Leslie Cane Articles

By: Leslie Cane: It’s normal to fear the worst when you’re facing or in the middle of a marital separation. Even when people are reassuring you that it’s probably going to be OK and even when you hear of people who reconciled shortly after their separation, you may expect that you are going to fare far worse than most or you are going to be the low score on the bell curve.

And when your separation seems to be going nowhere quickly, it’s normal to take a pessimistic view of the whole thing.  You may feel like this whole “marriages that survive the separation” talk is a farce and that people who seek separations are really just taking the first step toward divorce.

Someone might ask this very direct question: “do marriages really survive trial separations? Because I look around and I don’t see one marriage that I have personal knowledge of that has been able to do that. Not one. Admittedly, it’s possible that I have friends and colleagues that had bad marriages. But I swear none of them have made it. And now my husband and I are just starting our separation. I’m trying to have a good attitude and to think that if I played my cards right, we might have a chance. But my husband is so distant to me that I feel like he’s only going through the motions. I feel like this whole separation idea is just so he can act as if he really tried so that my parents don’t hate him. I am starting to think that marriages which make it through separations are a myth –  like bigfoot or something. Or it is just something that marriage counselors try to claim.”

I know firsthand that it can certainly feel that way. I used to worry about the exact same reality that you believe you might be facing right now. However, my marriage did survive the marital separation. And because of the articles I write, I do hear from a good number of folks who have done the same. Granted, to be fair, I am probably not nearly as likely to hear from people who didn’t have good results. So by no means is this a scientific sampling. But from these results and those that I’ve witnessed for myself, I certainly don’t think that marriages making it through a separation are a myth.

There are absolutely marriages that do not make it.  And there are absolutely couples who still love one another than end up divorced.  But there are absolutely couples who manage to work it out.

The Odds May Be Better Than You Think:  I wanted to make sure that it wasn’t just me with my preconceived notions who felt this way, so I did a little research. I admit that there are not that many statistics out there. But I did find a Wall Street Journal article that interviewed a marriage counselor with twenty years of experience. She indicated that about half of her clients who separated remained married at the end of the process and half did not.

Those might be better odds than you anticipated, but half still did not make it. If these statistics are to be believed, then you’d have a 50 / 50 chance of saving your marriage during a separation. And those are by no means impossible odds.

How You Can Increase Your Own Odds: But I think that with a decent strategy, you can do better than those odds. Because from my own observations in my own life, I’ve seen that many of the couples who didn’t make it truly didn’t have a plan. Much of the time, one couple leaves the other out of anger and the communication deteriorates from there. Also, some of these couples did not maintain their commitment to their spouse during the separation.  One or both did not remain faithful. Many chose to date others or “sow their wild oats” during their separations.

This complicates matters a great deal and just adds more confusion and anger to the mix. The good news is that you can set up your separation differently. If you haven’t already done so, try to agree to some guidelines and boundaries. Agree to how often you will communicate and see one another. Define how you will work on and try to overcome the issues that divide you.

Frankly, having a counselor, or at least some sort of written or agreed upon plan, can help to keep you on track and can keep you from becoming one of those couples who rarely communicate during their separation so that they grow further and further apart.

Many people are content to just “wait and see how it goes” or to “play it by ear,” but in my observation, doing so puts your marriage at risk. It is so much better to have a plan and to evaluate what is working and what is not.

I can’t claim that my husband and I did everything listed above, especially at first. But I believe our inability to plan is what almost lead us to divorce. In this case, my pessimistic outlook actually helped me because I was always observing my separation and evaluating what was happening. This lead me to take some action when my husband was perfectly content to watch and wait. (I believe if both of us had this attitude we would be divorced right now. I believe that at least one person needs to really observe what is going on and then work to get back on track.)

But I’m getting off topic a bit. To answer the question. No, marriages surviving separations is not a myth. It does happen. My inclination tells me that it happens quite a bit and my research indicates that it happens about half of the time. But I believe that you can increase the odds of it happening for you by being proactive and having a plan. You can read more about how I turned my own situation around on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com

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