If My Husband Wants A Divorce, Should I Tell Him To Just Go Ahead And File?
By: Leslie Cane: I often hear from people who feel as though they have made a reasonable effort in talking their spouse out of the pursuing a divorce. Often, they have tried to debate the issue with their spouse. They may have even tried a little reverse psychology for good measure. And they may have even have gone so far as to give their spouse some space. But, unfortunately, despite all of this, they are looking at an end result that is the same – a spouse who is saying that he wants a divorce.
It’s not unusual to get to a point where you have no more cards up your sleeve and no more bags of tricks at your feet. Even though you may still want to save your marriage, you can grow very tired of this process and can start to consider just giving in and allowing the divorce to happen.
Common comments are things like: “my husband has been unhappy in our marriage for a while. At first, he just kind of moped around but didn’t really verbalize his complaints. But then he eventually moved onto telling me the various ways that our marriage and myself made him unhappy. I told him that I’d be willing to go to counseling with him in order to save our marriage. He wasn’t really listening to much that I said. And he kept moping around the house and keeping his distance from me. We had no intimacy to speak of and he never attempted to spend any time with me. So a couple of days ago, my husband asked me out to dinner. I got my hopes up that things were going to improve for us. But they didn’t. He asked me to dinner so that he could tell me that he wants a divorce. I wasn’t sure how to respond. I mostly picked at my food and didn’t really give him any type of firm answer. But part of me wants to tell him that if he wants to be rid of me so badly then he should just go right ahead and file. But when I think about this reality, I’m sad. I don’t want to end my marriage. But I feel like I’ve tried most everything that I can think of. Should I just tell him to go right ahead and file?”
Unfortunately, this isn’t a decision that anyone else should make other than this wife. And I know that it’s a very tough decision. There was a time when my husband was hinting about a divorce. I didn’t know what else to try in order to improve our marriage. I’d tried various strategies to improve his happiness level but nothing had worked. Many friends were trying to gently tell me that perhaps it was time to bow out gracefully. So I fully understand the thought process where you think that maybe it would be best for every one if you just go ahead and agree to let your spouse, and your marriage, go.
And sometimes, this is the best call for you. But it’s my opinion that you aren’t going to know that until you sit down, get very quiet, and then ask yourself what it is that you really want. And by this I mean that you want to uncover what you would have happen if there were no odds or obstacles standing in your way. Imagine that you could wave a magic wand and have your deep desires come true. It wasn’t too difficult to guess at what this wife wanted because she had very plainly said that she had gotten her hopes up by the dinner and that she truly wanted to save her marriage, but she was discouraged because nothing had worked.
If all of this were true, then it seems to me that giving in and telling him to file a divorce would not be entirely in line with her wishes. In short, she would be conceding the divorce because she felt that it would be easier for everyone and because she feared that the divorce was what was going to happen anyway. But sometimes, you have to act in response to what you truly want rather than going by what your theorize would be the path of least resistance.
Granted, saving this marriage might be a difficult road. But there were strategies that hadn’t yet been tried. There were conversations that hadn’t yet been spoken. My opinion about this has always been (and I completely admit that this is only one person’s opinion) that the time to concede or seek a divorce is only after you know that you have done everything that you can to save your marriage first. Because if you know that, then you can walk away with out any hesitation and doubt. You walk away with peace because you know that you made every effort to have the desired outcome. Sometimes, we just fall short even after we’ve given it an honest effort. But we don’t know unless we try.
As I alluded to, I did consider giving up and angrily telling my husband to go ahead and file for a divorce. But, in my heart, I didn’t want to let him, or our marriage, go. So I decided to try a few new strategies and one of them eventually worked. If it helps, you can read the whole story on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com
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