Leslie Cane Articles

By: Leslie Cane: Many people don’t want to accept that their marriage is over, despite what their spouse is saying. In an attempt to change their spouse’s mind, they will often ask for concrete reasons for the marriage being over. They figure if they know why their spouse wants to end things, they can address the problems in order to hopefully save their marriage. Sometimes though, their spouse refuses to provide any reasoning behind their feelings.

Here’s an explanation: “I will be the first to admit that our marriage isn’t perfect. Because of our child’s disabilities, we are constantly under stress. But I thought that we would always stick together for the sake of our son. However, my husband apparently doesn’t share this thinking. Last night, he announced that our marriage is over. He said that nothing could change his mind and that he was going to find another place to live, move out, and then eventually file for a divorce. I was devastated and of course, my first question was why. He said that his decision wasn’t based on just one thing. He said he can’t pinpoint the exact reason. But he assured me that he didn’t need to spell it out because it is over no matter what the reason. I don’t think that there is someone else because we are both always home. He doesn’t have much spare time to carry on an affair. He probably just wants to run away and leave me being solely responsible for my son. I don’t want a divorce. I don’t agree that it’s over. What now?”

I know first hand that this is a tough situation. There are many reasons that a spouse will refuse to say why he thinks that your marriage is over. I will go over some of those reasons in the article below as well as offer some suggestions on where you go from here.

Sometimes, He’s Not Saying Why It’s Over Because He Doesn’t Want To Give You Any information To Use As A Debate Because His Mind Is Made Up: Quite often, your spouse is well aware that you are asking for his reasoning because you are looking for a way to change his mind.  So, he doesn’t want to give you anyway to try to change it. He doesn’t want to leave this up for any debate and he doesn’t want for you to attempt to poke holes in his thought process. This doesn’t mean that you have no hope, of course. But it sometimes means that you will need to be more creative in your strategy if you still want to save your marriage.

Sometimes He’s Tight-Lipped Because He Isn’t Sure What’s Behind His Actions: Sometimes, your dissatisfied spouse isn’t sure about the source of their unhappiness. For whatever reason, they just feel a bit lost and they’re wondering if this is all there is to life. Many times, they are dealing with a personal crossroads or crisis, which, quite unfairly, has nothing to do with your marriage.

Sometimes, They Aren’t Proud Of Their Reasons For Ending The Marriage: In this case, the husband could have been feeling very stressed out about their family situation, much of which was beyond any one’s control and wasn’t really anyone’s fault. So instead of telling his wife this embarrassing truth to which there is really no answer, he’d rather just refuse to give a reason. Again, this doesn’t mean that you don’t have any recourse. But it might mean that you will have to work around this.

How To Handle This Situation: In my mind, there are two choices that you have. You can either accept his lack of reasoning and observe how he proceeds and then react accordingly. Or, you can still try to save your marriage despite the fact that he really hasn’t given you much to work with.

Although I will admit that saving your marriage might be a little bit difficult and a much slower process in these circumstances, I know first hand that it’s not impossible. In order to be successful, you will often have to take your focus off of his reasoning or thought process and just place it on your relationship.  Because at the end of the day, the fact that he is doing this is more important than why he is.  He’s still going forward regardless.

Even if you don’t know exactly what he is thinking, you can make some pretty good guesses. You can assume that he isn’t happy and that he doesn’t think that your marriage can be changed enough to make him happy. He may be unwilling to try to change things or he may just have his doubts that things are actually changeable. Either way, it’s my opinion that your best course of action is to stop demanding answers in an attempt to debate with him and to instead place your focus on improving your relationship so that he begins to see a glimmer of hope.

Now, you may have to keep this strategy close to your chest. Because if make it blatantly obvious that your only goal is saving your marriage, then he may not be very cooperative and he may try to make sure that you fail. But if you make it appear that you are mostly interested in just improving things between you for the sake of your child and because you still care about him, then he is more likely to cooperate.

Yes, this means that you have to move slowly and that your goal won’t be as transparent. But it also means that you can very slowly rebuild the foundation of your relationship without much resistance. And, if you can do that successfully, you have a chance of proving to your spouse that your marriage might not be over after all.

I had to use this strategy in my own situation when my husband left and swore that he’d never change his mind about our marriage.  It eventually became obvious that if I was going to gain any ground, I’d have to make it appear that I had accepted this and I then began to whittle away at the situation until I saved our marriage.  If it helps, you can read that story on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com

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