Leslie Cane Articles

By: Leslie Cane: Many of the wives that read my articles are opposed to a divorce. Usually, their husbands are the ones pushing to end the marriage while they’re trying to do everything in their power to save it. For many wives, a divorce is the absolute worst-case scenario.

A wife might say: “To me, divorce is a failure. It’s giving up when you don’t have to. It’s throwing your family away without trying everything in your power to make things right. To me, marriage is forever and divorce isn’t an option. Unfortunately, my husband doesn’t feel the same way. He’s ready to just walk away and it’s not fair. He knows how opposed I am to divorcing, and yet he’s moving forward anyway. And now I feel like I have no choice but to allow him to end our marriage even though it’s not over for me. What can I do?”

I very much understand how this wife feels because I was in the same situation. You can feel very isolated and lonely. Because, at the end of the day, it’s nearly impossible to “make” or “get” someone to save the marriage without there being a good deal of resentment that’s going to ruin the relationship anyway. But yes, divorce was the one thing I didn’t want to happen. And, I felt that if I let it happen, it was going to be my life’s biggest failure. It absolutely broke my heart to think that my husband might be moving on with his life without me. I floored me to think that there might be a time when we weren’t a couple and that I would not have him in my life anymore.

But here’s the rub. The more you get caught up in opposing the divorce, typically the more your husband wants it. The whole thing becomes a relationship catch 22 because it forces you to cling more tightly than what might be comfortable or typical for you. Few husbands react well to these kinds of amplified emotions that are directed exactly toward them. In the following article, I’ll discuss some ways to find common ground when he wants the divorce that you simply can’t bear the thought of.

Define Those Things About The Divorce That Are The Most Objectionable And Painful To You: Sometimes, when you’re dealing with a very vague enemy, it’s quite hard to make things better because you don’t have specific issues to address. Merely saying that you can’t bear the thought of being divorced doesn’t really tell us all that much. It helps if you can make a list of those things that are most upsetting to you and then try to tackle those in a methodical way.

For example, most people in this situation are operating under the guise of fear and don’t much like treading on this new territory. Some common things that you’re grieving are often the loss of a family, the loss of the relationship with your husband, and the change of your lifestyle and the people in it. It really can help to try to work through these issues individually. Because if you can do this, you’re behaviors and your interactions with your husband will often change for the better (at least in his eyes) and this makes it easier for you to open up a new batch of opportunities.

If losing the relationship scares you, then approach your husband about trying to maintain it, even if the definition of it changes. (And it may only change temporarily. But re-defining it gives you a place to start.) In other words, whatever the fears are underneath the larger objection to the divorce, try to break them down and deal with them in a smaller way, rather than trying to combat a huge and vague fear which just seems too overwhelming anyway.

Understand That Sometimes, Stalling, Avoiding, Or Stopping The Divorce Means Not Fighting Against It In Negative Ways: Honestly, I believe that most women who tell me that a divorce is their worst case scenario are focusing on ways to stop the divorce rather than on ways to cope and adjust to it. This is completely understandable and I did the exact same thing. But, it’s so important to understand that if you’re reacting badly and focusing on the negative in order to guilt, shame, or beg your husband into reconsidering the divorce, you’re likely making the very thing that you fear the most that much more likely.

A husband’s wanting a divorce is most likely his reaction to being somewhat unhappy in the relationship and then thinking that nothing about that same relationship is going to change. So in order to change his mind about it, he has to see that he can feel positive emotions that stem from your relationship again. And, this in turn shows him that he was wrong in his assumptions that nothing was ever going to change.

I know it might sound as though I’m suggesting a very risky proposition. But, stalling, stopping, or delaying a divorce has so much more to do with the strategy of throwing negative emotions at the problem. Your husband is likely expecting you to act or react in a very predictable way. For this reason, he’s likely bracing himself to tune you out, to ignore you, or to just say things to pacify you with no real intention of following up.

If you want to change the way that he sees you and the marriage, you must change your message. It might be a decent idea to stop stressing how the divorce is the worst, most heartbreaking idea that you ever heard and then change your focus onto just rehabilitating the relationship. Stress that you can’t change his mind or alter his feelings, but because he’s so important to you, it’s vital that you can maintain a positive relationship. By doing this, you’re trying to ensure that one of your worst fears doesn’t actually come true, and you’ve likely gained yourself more access to him during which time you can try to change those perceptions that are driving him toward the divorce.