Leslie Cane Articles

By: Leslie Cane: I sometimes hear from spouses who are trying in vain to get their husbands or wives to clarify what is happening with their marriage. It’s often quite obvious that there are serious problems and issues, but it can be difficult (if not downright impossible) to not know what the future holds. Many people feel as though they could better address the serious issues in the marriage if their spouse would agree to even acknowledge them, work on them, or at least give some indication of where he or she sees the marriage heading in the future.

A wife’s situation may be something like this: “our marriage is obviously in serious trouble. We’ve been struggling for the past six months. There was a time when my husband was hinting that he might move out or ask for a divorce. I begged him not to and for now, he is still here, but it’s obvious that sometimes he wishes he wasn’t here. Sometimes, he stays out all night with his friends or he pretty much ignores me when we are together. I usually can only take so much of this before I ask my husband what is going on and what’s going to happen with our marriage. I’m willing to try to save it, but I doubt that I can do it all on my own. However, every time I try to bring up our marriage, what is wrong with it, what we might do to fix it, or what my husband has planned for the future, he will promptly change the subject. It’s as if he refuses to talk about the state of our marriage in any capacity. I will tell my husband that ignoring the problem isn’t going to make it go away, but he doesn’t seem to care. He just keeps right on changing the subject or pretending like he never heard me in the first place. What can I do about this? And why does he keep ignoring the topic?”

There are many reasons that your husband might be avoiding the topic of your marriage. I will discuss some of these reasons below as well as suggest some ways that you might attempt to handle this.

Possible Reasons Your Husband Might Be Changing The Subject Every Time You Bring Up Your Marriage: There are numerous reasons that your husband might be inclined to change the subject of your marriage. First, he may be just as stumped and as frustrated as you are. And, because he doesn’t have any decent answers for you, he might find it better to just remain silent until an answer presents itself. Second, he may not know how he feels about your marriage or about saving it. So, while he is deciding what he wants to do or how he wants to move forward, he might find it better to just not discuss the topic in depth. Or, he may just want to wait and see what’s going to happen before he makes any comments that may not bear out or that he might later regret. Finally, he may well have an opinion about your marriage and where it’s headed, but he may not want to discuss it yet, perhaps because he doesn’t want to hurt or discourage you or as I said before he’d prefer to see how things turn out rather than speculating. Now, let’s move on to ways that you might consider handling this situation.

How To Handle It When Your Husband Won’t Discuss Your Marriage Or Refuses To Talk About Saving It: Many in this situation will become frustrated that their spouse won’t discuss their marriage so they attempt to bring up the topic with even more intensity. They figure if they keep bringing it up, their spouse will eventually become so sick of the question that they will eventually answer. The problem with this method is that you may well get the answer that you didn’t want. In other words, if you force an answer, your spouse may become so frustrated that they tell you that, if you insist on rushing things, then maybe the marriage is in real trouble or even over.

This is the last thing that you want. So, sometimes you are better off giving up the continuous questioning, at least for now, and just addressing or trying to begin saving your marriage on your own. There is quite a bit that you can do without needing to continue to harp on the unknown. You don’t necessarily have to talk endlessly about your marriage to save it.

You can begin by trying to focus on what is going right between you rather than what is going wrong. Sometimes, if things are particularly bad, you will have to dig deep or look very hard to find any shred of what is right. But this is preferable to continuing to address something that your spouse is reluctant or unable to address. For now, begin to focus on those small things that are right between you. Build on those as you can. Become the spouse that you would like to be. Make sure that you are showing your spouse the person they fell in love with.  Make it easier to see the good things about you and your marriage rather than forcing your spouse to take inventory of the bad. Set it up so this is a light-hearted and welcoming topic rather than one your spouse feels he must avoid.

Although there may be a legitimate and negative reason that your spouse is changing the subject when you bring up your marriage, nothing says that you can’t set in motion the events that are going to transform your marriage so that sometime soon, you no longer have to keep asking questions to which you don’t know the answers.

I bugged my husband to death about the state of our marriage and about what he saw for it in the future. Eventually, he got tired of me bugging him and he pressed for a separation so I ended up wishing that I had focused on making things better rather than on demanding answers. Because saving my marriage was much more difficult after this. I was eventually able to restore the love and save the marriage, but the effort was much more difficult. If it helps, you can read the whole story of how I was able to save my marriage on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com

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