Leslie Cane Articles

By: Leslie Cane: I sometimes hear from people who feel that their spouse is acting like an entirely different person during their trial or marital separation. Of course, this is very troubling. Not only is concerning and painful to see your spouse transform before your very eyes, but it makes you wonder what this transformation might mean in terms of a possible reconciliation.

To demonstrate, I might hear from a wife who explains: “it was my husband who left our house. After eleven years of marriage (most of which I thought was very happy,) he decided that he wasn’t sure what he wanted out of his life anymore. To be fair about it, I noticed changes in him before he ever moved out. My husband used to be satisfied with the simple pleasures in life. What concerned him most was family, community, and helping others. These things don’t seem to satisfy him anymore. He apparently finds his life boring and he said that he felt as if he were ‘settling’ for less than what he wanted or deserved. As troubling as all of this was, it didn’t prepare me for what I am seeing now. Suddenly, my sensible husband is driving a sports car and staying out all night with much younger friends. The man who could care less what others thought of him seems to think it’s important that his new friends think he’s cool, almost as if he is a teenager. He has also changed the way that he has related to me. He used to be considerate and sweet. Now, he just acts as if I am a burden who annoys him. He is always rushing and it appears to me that he is going out every night. When I mentioned this to him, he snapped at me that this was none of my business and that I needed to ‘get a life’ and stop monitoring his. My husband would have never snapped at me like this before. I told him that I didn’t even know the person that he is anymore. He told me that I was being overly dramatic, but this is honestly the way that I feel. Why is he acting this way? And when will it stop?”

I have some theories on why people seem to go through dramatic personality changes during their separation, which I’ll share below. This is only my opinion, but it is based on my own experience and on things that I have witnessed in other separations.

Dissatisfaction Often Leads To The Separation. And That Same Dissatisfaction Can Cause Your Spouse To Act In A Way That Is Very Strange To You: Much of the time, the spouse who wants the separation is going through a bit of an identity crisis. I hesitate to say this because I don’t want to make it sound as if there is something inherently wrong with a spouse who seeks a separation. But, I do find that people who consider making drastic changes in their lives (like a separation is) are often people who are now reevaluating their lifestyle choices and their place in the world. There is no coincidence that you often see this is mid life – because that is the time when many of us are evaluating the mistakes that we made when we were younger and we’re also thinking about the way that we want to live our lives with the time that we have left.

When people are in this state of searching and evaluating, they will often try on different roles and personalities to see if any of them feels like a better fit than the one in which they have already been living. To use myself as an example, if I was evaluating my life and I decided that I had suffered by playing it safe too much in my life, then you might see me attempting to become much more of a risk taker, which would likely get the attention of those close to me.

This doesn’t mean that I will ultimately decide to change my personality and world view forever. It just means that, for now, I am trying on different ways of acting and seeing things to see if any work better for me.

I know that this is troubling (and likely very annoying) to you. But none of this means that he will ultimately keep any of the behaviors that he is trying out right now. He’s just testing the waters and attempting to see if any of the new behaviors give him any relief or make him any happier.

He may come to realize that they don’t and you may then see him act like his old self again. That is why I think it’s wise to not complain too much about the changes that you are seeing. In my experience, it is not worth the risk of alienating him to point out that he’s acting a little odd. And sometimes, when we express our concerns, our spouses see this as criticism. Or they begin to think that we just don’t understand them or that we don’t want them to be happy if it means they have to change and make us uncomfortable in the process. You don’t want for your husband to have these perceptions. You want for him to think that you support him and that you want him to be happy, even if this means you might see some odd or frustrating behaviors.  It really helps to try to keep busy in your own life.

That’s why my suggestion would be to be patient and to try not to take this personally. You might find that the behaviors will pass and soon enough he will be acting more like the man that you have always known.  To me, it’s not worth the risk to call him out right now.  My husband wasn’t himself during our separation and I chose to deal with this by focusing on myself.  If it helps, you can read more my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com

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