Leslie Cane Articles

I recently got heartbreaking correspondence from a young wife who was going through a separation.   They had been separated for about a month because this is what the husband wanted.  The wife’s primary goal was ending the separation and getting back together.  But she knew better than to push it.  She’d read some of my articles and knew that I advocate moving very slowly and deliberately during a separation.  So she knew not to push him and to take things slowly while focusing just on improving the relationship rather than dwelling on what they were calling it – or rather they were saying they were separated.

Still, she was struggling.  She said “I miss my husband so much during the separation that it physically hurts.  I am struggling every single day.  The more time I spend away from him, the more desperate I feel to get him back.  I have to literally physically hold myself back from reaching for the phone sometimes.  I’ll be flipping through the TV and I’ll see some shows that we liked to watch together and I’ll burst into tears.  How do I cope with this?  How do I get a hold of myself?”

I so felt for this wife.  I experienced the exact same thing while my husband and I were separated.  And I know this is unbearably hard.  But, the wife was right in her suspicions that if she let her husband see her like this, it was probably going to make things worse.  She couldn’t help how she felt of course.  But this was something she also shouldn’t share with her husband until later, at least in my experience.

So in the following article, I’m going to go over some tips that will hopefully give you some support when you’re separated, missing your husband horribly, but trying to play it the right way so that you can get him back.

I Know That You Miss Him.  But Do Whatever You Need To Do To Distract Yourself And Reevaluate Before You Act:  The wife repeatedly told me that she was constantly tempted to call, text, or come by.  Sometimes, her husband was still receptive to her so it was tempting to not want to contact him often to “feel him out.”

I do understand.  But allowing him to take the lead sometimes is almost always the right call.  If you are always the one initiating the contact, then he starts to feel as if there’s no give and take and this devalues you in his eyes – as strange as that sounds.

You’re too transparent and too easy to read.  He knows that you are hanging on his every word and basing the happiness of your day on what happens with him.  Even if this is true, this is not what he should think.

So what do you when you can’t stop calling, texting, or thinking about him?  You do whatever it takes to distract yourself.  This became such a problem for me that I had to physically remove myself from the situation.  I went out of town to stay with family and friends because I knew this was probably the only decent way to keep me from getting out of control and going overboard.

And this was the turning point.  A while after I did this, my husband’s attitude changed.  It wasn’t an immediate process, but it was quite noticeable.  Thankfully, I was smart enough to capitalize on this.

Yes, it was tempting to sigh with relief and beg him to call off the separation.  But everything I was reading told me this was the wrong call.  So I kept in contact but I didn’t come on too strong and I tried to create a little mystery.

I’m So Afraid That He Will Forget About Me Or Move On During Our Separation.  What If He Doesn’t Miss Me At All?:  In this situation, many wives worry that if they don’t constantly keep in touch, their husband will begin moving on because he doesn’t miss them as much as they miss him.  Frankly, if you contact him too much, you make him not missing you MORE LIKELY.

He may feel that he needs to prolong the separation just to get a break.  I have to tell you this.  Very few men visit my blog and tell me that they want to end the separation because their wife wore them down.  Instead, they just want the separation more when she acts like this.

But, many tell me that they decided to end the separation because their wife presented herself in such a way that it changed their perceptions about her and made them want to be with her again.  Please stay the course.

I know you miss your husband.  He might well miss you more than he is letting on.  But give him a chance to miss you so much that he will want to come back through his own free will.

I’m not saying that you should never call or just ignore the situation.  I’m just saying that there has to be a somewhat balanced give and take.  He has to feel like you are worth chasing a little bit.  If you both have to work for it, it’s perceived as much more valuable.

I know all of this because I was in the same situation myself.  I didn’t want to back off while I missed my husband so much.  But as I said, my backing off which changed the whole thing.  You can read this story on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com.  I’m certainly no expert but this is what worked for me.  If you’ve not yet watched T Jackson’s free video on this exact topic, you can see it on the right side of this blog.  It’s free and worth checking out.  It taught me a lot.

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