Leslie Cane Articles

By: Leslie Cane:  It’s often not until you see your marriage fall apart before your eyes that you realize how good you used to have it.  The truth is, it can be very easy to take your spouse and your marriage for granted – until you are on the verge of losing both.  When you see just how bad this can get, you can be willing to do just about anything to fix it.  The problem is that your spouse isn’t always in agreement with this.

A wife might say: “our marriage is actually awful.  I don’t say this lightly.  But it is.  Frankly, it is terrible.  A couple of years ago, my husband put up some money in the stock market.  I knew that he was investing and I encouraged him to do so.  But, he made some quick money and he got over confident.  He risked more money than we had agreed upon.  Needless to say, we lost the money. Not only did he have to tell me what he did, but a little digging told me that this was not the first time he’d made investments without consulting me.  We lost our home because of this.  We had to move to a much less expensive home in a new school district.  We tried to keep our kids in the same school but got caught fudging our address.  Our kids had to switch schools mid year.  I can’t tell you the stress this put on our family.  Things got so bad that my husband lived with his brother for a while.  I have to admit that the worse things got, the more I blamed him for how horrible our lives had gotten and the more unkind I was to him. It got a point where I could not stand to look at him. That was an awful time period for all of us.  Well, as a result of all of this, one of our kids went through a really bad time and made some awful friends and started participating in risky behaviors.  My husband and I had to band together to get our child back on track. We noticed our child did better when he saw us getting along so my husband moved back in and we’ve been back together ever since.  I’m glad for this.  But the problem is that our marriage is not like it used to be.  I can stand to look at my husband these days.  But it’s not like we laugh and are so happy like we used to be.  I’ve mentioned this to my husband and I have asked him to work with me to rebuild my marriage.  He says that I am reading too much into things.  He says I am making work and problems when none are there.  He says I’m being nit picky.  I’m not.  I know our marriage can be better than this.  How do I show him that it would be worth it to rebuild our marriage?”

Try To Determine How He’s Interpreting Your Request: I get this question quite a bit.  I’ve had wives tell me that they’ve presented their husband with statistics showing that men who are happily married live longer and are more healthy.  Or, they will try to appeal to his sense of logic – telling him that they are modeling the type of marriage their children might one day have.  This doesn’t always work that well.  You can try to convince him in various ways.  But you often run into the same problem.  When you ask someone to “work” or “rebuild” the connotation is that it’s time to get down to work.  To labor.  To struggle.

And these things just don’t give most of us a warm and fuzzy feeling when most of us already have more than enough work on our plates.  Even if our husbands want a better marriage, many worry that we will put in all of this effort and still end up with the same marriage.  Many of them wonder why, if the commitment is there, do you need to go over the marriage with a fine tooth comb?

Doing The Initial Heavy Lifting To Get Him On Board: So how to get around this sort of skepticism?  You show him that it doesn’t have to be so hard and that the results are worth it.  You begin by doing some of the heavy lifting yourself.  You likely know your biggest issues.  I would suspect that in this case, it is the fact that there is a little leftover resentment and drudgery.  When money is tight, it’s easy to get stuck in a rut of the status quo because there isn’t any money for fun extras or outings.  You’re just trying to survive, so for a while, you’re not concerned about the extra efforts that can make us feel special and connected.

That’s no reason to give up though.  As you’ve seen first hand, those efforts are worth it.  Giving your spouse a back rub or massage costs nothing.  You can usually rent a movie for a couple of dollars (or free if you get it from the library.)  Talking is free.  Taking a walk and holding hands means you can leave your wallet at home.  Start incorporating some of these things in your life.  Start giving to your spouse instead of asking of him – at least to start.

Why? Because he will see the results and he will see that the results are easy and inexpensive.  This is usually the quickest and easiest way to show him that rebuilding your marriage isn’t all that hard and is more than worth it.

I know that it may seem unfair to have to take the initiative, but it is worth it in the end.  I wish I would have taken the initiative before my husband left and we separated.  We did rebuild our marriage, but a lot of pain and time could have been avoided if he had rebuilt before it all came crashing down.  You can read more on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com

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