Leslie Cane Articles

By: Leslie Cane: If your separation was anything like mine, there comes a day when it becomes obvious that your current behavior is just not working. As a result of this, you might find yourself dissecting your behavior and deciding which parts of that same behavior you might want to stop and which parts you may want to showcase.

In my own case, I noticed that if I let my desperation and weakness show, it almost always ended up going badly. It was very clearly a huge turn off for my husband. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that this behavior was not going to help me save my marriage. And many women have the same experience. And when you realize this, you start to wonder if showcasing strength and confidence is going to get the job done a little more efficiently.

A wife might verbalize this by saying something like: “I admit that I have put my own helplessness and dependance toward my husband on full display. I have wanted him to see me struggling.  He left me and I feel like, at least in part, my struggles are his fault. His selfishness and his mid life crisis brought this on. And he just carelessly left me to clean up his mess. I resent it. I can’t pretend that I don’t. But when I bring up how hard it is for me, he will literally shut me down with his words. He doesn’t want to hear it. I am angry with him, but I still want my marriage. However, every time we interact, I feel like I am further and further away from focusing on my marriage in the way that I should. I am considering dropping all of the struggles and acting strong, confident, and capable. If I am able to pull this off, will he come back?”

Why Acting Strong And Capable During Your Separation Is Sometimes Beneficial: It’s really hard to predict that. Not only do I not know why he left, but I have no way to know what progress has been made.  Nor can I gage the behavior of someone who I don’t know. But, I can tell you that in my own experience and from hearing from many others, separated husbands do typically react better to you when you portray the strong, capable side of yourself. I think that there is a couple of reasons for this. The first is that you are modeling self respect and they are therefore going to model respect right back to you. Also, I believe that showing yourself as less than capable makes them feel guilty. Guilt is a negative emotion and this can lead to them retreating. But if you take the negativity issue away, you may see a change pretty quickly.

And this change will usually come with him being more receptive to you. That should feel like a relief. But know that it’s only the first step – at least most of the time. Him being receptive is like cracking open the door. You’re going to have to open the door and then begin taking baby steps to walk back into an improved relationship.

This is usually a gradual process. You make little gains. You continue to build. And you improve a little at a time.

Being Really Honest With Yourself And Really Clear About Your Goals: Another thing that you want to ask yourself is whether or not you can identify why he left in the first place. I know you said this was a mid life crisis. But it pays to be brutally honest with yourself right now. Is there any way that you can improve your marriage and the way you relate to him?  Can you remove some of his doubts so that he willingly wants to come back?  This can be just a tiny shift that makes huge and beneficial changes.

I think that men who end up enthusiastically coming home usually have seen some real and ongoing changes or they figure out that they were wrong in their perceptions to begin with. One way to show him he was wrong is to act with a high amount of grace and dignity right now. If you show yourself as someone who plays fair and shows concern for him during this difficult time, he may change his perception of you. Better, if you can begin to address any issues that you had and he sees real progress, then this will usually help to erase some of those doubts and negative feelings.

Honestly, it is usually an improvement of a combination of things that brings him home. It’s usually that he becomes more receptive, he sees you in a new way, and he sees some positive progress. But portraying confidence and strength will typically begin the process of him being more receptive and less guarded toward you. It opens the door ever so slightly. And you can’t begin the process of getting him back until you open that door.

I knew when the door opened in my own separation. And I was so scared of it closing again that I moved at snail’s pace, but it was worth it.  Because our reconciliation lasted. You can read more on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com

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