Leslie Cane Articles

By: Leslie Cane: I sometimes hear from folks who fully admit that they may need a break or separation from their spouse. But, at the same time, they aren’t yet ready to end their marriage and they are pretty sure that they don’t want a divorce. However, unfortunately, their spouse doesn’t agree. And that can cause quite a dilemma or a debate.

You might hear a comment like: “I fully admit that my husband and I might benefit from living apart from one another for a little while. I am really fine with a separation. We fight all of the time and our fights have taken on a destructive feeling. I think that it might do us good to separate for a while so that we can both calm down. But my husband feels like a separation is not enough. He says that separating is not going to fix our problems. He says that we are only wasting our time by delaying a divorce and he wants to go ahead and file for one. What happens now? And is there any thing that I can do to convince him to agree to a separation rather than a divorce?”

Before I answer, I have to tell you that I’m not an attorney and I’m really not knowledgeable about the legal questions contained in these concerns. This article won’t be focusing on any legal questions, but I’d suggest seeing an attorney if your concerns are legal ones. What I can offer are some suggestions on attempting to come up with a compromise in order to delay (and hopefully end) any talk of divorce.

Understand Why Your Spouse Is Reluctant To Commit To A Separation: Before you try to compromise with your spouse, it’s extremely important to understand why your spouse may be reluctant to stop at a separation. I can share with you what many people in this situation indicate when they leave comments on my blog. They say that they don’t want to waste the money with supporting two households during a separation when the outcome is going to be a divorce anyway. They don’t believe that anything is really going to change and they believe that a separation is only going to delay the inevitable and also waste time and money.

It’s important that you understand this because you’ll use this thought process in order to craft your arguments in an attempt to compromise, which leads me to my next point.

Be Careful And Flexible When Asking For A Compromise: An obvious strategy here is to attempt to convince your spouse that compromising will help both of you to get what you want. It’s important though that it appears as if you are not asking him to give in or to see things your way. You want to appeal to the issues that are most causing him to hesitate.

You don’t want to imply that he is hasty, selfish, or stubborn. Instead, you want to appeal to his logical side because he’s likely using logic rather than emotions when he’s thinking about the divorce. He’s thinking that separating is a waste of time and money and he’s thinking that any changes that the two of you are going to attempt with be too little too late.

So you might to try something like: “I know that you want a divorce. I understand that completely. But I think that we should considering putting our heads together and coming up with a compromise. The cost of a divorce plus maintaining two households is astronomical. I now that you don’t think that we will be able to change anything, but I think that I can prove you wrong without too much difficulty from either of us. I also believe that if we manage to work things out, we will be much better off financially. A household supported by two people is going to be much better off than two households supported by only one person. I’m not asking you to take my word for it or to take a leap of faith. I’m asking you to give me a short and set amount of time to work with you to make this better. We will have our space and live apart. But we will get together regularly to check in. This gives the situation time to calm down. This allows us both to catch our breath and to work on ourselves. And we are getting the space that we both need and want. If the trial separation doesn’t work, then it hasn’t cost us anything and we can evaluate then how we want to proceed. But a divorce is a huge step to take before you’ve given a real attempt to make your marriage better to see if it can be saved. To me, it would be a shame to just walk away from our marriage without trying every thing in our power to save it. We’ve been together too long and you matter too much to me to just walk away without making any effort to see if things can change. Will you just give us a little time to try a separation rather than a divorce? I don’t think that it’s too much to ask.”

He may ask to think about it for a little while. You may not get the reaction that you were hoping for immediately. But once he takes the time to evaluate this, he may see that your request is more than reasonable. It’s certainly worth a try.

Luckily, I was able to talk my husband into not divorcing me right away, and I’m pretty certain that was a major factor in saving my marriage.  You’re welcome to read the whole story on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com

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