Leslie Cane Articles

By: Leslie Cane: When you are separated because your spouse felt that something was making him unhappy about your actions or the state of your marriage, it can be incredibly hard and hurtful to hear him say that you are continuing on with the behavior and only making things worse. It can make you feel like you can not make progress or improve your situation no matter what you do. It can also feel like a personal attack. You can start to believe that it’s not your marriage that he doesn’t like – but it’s you personally. You have to be careful with this thinking though. If you are still invested in your marriage, the last thing that you want to do is feel helpless or like you don’t have any control. And I believe that you can control what you are projecting to him. Here is one such example.

A wife might explain that her separated husband is telling her that her insecurities are pretty much driving every negative thing that is currently happening. She might explain it this way: “I have always been a little insecure where my husband is concerned. I have always felt that I married a little outside of my league. In high school, I was considered ugly and nerdy. In college, I lost a lot of weight and my appearance vastly improved, but most people remembered me from when I was younger. I met my husband at my job and he didn’t know me from before. So he just saw me as attractive and smart. This was so wonderful for me. Because no one had ever viewed me without the veil of my past. For the first time in my life, I didn’t feel like that awkward teenager or ugly duckling. It was wonderful. However, I came to learn that in times of stress or doubt, that ugly duckling imagery would always come back. When I was pregnant, I worried constantly about my weight. When I saw my first grey hair, I thought that soon, he’d find a younger woman. I admit that I was always overly suspicious of my husband. I would always wonder if he stayed at work even a minute late. When he had to start traveling for work, this came to a head. My insecurities were ratcheted up about a hundred times. This caused a huge amount of stress. My husband said that he always felt he had to have his guard up with me, even if he was doing nothing wrong. Things got so bad that he eventually left and said he thought we needed to separate for a while. Of course, for someone with insecurity problems like mine, this was awful. Because even though he was telling me that this was probably just temporary, what I was hearing was him saying he didn’t want me anymore even though this was absolutely not what he was literally saying. I always found myself trying to read between the lines in our conversations. I’m always asking him a million questions about what he has been doing and what he is thinking and where he sees us in a month from now. Last night he told me very plainly that my insecurity was driving him away. I don’t know what to do about this because if he would just come back, we wouldn’t have this issue anyway. How do I get control over my insecurity and is this really an issue or is he just using this as an excuse?”

I don’t know your husband’s motivations, but, from my own observations in my own case, I think it is a real issue. And I think that it’s one that can deteriorate all areas of your life – even beyond your marriage. When you do not feel good enough, you project this to every one around you and in everything that you do. You are almost apologetic for your very existence no matter how good a person you are, how smart you are, how attractive you are, or how very much you have to offer. And even when people don’t see you in this way at all, when you are constantly drawing their attention to your insecurities, then at some point, in some way, they may start to wonder if perhaps you aren’t right or that you know something about yourself that they don’t know.

This is heartbreaking and incredibly ironic. Because it is the very thing that you’ve been hoping to avoid for this entire time. And it’s so painful because all you’ve wanted was to hide this part of yourself and you’ve only showcased it.

You can’t change the past. But you can most certainly work on yourself in the present. I think that this is the perfect time to build yourself up. Think about it. You likely have more time on your hands. You have privacy most of the time. It’s time to let go of that image from childhood that definitely no longer suits you, that is holding you back, and that is keeping you from getting what you truly want.

Because until you believe yourself worthy and you see how wonderful and unique you are, then you can’t truly be secure. And until you are truly secure, you can’t effectively pretend to be. Sure, it may help if you would lay off of the questioning and the always asking for reassurance. But, even if you are hiding it, your insecurity is still going to be there. And it is still going to cause you pain.

Some people are able to build themselves up on their own. They fix those things that cause them doubt and they embrace and enhance what makes them who they are.  Some find counseling helpful. But regardless of what happens with your marriage, I think that building yourself up would be beneficial in numerous ways to you. Because you don’t deserve to go through life feeling that you are less than you truly are. You deserve to know that you are exactly as you were meant to be and that you are good enough.

I was very insecure during my own separation.  In fact, when I went out of town, my husband misread it as confidence – when truly, it wasn’t.  This was a turning point.  And this lit a light bulb in my head and I knew that I had to actually become more self assured.  I worked on myself.  I increased my own self knowledge about what made me unique and what I could offer.  And it made a huge difference. In fact, I think it was one of the driving factors that helped me save my marriage. You can read more on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com

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