Leslie Cane Articles

By: Leslie Cane: When you are separated and you want your spouse back so badly that it hurts, there is almost nothing worse than knowing that your actions are annoying your spouse so that you are making things worse. People sometimes assume that the person who is trying too hard doesn’t know that their behavior is doing more harm than good. Very often, we do know. But we are so scared of the outcome that sometimes, we just can’t stop ourselves. We see the look on his face or hear the tension in his voice. But we are scared to back away because it’s our marriage that we are talking about. And we take that very seriously.

A wife might say: “I know that I am bugging my husband too much while we are separated. I know that I am making a mistake. But last week, he was sick. I couldn’t stand the thought of him being all alone. So I made him some soup and brought it over. He was clearly very annoyed that I did this. I called the next day to see if he was feeling any better. He angrily told me that the whole idea of taking a break was to do just that – to actually have a break. I know this in my mind, but I guess my heart just isn’t listening. I’m scared to leave him alone. Because I feel like once I do, he is going to move on. I know I have to change. But I just do not know how.”

Boy, am I aware of this feeling because I had it myself. I was a complete pest during my separation but I honestly felt that because I had good intentions, I should be cut some slack. The thing is, your spouse often doesn’t care about your intentions. It is only your actions that he is worried about.

Mind Games To Force Yourself To Back Off From Trying Too Hard During Your Separation: I can remember holding my phone and literally playing serious mind games with myself. I’d make a deal with myself that I wouldn’t text for two hours. I would set the timer. I would tell myself that I was just dealing with that tiny amount of time. After the two hours were up, I’d start all over.  I got into the habit of asking myself if what I was about to attempt with my husband was going to make the situation better or worse.  If my honest answer was that I was about to make things worse, then I knew that I shouldn’t do it.  Because every time I made things worse, I had to work that much harder to even get back to neutral.

Another thing that I would do is to play out the scenario in my mind and picture my husband’s angry face if I bothered him yet again when he had already lost patience with me. In other words, I’d say something like this to myself: “so let’s say you give in and you text him yet again. How do you think he’s going to look when he gets that text?” I could picture my husband’s frustrated face very vividly and this helped me to stop.

Sometimes You Have To Force Some Distance: After a while, I realized that this some of my mind games were a little silly  because I was still just sitting around my house.  So I forced myself to get out of the house and go out with friends. That made the time go by much faster. Eventually, I got comfortable with that and I even went on a trip to my old hometown without my husband because I found that busying myself by seeing people close to me made things much easier. Once I saw that my husband respond favorably to this, then the whole process was sort of a no brainer. I was getting positive feedback so it was a relief to know that if I just held off, it might all be worth it.

Stay As Genuinely Busy As Is Possible: Since you’re not at the point where you’re getting positive feedback, the next step is to keep yourself busy. You know yourself better than anyone else. So what can you do that makes time just melt away? For me, that is working out, doing yoga, reading, or doing crafts. I jumped back into these hobbies with a vengeance during my separation.  It makes sense to fall back on the things I already knew would provide some comfort.

I will admit that at first, it was difficult. I would read a whole page of a novel and then realize I didn’t remember or process anything that I was reading. But I just kept at it.

See The True Risk Of Not Backing Off: Of course, the whole problem with all of this is that letting go, even for just a little while, feels like a risk. The worry is that when you are not monitoring him, he’s going to take full advantage of his freedom and start to move away from you. I admit that this was the scariest part for me. But I knew that logically, the bigger risk was to keep going as I was – making him frustrated with me on a daily basis – so much so that he’d started to avoid me. Luckily, I was able to see that the new strategy of backing away worked much better and so I was able to literally see the benefits.

I know it’s hard to stop the cycle that you are in. But play whatever mind games that you have to play in the beginning. It will get easier if you start to see results. But in the beginning, it’s a leap of faith. Make the tasks that you are trying to avoid hard to carry out. For example, I knew that my friends would call me out if they saw me texting my husband. So it just made sense to spend a lot of time with them so that I wouldn’t be as tempted.

I know that this seems daunting, but every single journey begins with one step. Sometimes, taking that first step is the hardest part.  But once you see that this first step yields results, it is easier to begin walking.  If it helps, you can read about how I walked my way into the path that saved my marriage on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com

Filed under: Uncategorized by admin