Leslie Cane Articles

I sometimes hear from wives who are having an incredibly hard time during their marital separation. Not only do they miss their husband desperately, but they can’t help but notice that he is being incredibly secretive. It is just human nature to want to know what is going on with your spouse when you are apart, but some husbands go out of their way to make sure that you DON’T know. Understandably, this can make some wives very uncomfortable and suspicious.

Someone might say, “my husband and I have only been separated for eight days, but he is already taking a combative and secretive stance with me. When I try to ask him what he did for the evening, he will say something vague like ‘nothing.’ If he is not there when I call, he will offer no explanation for his whereabouts when he calls back. We separated on relatively good terms. He just said that he needed space. I honestly never thought that we may not reconcile eventually, but now I am starting to wonder about that. Last night, I got annoyed with him being so evasive with me so I asked, ‘is there something I should know’ and he just sort of scoffed like he was angry that I would say that. I did not have the courage to press any more since things haven’t been going well. But I can’t shake the feeling that he is hiding something or keeping secrets. Before he moved out, he assured me that he wasn’t going to date other people. I believed him, but now I am not so sure. How can I get him to disclose these secrets that he is keeping?”

I suspect that, if you press your husband, you’ll have a very challenging task ahead of you. Husbands who ask for space initially aren’t usually falling all over themselves to give you a play-by-play of their lives, at least initially. They are too busy evaluating how they like the space. If you push for more information, he may become even more secretive and pull away even more.

I had a similar experience during my own separation and had convinced myself that my husband was seeing other people. I kept bugging and hounding him about this and he eventually stopped taking my calls for a while because he didn’t want to be cross examined every time we talked. Once we reconciled, I found out that he’d been going to the gym by himself. I am not sure why he wanted to keep that from me, but that is where he’d been going. Of course, I had assumed the worst and I caused our situation to deteriorate by allowing my mind to go to dark places.

I would have been better off asking once and then avoiding the topic, knowing that if he actually had something important to tell me, he would have done so without my needing to ask him about it. Or if he was seeing other people, it would have eventually gotten back to me.  I know that it feels like you have a right to know what is going on with him. But husbands in this situation tend to be naturally secretive. In the early days, they aren’t yet sure how things are going. So when you ask them, sometimes they literally don’t have an answer for you. It’s not always that they are trying to hide something. Sometimes, they just do not have the answers yet.

I was talking with a friend about this and she asked whether she was supposed to “not care” if her husband was suddenly socializing like he was a single person. In my view, not caring” is impossible. Of course you care. But, in actuality, you don’t know what he’s doing. And if you demand answers, he’s just going to hold onto the answers more tightly. You can ask him whatever questions you have, but if he clams up, then that’s a cue to come back to that question later. Frankly, if you are able to gain some ground with him so that a comfort and intimacy between you returns, you will often find that he will tell you things naturally. The idea is to try and build a low-key, non-judgmental rapport so that he feels comfortable talking to and confiding in you. Once that happens, you won’t have to nag him until you get answers. He will just feel comfortable telling you.

I can’t promise you that he isn’t keeping secrets. But sometimes, our own fear makes us overly paranoid and we see things that aren’t there. At least that was true with me. Worse, our paranoia can cause us to pressure our husband so much that he backs away even more. Sometimes, you have to pretend that you are less invested than you actually are in order to get some answers. I once had a therapist tell me that the best way to get answers was to simply listen rather than asking. There are often clues that you can pick up on if you are listening instead of grilling. And the person being listened to usually does not even realize that you are doing it. This is so much more effective than making him feel defensive.

Unfortunately, sometimes, in order to not scare him off or cause him to back away, you have to stop hounding him for answers.  Because pushing is a way to ensure that you will not get the answers.  Let him (and the answers) come to you.  At least that is what finally worked for me.  You can read more on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com

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