Leslie Cane Articles

By: Leslie Cane: If you are separated but never wanted the separation to begin with, you already know that pursuing a separation is the wrong choice. Unfortunately, it can feel as if it is sometimes impossible to convince your separated husband of the same. For some people, when they make a decision, they are very invested in being right. So even if there are signs that the decision has flaws, they can be very unwilling to admit this, even to themselves. It can be very frustrating when you are hearing from other people that your spouse has been second guessing the separation, but he won’t confess the same to you.

Here is what I mean. A wife might describe a situation where she begged her husband not to pursue the separation beforehand. She might say: “I knew that my husband was overreacting by pursuing a separation. He tends to be dramatic sometimes when he gets angry. And I knew that this was the case. For the most part, we were happy and have a good marriage. But my husband doesn’t like how I am so supportive of my sister, so I don’t always tell him how much I support her and I sometimes omit financial support that I slip her here and there. Well, my husband found out about this and acted as if I were the biggest liar to walk the face of the earth. He acted like I had done something so heinous to him. I told him that I was more than willing to openly discuss the issues with my family and to make any needed adjustments. This was not good enough.  My husband said that he felt that he could not trust me. This just isn’t true. This is the ONLY issue that I have kept from him and the only reason that I did is because I knew that he would overreact like this. Yes, my sister is a bit immature sometimes, but she’s really just a kid. And the money that I gave her isn’t going to break us. My sister is angry about this and says that my husband is just trying to control me. But my husband is so angry and serious about this that he moved out and said that we should separate for a while. My sister says that he is just using this as an excuse and that he must not be happy in our marriage. Well, he told our neighbor that he is second guessing his decision to separate. He told the neighbor that maybe he overreacted. However, when I state that he overreacted and that he should just move back home, he refuses and becomes indignant, saying that we haven’t given this separation enough time or effort. Why won’t he just admit that he was wrong about separating?”

Some People Are Very Invested In Being Correct: He may be very invested in feeling (or appearing) as if he is right. And he may be the kind of person who has a hard time admitting a mistake or apologizing for the same. It’s also possible that while he may realize that he’s made a potential mistake, he still wants to try to see it through and evaluate how he is feeling after some time has passed.  He may think that now that he’s made the move, he should wait to make absolutely sure that it is not the right one.  That’s why I think that it can be important not to keep pushing about this or to keep insisting that he admit that he is wrong when he’s resisting you.

Because think about it for a second: your real goal here is to get him to willingly want to come home in the spirit of working together to repair your marriage. If he only comes back because you forced him to admit he was wrong, his attitude may not be one that is open to goodwill. Instead, if you get along and have positive interactions when you are together and talk to one another, he might just naturally have a stronger realization that the mistake was a big one because he misses you. Once this happens, you won’t need to force anything out of him and you will be in a great position because you were nothing but patient and supportive.

Acknowledge Any Part That You’ve Played.  Even If The Incorrect Decision To Separate Was His: It’s important that even though you know that he overreacted, you still take responsibility for the omission about your sister and you still discuss it – like you promised that you would. I suspect that this isn’t just about this one incident with your sister. Usually when someone takes the very dramatic stance of moving out, they’ve been frustrated before and are at a point where they feel that they need to take some dramatic action to get the frustrations to stop. So, while he’s angry about your sister, he may generally feel that you put the needs of others before him or that you don’t respect him enough to tell him the truth. Listen closely to what he’s telling you and make sure that you aren’t dealing with a bigger problem.

If he truly thinks that the separation is a mistake, he will hopefully act on this in time and come home. Once he does, work on the family issue and work on conflict resolution. Because the more frequent the fighting and the separations become, the harder it gets to recover.

I know this first hand.  We got in the habit of just letting our conflict blow over time and time again.  Eventually, though, things could no longer blow over and we ended up separated.  In the end, we reconciled.  But it was very hard to recover once my husband moved out.  And I had to try various strategies until something finally worked. You can read more about the resolution on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com

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