Leslie Cane Articles

By: Leslie Cane: Because I often write about saving your marriage and avoiding a divorce, I’m often approached by wives who tell me that they’ve tried “everything,” and yet nothing works to change the husband’s mind about a divorce. This article will outline some steps that may work. If you haven’t tried these tactics, I think that you definitely should before you throw in the towel.  If you have tried them all and none have worked, then I’ll list a back up “last-ditch effort” plan at the end of this article.

Have You Made Every Effort To Replace Negative Feelings With Positive Ones? Here’s where so many wives go wrong when they want to prevent a divorce or change their husband’s mind about splitting up. Many times, they panic and go on a crusade to strong-arm the husband into changing his mind about going forward with the divorce.

So, they engage. They question. They push buttons. They do anything they can to get their husband’s attention – even if this means they are getting negative attention.

I know this because, in desperation, I tried these tactics myself.  Here is the problem with these methods. All they do is make you appear more unstable and less attractive. I understand why we all do them, but they don’t work. They just elicit more negative feelings that your husband is going to associate with both you and the marriage.

Instead, every chance you get, you want to place yourself (and your actions) in a positive light. You want to do things that are going to bring you closer to your husband rather than farther away.

Does this mean I want you to suppress your own feelings and needs? No, not at all. But you can always communicate with your partner in positive ways that you can feel good about later.

So many husbands tell me they feel as if their wives are trying to “beat them down,” with noise to change their minds. While they may give in initially, their heart is not going to be in it. So, the next time there is conflict, they are going to block your efforts big time, which will only make preventing a divorce harder for you in the end.

Are You Focusing On What’s Wrong Rather Than On What Is Right With Your Marriage? Another huge mistake is that wives think they have to immediately fix every single problem in the marriage. So, they sit their husband’s down and recite a list of everything that is wrong and outline how you are both going to “work on it.”

Many men just do not have the patience or the communication skills for this. They feel beaten and discouraged before they ever get started. In short, the plan often sounds like too much work, sounds too hard, and appears too out of reach (which elicits a lot of the negative feelings I discussed earlier.)

What you should do instead is to focus on what is right with the marriage. You don’t even need to tell your husband that you are doing this. You want to show him rather than tell him.

Your goal is to bring back the positive feelings and situations that contributed to your falling in love in the first place. You do this by presenting the best version of yourself – the woman that he first fell in love with.

I’d be willing to bet that when you were first dating, both of you were much more happy-go-lucky, laid back, open and loving, and willing to work through any problems and fights quickly. People deeply in love don’t want to waste time bickering. So, you must be able to return to a place where you both are feeling affection and empathy (which later leads to commitment.)

Now, I don’t mean that you never have to discuss or work through your problems, because you do. But, when your marriage is already on very shaky ground, it’s probably not a great time to dissect and call attention to what is wrong with it. If you can return to a place where both people are receptive and loving, then working through your problems is going to be so much easier.

The Last Ditch Effort When You’ve Tried Everything To Change Your Husband’s Mind About The Divorce: If you haven’t yet gone all out on the above suggestions, you definitely should. I have found that if you try to prevent the divorce from a different angle and a positive rather than a negative place, this sometimes works. However, if you have tried all of these things and your husband is still dead set on a divorce, then I typically suggest that you agree with him up to a point. I’ll explain.

The best-case scenario is to agree that the marriage needs work. If you both can agree on that, you’ve bought yourself some time and now have both people committed and open to working things out.  If this isn’t possible, and your husband is still dead set on a divorce, the next step is agreeing to a break wherein you will both take time to work on yourselves. You have to be convincing about this and tell your husband that you’ve thought it over and you too would like to take some time for yourself. The strategy behind this is that agreeing to the break is better than agreeing to a divorce and it will ease some of the tension and resistance. So, what do you do on this break?

You still present the woman he fell in love with, but you actually do work on yourself. You go out and see friends. You take up old hobbies. You do all those things that make you happy which you never had time to do before (and you make sure these things get leaked to your husband.)

I promise you this is going to help your cause and not hurt it. Because not only will this make you feel better, it might inspire your husband’s interest, or at least his curiosity.

Ultimately, you want him to know that the openhearted, fun, and self-respecting woman he fell in love with is still alive and kicking, and you want to realize (due to her absence) that he misses her very much and wants her back in his life.

The method is the same if your husband is actually going forward with the divorce. And, the reasons behind it are also the same. The idea is that if you present yourself in the best light, he’s going to eventually realize that the negative feelings he used to feel are now replaced with positive ones – so why should he still need to leave the marriage? Yes, you have to have the discipline to do this, but what other choice is there?

I learned these steps after almost losing my own husband. Eventually, I did have to use a variation on the last-ditch effort, but it worked. You can read that story on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com