How Do I Ask My Husband Not To See Other People During The Trial Separation?
By Leslie Cane: Many wives have a great deal of fear and reservations about their upcoming trial separation. Often, the wife is only reluctantly going along with the separation because she feels as if she doesn’t have much of a choice. And while she worries about what is going to happen during her day to day life or with her marriage, one of the biggest concerns if often her husband seeing other people. Often, she just isn’t sure how to broach this subject, especially when the husband has been hinting that this is what he wants to do.
One of these wives might explain: “my husband has been pushing for a trial separation for the past several months. I have resisted all along and I have hoped he would forget about this and change his mind. But that never happened. He has found an apartment and is moving out tomorrow. All along, he has been saying that he wants time to himself and he wants to see if he is happier living on his own. Although he hasn’t come right out and said it, I strongly suspect that he is going to see other women because it just seems as if he wants to explore another lifestyle to see if he likes that better. I don’t want for this to happen. I worry that if he sees other women, then our marriage is going to be over. But I’m worried if I bring this up, he’s only going to get angry and more distant. How do I even approach him about this?”
I felt that it was very important for the wife to gather enough courage to bring up this topic. Because I feel very strongly that she was right in her suspicions that his seeing other people could really hurt their chances of a reconciliation. In fact, if I had to pinpoint what is most likely to cause conflict during a trial separation, that would be uncertainty and insecurity. A wife has a valid reason to feel extremely insecure when she knows her husband is seeing other women. Also, it just isn’t right to see other people when you are still married. Sure, you are going through a trial separation, but no one has filed for divorce and no divorce has been finalized. This means that you are still married and, at least in my opinion, it’s just not appropriate for either spouse to see other people.
How To Ask Your Spouse To Remain Faithful During The Separation: It’s important that you choose a time when you are both somewhat calm to bring this up. But, don’t wait too long. You want to have this conversation before he actually leaves. In fact, the more ground rules that you can agree upon before the separation begins, the better the outcome will usually be. So you might want to say something like: “well we really haven’t talked about all of the details of the separation. One thing, in particular, is really bothering me. I am worried that if either of us sees other people, this will lessen our chances of reconciliation. The whole idea of the separation is for us to both take time to become clear about our marriage and about what we truly want. But if other people are involved, then we can’t objectively evaluate this. This is going to be hard enough without either of us having to worry about other people coming into our lives. My intention is to work on myself and not to involve anyone else. I have no interest in seeing other people when I am hoping to save my marriage to you. Can you please give me your word that you will remain faithful while we are separated?”
Notice that I kept the tone very calm and I laid out my reasoning behind the request before I actually made the request. I was hoping to appeal to his sense of logic and fairness rather than his emotions since both people’s emotions can be all over the place during the separation process. So what do you do if he’s hesitant, says he isn’t sure what he’s going to do or admits that he plans to date other women, well then you will need to evaluate if this is going to be acceptable to you. But I can tell you that most of the time, it’s difficult to predict exactly what is going to happen. People often miss their spouse more than they anticipated and this can help matters.
It’s very important to remain upbeat and open. You want to have regular communication with your spouse and you want for their interactions with you to be positive ones. You don’t want for him to turn to someone else if he can’t communicate with you. And you don’t want for him to want to escape with someone else if things get bad. This isn’t to say that you have to walk on eggshells or pretend to feel something that you don’t. But to the extent that you can, you want to make sure that things actually improve rather than deteriorate during the separation.
Unfortunately for me, I was so fearful that my husband was going to see other people when we were separated that I became paranoid and negative. My husband never wanted to be around me, and this almost costs me my marriage. It wasn’t until I learned to take control of the situation that things turned around. If it helps you can read the whole story on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com
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