Leslie Cane Articles

By: Leslie Cane: I so often hear from wives who would give anything to look inside of the mind of the husband who has either left the marriage or who wants to leave it. They figure if they knew exactly what their husband was thinking, they could address his concerns and save their marriage.

Common comments are things like: “suddenly, my husband wants to leave me. He says he’s just not happy and that he can’t live like this anymore. I want to ask him when he got so selfish or naive. Marriage isn’t perfect and no one is going to be happy every single day. My best friend is going through the same thing with her husband. What are these husbands even thinking when they suddenly decide to leave their marriage? I want to know because I just don’t understand it. There are days when I am unhappy also, but I wouldn’t just decide to leave my marriage because of a little bit of discomfort.”

I can certainly understand where this wife was coming from. I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to read my husband’s mind when we were separated. But, since I’ve started my blog, I do hear from a lot of men in this situation. So because of my experience with my own marriage and because of all of the comments I hear from men, I do feel as if I have a firm handle on their thought process. So below, I will try to give a view into the mindset of men who want to leave their marriages.

It Would Be A Mistake To Assume That All Men Who Want To Leave Their Marriages No Longer Love Their Wives: Many people assume that when a husband wants to leave his marriage, the primary reason for this is that he has fallen out of love with his wife. Although a small amount of husbands make this claim, a good deal will tell you that to some extent they still love their wives.  Some will even tell you that they love their wives very much.  Some of the time, a lack of love doesn’t have much to do with why they want to leave their marriage, or at least it is not the presiding factor.

Men Want To Leave Their Marriages When They Have A Hard Time Envisioning The Process Of Saving It: I know that it often seems like men leave without a lot of warning. I so often hear from wives who tell me that their husbands left seemingly out of nowhere. But, men often do not see it this way at all. They will often tell you that there have been long term problems that the couple just either could not agree upon or could not overcome.

Unfortunately, sometimes the husband does not make clear or disclose how much of a deal breaker the issues are becoming to him. But inside, he struggles so that eventually, the problem becomes so big that in his own mind that the marriage crumbles under the weight of them. Things often get to the point where the husband can’t easily envision changing or saving the marriage. Because if he could, he wouldn’t want or need to leave it.

Of course, many times the wife has a different point of view. If you asked her, she would tell you that the problem or the issue is in the husband’s own head or that it is not as bad as the husband perceives. And, the wife often has a lot of validity to what she is saying. But what people often do not understand is that as long as your husband believes something, it might as well be the truth because it is valid to him. And arguing or trying to make him see where he is wrong rarely will help your cause. Instead, you are better off agreeing to disagree and trying to validate at least some of what he says. You want him to believe that you are on his side and trying to help him to get what he wants.

So, to answer the question posed, husbands who want to leave their wives are often thinking that although they may still love their wives and wish that things were different, certain aspects of their marriage have deteriorated to the point that he has decided that his life might be better or that he might be happier outside of his marriage.  So, in his own mind, it becomes necessary for him to leave.

I’m not saying that these men are right in their assessments. I am only telling you the thought process that I see over and over so that these insights might help you if you’re trying to save your marriage. So where does this knowledge leave you? I would suggest that you use this information to your advantage rather than allowing this to make you discouraged.  You want to very gradually and convincingly make your husband see just a sliver of hope with your marriage so that he might realize that he was wrong in his assumptions that things were so far gone that he really had choice in leaving.

In order for this to work, it often needs to be gradual enough to be convincing. It’s very likely that your husband did not decide to leave your marriage abruptly. It likely took a while for things to break down. So it will likely take a while for things to build back up. Work very hard on being agreeable, upbeat, and easy to approach. You want for your interactions with your husband to be positive. In fact, your goal is that he is eventually quite pleasantly surprised with the way things are going between you. The goal is that as things begin to improve between you, things will feel easy and right once again. You want him to see that no one really has to “fight” all that hard for your marriage. You don’t want for this to feel like a difficult process. You want it to feel as though all of the pieces are falling into place because your marriage is right and your relationship was meant to be so that no issues between you can or should change that.

For weeks, I tried to figure out what my husband was thinking when he left me.  Eventually, I realized that this was a waste of time.  Because what mattered more than his thought process was the fact that he was gone and that I needed to come up with a way to get him back.  So I set out to come up with a plan that would actually work to get him back home and to save my marriage.  And, through a lot of trial and error, I finally found something that worked.  If it helps, you can read about this entire process on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com

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