Leslie Cane Articles

By: Leslie Cane: I sometimes hear from a wife whose husband is doing everything in his power to discourage her from feeling hope that their marriage might ultimately be saved. And while he’s not telling her that the marriage is definitely over starting today, it’s clear that he doesn’t want for her to assume any positive outcome.

In this situation, I might hear a comment like: “my husband and I have been separated for about three weeks. I fully understand that things don’t look good for us. When your husband moves out and you’re sleeping alone in an empty house, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that the signs aren’t looking good. But my husband acts as if he needs to spell this out for me every chance he gets. On the off chance that we have a nice conversation or a nice outing together, my husband will always go out of his way to say something like ‘now you know that this doesn’t mean that we are getting back together. One good day does not mean that there will be a reconciliation.’ The other day I got frustrated with this and I asked my husband why he was always doing this. His answer was that he ‘didn’t want me to get my hopes up about saving our marriage.’ This was very upsetting and I didn’t know how to respond. It’s as if he’s determined that he is going to end our marriage no matter what happens. It’s almost like he’s told himself that he’s not going to register or consider anything positive that happens between us. It’s very discouraging to me because I’d like to just wait and see what happens. How am I supposed to feel when my own husband is trying to dash my hopes? Should there still be any hope left at all?”

I really feel for concerns like this because it brings back memories from my own situation. And it can make you feel as if you have nothing to look forward to and nothing to really strive for no matter what because your husband is determined to shoot down any progress that you’ve made. But here is what I learned from that situation. No one can take your hope away without your permission. Very luckily, you don’t need your husband’s blessing to continue to hope for improvements.  He doesn’t even need to know about your hope.  Frankly, your hope is your own business and not anyone else’s.

I know that it’s tempting to want to debate this or to ask him who he thinks he is to try to control your thought process. But, as understandable as this inclination is, I’ve found that it sometimes only makes things worse. If  he thinks that you’re trying to disprove his theory that there is reason to have hope, then he’s going to go out of his way to show you that in fact there is none. And that process can be very harmful to your marriage.

I’d suggest that instead, you want to make it clear that you will agree to disagree and that you’re not going into this with any set of expectations. You want to make it clear that you’re only trying to make the best of the situation, since there’s no good reason to always turn to the negative. So you might try a response like: “I’m well aware of how you feel about this. My being upbeat and just enjoying our day together doesn’t mean that I’m assuming we’re going to reconcile tomorrow. I know that we are separated. I know that neither one of us knows what the future holds. But I don’t think that this means that I have to have a negative attitude or that I always have to notice what’s wrong. Regardless of what happens between us today or in the future, I don’t have any expectations. I just want to make the best of each day because our relationship is important to me – regardless of whether it’s changing or not.  I’m just making the most of our time together just for today. And I don’t see anything wrong with that. Nothing says that we can’t try to get along and make the best of things.”

Once you’ve said this, it’s best to not dwell on it. You don’t want this to become a huge issue between you. Try to keep things very light hearted and non stressful. Your husband is less likely to resist you if he doesn’t think that you are pushing and if he believes that you don’t have an agenda. And frankly, sometimes working this way turns out to be an advantage for you.

My husband certainly didn’t want me to have any hope when we were separated because he was pretty sure that he wanted to divorce me. And he was certain that there wasn’t much that I could do to change his mind. It become obvious that the more I tried to change his mind and the more hope I had, the more determined he became that a divorce was going to happen.

So I decided that I was no longer going to try to change his mind. Instead, I was going to focus on myself and just maintain positive communications with him because he was too important to me to allow the entire relationship to deteriorate. When I backed away from my stance, his attitude toward me changed. And I was eventually able to save my marriage – even after many people would have lost hope. The truth is, I never gave up hope. But I learned not to advertise the same. Sometimes, you have to back away so that his resistance lessens. It doesn’t mean that you are giving up. It just means that you are approaching things in another way.

If it helps, you’re welcome to read about how I held onto my hope while backing away on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com

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