to pay attention.

How To Play It During The Separation When You Want To Get Him Back: Hopefully, it’s obvious by now that I didn’t think that the wife’s guilt trips were doing her any good. It’s simply human nature for people to want to stay away from things and other people that make them feel bad about their situations or about themselves. If you dwell on these things, then those perceptions that we talked about aren’t likely to swing in your favor.

You are much better off focusing on what is still good. And you will usually have more success if you turn down the pressure. Make it clear that you don’t know what the future holds and that you are tired of all the conflict and no longer want that to be the basis of your relationship. Focus just on making each encounter and perception as positive as you can without coming off as insincere or as if you are just putting on an act for his sake.

For this to really stick, it usually has to be a somewhat gradual process. If you guilt him into coming back before he is really ready to do so, then his heart might be conflicted and his commitment may not be there. As a result, you might always be waiting for the worst-case scenario and this isn’t that great for your marriage either.

How you present yourself right now is very important. You don’t want to be the only one who is invested. If you are, then it can help to back away just a little. If you come on too strong or appear too desperate, then the perception can be that you know that there’s something very wrong with you and the relationship and you’re afraid that eventually, your husband will come to realize this if he is away long enough. This is what you can not afford to have happen.

You want to be light-hearted, open, alluring, and flirty. You do not want to show him that you are struggling or that you put hours of thought and effort into each and every meeting. You want him to think that deep in your heart, you know that you are meant to be together and this is why things are going to work out without your pushing too hard.

It’s Best To Let Him Be The One To Mention Coming Back After The Separation: I can not stress enough how it will often hurt your cause if you are always pushing him to come back. If you’ve been constantly bringing this up, now is the time to stop. You will have your best chance of success if you let him be the one to suggest or ask if he can come back to the marriage and your home.

Often, when I tell women this they will respond with something like: “Yeah, well that’s a lovely idea but it’s never going to happen. If I wait until he asks to come back then I’m going to be waiting a long time.” I disagree with this. I’ve seen this scenario play out so many times. Quite often (but not always,) if you play your cards right, you can and will get the result that you want, which is, of course, him willingly coming back to you after the separation.

One day, he would decide that he was going to work with her to save the marriage, but then the next day he would completely change his stance and tell her that he felt they should just go ahead and divorce. Sometimes, this change of heart would come after a fight, but sometimes, it would come seemingly out of the blue. The wife was having a hard time responding and formulating a plan because every day was different. She had no idea which husband she was going to be dealing with on any particular day.

She was looking for the best way to approach her husband’s swinging moods. Despite her frustration, she loved him very much and did not want a divorce. 

A Husband’s Changing His Mind About The Divorce Sometimes Shows That He’s Uncertain And This Provides An Opportunity: Here’s an observation that the wife was missing. As frustrating as it was that her husband was changing his mind all of the time, at least he wasn’t dead set on a divorce. The fact that he was being so “wishy-washy” as she called it, meant that he wasn’t sure that he really wanted a divorce.

I sometimes speak with women who have already been served divorce papers or who have husbands who won’t even consider saving the marriage. So, as frustrating as this situation was, it was potentially workable.

The husband’s changing his mind might have been just his reaction to the inner turmoil that he was experiencing. Because neither of them had a plan as to how to change the negative cycle that they had gotten into, and he did not know how to go about making a positive change. When he felt this deeply, he was sometimes tempted to just throw in the towel because he did not believe that anything was ever going to change.

Their negative experiences of late had convinced him that all he could expect was more of the same and the only way to really stop this once and for all was to just end it. It was important that the wife understand this because the way to get him to quit flip-flopping about the divorce was to show him that things could steadily change for the better.

Changing The Negative Cycle With No End In Sight: The wife understood that she had to change this cycle, but she had no idea where to begin. They had become stuck in a rut and she said that, depending on the mood of her husband, she could almost anticipate what was going to happen before he even opened his mouth. He pushed, she pulled. He came forward, and she retreated. And sometimes, they would change roles just to give themselves some variety.

This was going to have to change. Because as soon as the same behavior started, so too did the same results. In order to get more desirable results, they were going to have to learn more desirable behaviors. But, the wife had her doubts that these things were going to “stick.” She felt strongly that her husband was going to resist anything that she put into place. I told her that the way that she presented this to him was going to be important.

Sometimes, it’s unnecessary to spell out what you are doing. If you feel strongly that you’re going to meet with resistance, then you can begin by controlling what you can – which is yourself and your actions. You can refuse to get pulled into the same old routines and you can go into this with a positive attitude. You can remember the things and the feelings that gave you good results in the past and draw on those things.

A Different Way Of Looking At It: Sometimes, when we get into very negative ways of behaving, we forget that the two of us used to laugh, play, and interact without cringing. If you can look back objectively, you can often pinpoint the places, circumstances, and people who used to bring about the bond that looked so differently than it does today. Although you certainly can’t turn back time, you can bring back some of these positive influences in your life by changing your attitude, your circumstances, and your reactions.

I told the wife that when her husband began to engage, she might respond with something like “You know, I’ve been thinking and I’ve decided that these negative habits that we’ve fallen into only make us unhappy. We both deserve to be happy so I’m not going to participate in these behaviors anymore. We can certainly talk about it though, when we are both more calm.” At first, of course, the husband might make a combative comment in return. But, when he did, she was to remove herself from the situation and tell him that they could revisit it when they were both calm.

She was then to focus on the positive. She was to be the affectionate, happy, light-hearted person that she knew she could be. Not only would this disarm him, but eventually, it would contribute to him seeing that things could change. And, as a result of that, the old habits would be broken down. So that eventually, the talks of divorce could stop as there would be no reason for them anymore.

by: Leslie Cane: I’ve dialogued with many people who are in no way ready to throw the towel on their marriage. But, they are often the only one in the marriage who feels this way. Typically, one person wants a divorce, while the other does not. 

The person who wants to stay married mostly knows that they have a lot of work to do, but they aren’t sure where to start. They know that they will either need to delay or stop the proceedings or change their spouses’ minds. I’ll discuss the latter in the following article.

Why I Feel That Trying To Change Your Spouse’s Mind About The Divorce Is The Best Strategy To Take When You Don’t Want To Split Up: I am sometimes asked questions about legal strategies. I am never able to answer these questions because I’m not an attorney, but also because I don’t feel that this is a very successful tactic. 

I don’t see stall tactics or playing “hardball” working very often. Usually, this only angers and annoys the spouse who wants the divorce. When you are opposing them in this way, it usually only makes them want the divorce more – and it also typically makes them want it to be over with more quickly.

Also, even if you are successful in using these oppositional tactics, you will likely always wonder if your spouse is really totally on board. You might get them to “give in,” but you’ll always wonder if you really have them with their whole hearts. 

I often have people tell me that they try to show their spouse how much money they are going to lose in the divorce. The goal is to show the spouse that it’s just going to be too expensive to buy their freedom. Honestly, though, do you really want your spouse to stay married to you only to save money?

Of course not. You want them to remain married to you because they love you and they want to be with you for life. This is often not accomplished by fighting with them or being on opposite sides of them. You will likely have much more cooperation and success if you can find something to agree upon and convince them that you really are on your side.

Sometimes, you simply have to start by agreeing that you will make this process as bearable as possible because you want to remain close and you don’t want to hurt one another. Sometimes, you will have to tell your spouse that you intend to work with them to maintain the history and feelings between you, even if your relationship is evolving into something else. 

By doing this, you have become an ally rather than an enemy, and you’ve hopefully gained yourself some access to your spouse because they won’t fear having to deal with you (like they would if you were arguing with them or all the time or constantly telling them why they were wrong.)

I understand that this might seem like a difficult and risky strategy, but it is, without a doubt, the one that I see having the greatest amount of success and it’s the only way to know that allows you to maintain your integrity. 

You’ve also set it up so that your spouse can come back to you in an honest and lasting way that is free from conflict and compromise that their heart was just not behind.

Setting It Up So That The Loving Feelings Return So That Your Spouse Calls Off The Divorce And Wants To Stay Married: This is usually something that has to happen gradually so that it is lasting and genuine. Your spouse likely wants a divorce because there is something in the relationship that has been lost or is no longer working. They likely perceive that they would be better off alone. These are the perceptions that must be addressed or changed.

Without knowing your situation, I can tell you that most marital issues stem from shifting intimacy and lessening closeness. Somewhere along the line, your partner stopped thinking as part of a couple and started thinking as an individual. 

This usually happens as the bond begins to weaken. Returning this bond is usually a process rather than an overnight event. You will generally need to build on a series of successes until you can bring about a dramatic change in perceptions.

You really need to elicit feelings that make him (or her) remember things when they were good. Make sure he sees the qualities that made him love you in the first place. (If he loves your sense of humor, make sure he sees it.) Over time, he will begin to question his perception that the marriage is dead and that you are two different people. He needs to see that the two of you can interact in the same positive way that used to make you both happy.

To do this, you will sometimes have to settle for small victories. The meeting over coffee that ended in laughter might give way to something more. The key is to not push too hard, to appear that you are coping with integrity and are considering his best interests and wishes and that you are the same, upbeat person who is very capable of bringing about loving feelings in him.

By: Leslie Cane: I sometimes speak with spouses outlining a marriage that they define as “troubled.” They want some ideas or tips on how to heal the marriage and bring it back from a place of neglect and apathy to a place of love, appreciation, and affection. Sometimes, only one spouse has this wish, while the other spouse is ready to walk out or has really given up. 

Still, typically the spouse who wants to heal the marriage can separate things as they are now from things as they used to be. They truly believe that if they are able to say or do the right things, little by little, they can begin to bring the marriage back from the dead. I believe this too. I’ve seen so many marriages that were only bitter shells of themselves reborn through a little effort and through sheer determination. Often, it takes more than a desire and well wishes to make this happen. You also need a plan that is actually going to work. So, in the following article, I’ll offer tips and advice on healing your troubled marriage.

Why I Really Hate The Phrase “Troubled Marriage” (Hint: It’s A Sabotaging, Self-Fulfilling Prophecy:) To be honest, I cringe when someone repeatedly chooses the word troubled to describe their marriage. This word choice really implies that the marriage is like an old, rabid dog that either must be rehabilitated through some miracle or put out of its misery. This does not make the whole thing seem exciting or desirable. In essence, your word choice can’t help but influence your feelings about this entire situation before you’ve even begun to carry out the plan that I’m about to give you.

So, stop dwelling on the negative and describing or thinking about your marriage in the state that it is now. Instead, think of it in the terms that you want it to be in the future. You don’t want to approach your spouse from a place of beaten resignation. You want to approach them from a place of being excited about the future. This is a huge difference between the two and this will often greatly affect your outcome.

Act “As If” And Know That You Don’t Need To Give Them A Play By Play Of What You’re Doing: OK, let’s think about this for a second. Right now, your goal, very simply, is to get from point A to point B. Point A is where you are right now in your marriage and point B is your goal and what you’re shooting for. Theoretically, you need your spouse’s cooperation and enthusiasm to get where you want to go. But, I often tell people to realize that you likely aren’t going to get this cooperation until much later. And, you really don’t need it in the very beginning. There is quite a lot that you can do on your own.  

Many people make the mistake of sitting their spouse down and asking for their help in “working on” their marriage. Again, I cringe at this terminology. When most adults hear the phrase “working on,” all this sounds like to them is, well, work. And, we are so time-strapped and stressed today that many of us are not going to get overly excited when we’re told that we’re being given yet another task to put on the daily plate of life. 

Again, the use of words affects how your spouse is going to look at what you’re asking them to do. And frankly, if your marriage has already reached this point, they’ve probably stopped listening to your promises and solutions. They’ve heard this before and they know it doesn’t work. So enough with all the words. You’re going to have to start focusing on action. And, you want to package it in a way so that you can both get behind it. 

So, you want to tell them (very briefly) that you’re saddened by the state of your marriage and that you’d just like to simply focus on having more fun together. You are tired of living in drudgery and you think that both of you deserve better. Tell him (or her) that you’re tired of walking on eggshells and always analyzing and trying to fix everything. That process is tiresome and you want to abandon it for light-hearted action. This does a couple of things. It lightens the tension which quite frankly is probably draining your marriage. It takes a lot of the pressure away and it postpones the difficult conversations that they were probably dreading (and vowing to ignore) anyway.

Putting Off The Hard Stuff Until You’re Strongly Bonded Again: Some readers tell me that the plan makes sense, but still, they just can’t understand how they’re actually going to heal this marriage when I’m telling them to delay the work part. Well, I don’t mean that you have to put it off indefinitely. However, the first step toward healing is changing your attitude. Both you and your spouse must change your perception of your marriage away from something that is struggling or just barely hanging on. This is done through a series of positive, shared experiences. 

You want to move toward a place where both you and your spouse are having fun together and are again experiencing affection, anticipation, and appreciation. Because once you are here, you’ll have a much better chance of having both of you equally on board and then committed to doing “the work” necessary to get things back on track.

By: Leslie Cane: Over the weekend, I spoke to a friend of a friend – a wife who was at the end of her rope. She told me that she and her husband were only interacting these days by fighting. She said that she honestly felt like she was living in a “war zone.” She worried about the effect of this fighting on her kids. She did not want to continue to live this way.

Still, she had to admit that she still loved her husband, and she felt pretty strongly that he still loved her. They were sometimes affectionate with each other when they “made up” after their fights. But, there was no doubt that there was way too much tension in the air. The wife wanted to know if I thought she should divorce her husband to put a stop to all of the fighting and tension. I’ll share my thoughts in the following article.

Getting A Divorce Versus Fighting All The Time: To start the discussion off, I asked the wife very directly if she wanted a divorce. She did not even have to think about it. She gave me a very definitive “no,” but then quickly prefaced it with “But I don’t want to continue to live with all of this fighting either.”

There’s no denying that constant fighting is a very detrimental environment in which to raise a family. This sort of pressure cooker environment is not conducive to anyone’s mental health. Plus, the children are growing up witnessing a relationship in which arguing, belittling, and raising voices is the way that folks work out their problems. 

This was certainly not the example that the wife wanted to set. She wanted to show her children a positive way to get their points across and to negotiate their wants and needs. And, she was very upset to see her children exhibiting aggressive and angry behavior.

So, it’s pretty clear that constant fighting is detrimental to everyone in the house. No one can deny this. But, having divorced parents is not always a great alternative either. The wife’s parents were divorced, and she still felt the void and the sadness that followed her parents’ divorce, even as a grown woman. She told me that seeing her father’s truck drive away from her family home is probably the most persuasive memory that she has from her childhood, and it saddened her to think that she might be headed to a similar place with her own children. But, she could not see a way out of either problem.

Stopping The Cycle Of Fighting To Prevent The Impending Divorce: I asked her whether she had ever focused on trying to improve the fighting or the combative way that the two of them interacted. She told me that she had and that sometimes things got briefly better, but they almost always reverted back to their old ways eventually.

After discussing this for a little while, it became pretty clear that the two of them were mostly fighting over the same few topics over and over again. And, because nothing ever got solved for good, both parties were becoming increasingly frustrated and hopeless. So the fights escalated and took on a more negative tone over time.

Another factor in this cycle of behavior was that the fights were becoming very commonplace in their home. This had become the normal way that they interacted and expressed their feelings. Eventually, they both almost begin to feed off of this. It became part of their routine that one person would push, and then the other would push back, and so on over and over again.

Obviously, the first step toward breaking this cycle was to change the way that the wife responded to the husband’s little barbs and pushes. See, I’ve learned from my own experience that the wife had to accept that she could not control her husband’s behavior. She could not really shame, force, or guilt him into changing. This decision had to come solely from him. This decision was much more likely to come if the environment began to become more supportive and less combative.

The wife felt very strongly that if the two of them could solve the issues that were coming up over and over again, then the fighting would become less common. This was certainly possible, but here are some flaws with that thinking. 

First, they had tried to work through these issues for years, so what was going to be so different this time? Second, even if they did “solve” these hot-button issues, other stressors would always come up. This is just real life. So, they likely needed to learn new ways to negotiate and compromise to ensure long-term success – and the wife could begin this process by focusing on herself.

There were many considerations to this, but it helps to break it into smaller chunks. First, it helps to break up the cycle that the fighting would typically take. When you feel the urge to lash out, instead take out a pad of paper and write down the issue in one sentence. 

The tendency of many couples is to “pile on” the complaints when they become angry at each other so that one issue would give rise to several issues.

Give yourself at least an hour from when you write down the issue to when you bring it up. This would give things time to calm down and it forces you to focus on the most important issue.

Next, you can change the way you set up when you’re going to talk about. The next time your husband wants to start the same old fight, calmly and directly say that this topic often got them into trouble and started a cycle of fighting. Try to delay it. Ask if you can discuss it when the kids are in bed. This allows things to be more calm due to the delay. 

When it’s time to discuss it, lay your cards on the table and remember that one sentence. There is nothing wrong with telling him that you are troubled by the fighting and want to stop this. You are not denying the problems, but trying to break the destructive cycle so that the issue becomes much more manageable as you eventually no longer have two angry and resistant people who were unable to compromise.

Focus on what you wrote and the card and only that. That way, you are able to really and truly tackle one problem at a time and will no longer have the same old fight that never gets solved.

If you solve the issues you fight over methodically, then there is no need to get a divorce because you won’t be expressing your continuous frustration in the form of fights.

by: Leslie Cane: I recently spoke with a wife who was blindsided by her husband coming home from work, sitting her down, and telling her (very matter-of-factly) that the marriage was no longer working for him and he “wanted out.” 

The wife was so stunned that she didn’t respond. She had no idea what to do, how to react, or how to feel. She felt as if the rug had been pulled out from under her because this apparently came without warning. She eventually excused herself and left for a while. 

She wanted to know how to approach this situation and how to respond. Although this situation is a difficult one, I do believe that some responses are better than others. I will discuss this more in the following article.

Deal With What You Do Know, Rather Than What You Don’t Know: Admittedly, I did not know this woman or her husband well. But, I’ve dealth with the spouse who “wants out.” The biggest mistake that I see people in this situation make is that they will often immediately deal with the questions of why rather than the questions of how. 

What I mean by this is that they want immediate answers. To them, this situation came right out of thin air, so they think that there must be some logical reason for this. 

Therefore, they think that if they can just hound their husband until he provides a glimpse into his exact mindset and reasoning, they can therefore begin to work on changing his mind and showing him that he’s wrong.

Also, some wives will immediately suspect that there’s something sinister that the husband is not admitting to. They begin to hound him about whether he’s having an affair or hanging out with friends who are putting ridiculous ideas into his head.

Unfortunately, most of the time, all these strategies do is make your husband defensive and cause him to see you in an even more unfavorable light. So, what’s happening is that now both people are frustrated and are seeing the other person as the cause of many of the problems. This really does very little to help the situation. (And, if you are calm, in control, and patient, the truth will eventually come out anyway.)

While it’s absolutely understandable that you want answers, I have to tell you that sometimes, he’s not equipped to give them, at least to your satisfaction. He often knows that this is not working for him, but sometimes, even he is not sure why. 

Or, if he is, he can not articulate what it would take for you to change this for him. See, so often we women are looking for him to give us a road map. What we really want to hear is for him to say something like “Here are the exact reasons that I’m unhappy. If you can change these things by (fill in the blank, depending on your situation) then I would change my mind.”

This is not likely to happen. What you’ll often get instead is him being resistant to offer you specific information other than vague phrases like: “I just think it’s time to separate;” or “I’m just not happy;” or “I just don’t think the marriage is healthy anymore.” I

t can be very hard to address these things because they are based on his perception which, from the way you see it, is absolutely wrong. Plus, you don’t have control over another person’s thoughts.)

But telling him that he’s wrong is not going to help your cause. No, your best bet is to deal with exactly what he’s telling you and to go from there. 

You can’t read his mind and it can be difficult to deal with perceptions that only he is responsible for. So, what you want to do is to deal with what you can. 

You can address what he’s said as though it is a valid reality. And what you know for sure is that at least at this moment in time, he’s not happy and doesn’t think that marriage is going to change enough to make it worth his while to stay. 

This is the perception that you should work on changing because this is what is lying right in front of you.

Saving Your Marriage, Even When His Wanting To End It Came Without Any Warning: Another thing that people tend to dwell on is the fact that there was no real warning. Yes, this was unfair. But, you can’t change that. 

As I said, you can only deal with what is happening right now. So, move past the warning issue and focus on what you can do right now. And, what you can do is work on those perceptions that are causing him to want to walk away. He thinks that the marriage is not worth saving and that it can not change.

The easiest and most logical place to start is to address his belief that nothing is going to change. He’s likely expecting you to react in the ways that I have discussed – to demand answers, to nag, to guilt, to reel. You’re better off not doing that. It’s better to calmly tell him that you’re so very sorry to hear that, but that you made a vow to hang in there through good times and bad. 

So, in the spirit of that, you’re willing to work with him to make things better, no matter what “better” ends up meaning in this particular case.

Show him the empathetic, understanding, calm, and in-control woman that he is likely not expecting. 

Remember the road map that I said that most of us want? Well, you likely have it, although you probably do not realize it. You often do not need for him to lay out for you what makes him content and fulfilled. 

This man once, and probably still does, love you. But the circumstances have changed. If you try, you can usually determine when and how this happened. And, you can remember when things were very different and that (and how) you made each other happy. You know what you did, how you interacted, and how you paid attention.

At the end of the day, we all have the same needs. We want to feel heard. We want to know that we are understood and desired and that we are receiving what we give and deserve. And we know that these things make us feel good and make us want to continue. 

When you are forming your responses and strategies, always keep this in mind. Because you’re much better off focusing on this rather than how this is both unfair and unexpected.