Leslie Cane Articles

By: Leslie Cane: When you are reluctantly separated, you might find yourself always analyzing the feelings or your spouse and yourself. (And this is especially true if you’re hoping to reconcile.) You may ask yourself whether absence makes the heart grow fonder.  And you may wonder if this is also true for your spouse.

It can be difficult to just come out and ask your spouse if he still loves you. But some of us attempt to find a way to bring it into our conversations because either the suspense is killing us, or we want the reassurance of knowing that even if we are technically separated, he still loves us. Some of us get that reassurance. Some of us don’t (at least not right away.) And some of us get something that is somewhere in between the two – a husband who concedes to only loving us only sometimes.

For example, a wife might find herself in a situation where her husband admits that he loves her some days, depending upon the circumstances. She might say: “my husband and I are honestly up and down during the separation. There are times when it seems that he wants nothing whatsoever to do with me and then there are times when he seems to crave my presence and he will either come over to our old home or ask me to dinner or to his apartment. Of course, I will get encouraged by this and then I’ll start asking him to do things with me regularly. But he’s so hot and cold. We can literally go from laughing and joking to him actually avoiding me the very next day. It is quite confusing. It can be very hard for me to figure out how he really feels or what he really wants. So the other day, when he was in one of his receptive phrases, I blurted out, ‘can I ask you something?’ My husband answered in the affirmative. So I said, ‘do you still love me at all?’ My husband’s response was that on some days, he does feel love for me and on other days, he does not.  This response fits with his behavior, but I still do not understand it. How does your love turn off and on from one day to the next? And it’s not like we necessarily have bad days together or that on the days that we fight, he doesn’t love me. Because we live apart, we rarely fight anymore. It just seems that on days that he decides that he doesn’t love me, he simply avoids me. But on the days when we aren’t together, I still love him. I worry that this means that his love for me is going to wane until there is nothing left. Why would he love me one day but not another? I get that we are separated, but still.”

He May Be Experiencing Fluctuating Feelings Or Confusion Rather A Lack Of Any Feelings: I am not sure that your husband literally loses and gains love for you over the course of one day. That would be incredibly difficult (and unrealistic) to do. I think that it is more likely that he means that one day he may be FEELING loving toward you, while on another day, he may not be feeling quite as loving. This really isn’t that unusual. Feelings can fluctuate depending on the day, on the circumstances, and on the spouse.

Separation Fluctuations Can Happen Frequently And Be A Normal Part Of The Process On Both Sides: I know that during my own separation, there were most definitely days when my husband was outright spiteful to me and days when he was weirdly sweet. I never asked him if he still loved me, but who knows what the response would have been. I can also tell you that there were days where I got really frustrated at being alone and DEFINITELY did not feel very loving toward my husband on those days. And then there were days when I missed my husband very much and on those days, I felt overwhelming love. It’s frustrating to flip flop like this. But in my experience, most people do this, at least some of the time. A separation can be a very volatile time. So you can expect your feelings to be volatile too.

Capitalize On The Positive Whenever You Can: None of this means that he doesn’t actually love you. It could mean that he’s just experiencing those fluctuations. Going from my own experience, my advice would be to focus on the good days. Really try to bond and reconnect during those good days. When I was able to do that, I found that the bad days were less frequent, and of course, that meant that the loving feelings were more frequent also. The idea is to just slowly build upon the successes until the feeling of love becomes the feeling that stays. Hopefully, these feelings and the improvements that you make will lead to a reconciliation.

But this is often a gradual process. Which means that you just have to get through the bad days without causing more damage and seize the good days when you can. I know that it might be tempting to debate or lament about his feelings. But I wouldn’t if you think that this might cause him to pull away again. The last thing that you want to do is to lessen your access to him – especially when you are trying to capitalize on the good days.

If it helps, you can read more about the gradual process I used to inspire a reconciliation on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com

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