Leslie Cane Articles

By: Leslie Cane:  I dialog with many people who are going through a marital separation and I have gone through one myself.  The majority of people describe the separation as very difficult and heartbreaking.  Very few people enjoy their lives during the separation – partially because there is just too much uncertainty, pain, and drama.  Also, it is hard to just sit idly and wait and see what happens.  Since you don’t always know what your spouse is thinking and you can not control their actions, you can feel as if your hands are tied for much of the time.  This can be especially true if you feel that your spouse is ignoring you.

Someone might say: “when my husband was trying to sell me on the idea of him moving out, he tried to make it sound like we would talk all of the time.  I had some small doubts about this, but I did not think that he would out and out lie to me. And I wanted to be optimistic.   The separation started with him reaching out to me much less than I wanted.  Then it progressed to him not returning my calls or texts when I had to resort to reaching out to him.  When he pretty much ignores me like this, I keep trying and sometimes he will eventually answer or return my calls, but he always keeps things very brief and very cold.  This is very upsetting to me.  I am feeling ignored.  And I don’t like that feeling at all.  I find myself wondering just what I have to do to get my own husband’s attention.  And I feel discarded.  I feel almost as if he conned me to accept the separation with the full knowledge that he would begin to distance himself from me almost immediately.  How do I get him to stop ignoring me?”

I will admit that this can be a very tricky situation.  I was in this situation myself and I really made a mess of things.  Because you feel the need to make yourself heard, you tend to get more and more demanding and more and more panicked as time goes on. As a result, your husband backs further and further away as you display the behavior that he is trying to avoid.  (At least this is what happened in my case.)

Why Separated Husbands Pull Away: Many husbands who tend to pull away in the beginning of the separation are looking for space. So when you come full throttle at them demanding that they make room for you, many will back away, since this is the exact opposite of what they were looking for.  This leaves you in an unfortunate position.  The natural inclination is to attempt to do something (anything, really) that forces them to pay attention to you.  It just feels wrong to back off and to let them come to you.

Negative Strategies Usually Backfire: I can tell you from experience that attempting negative strategies to get their attention and reaction is usually not the way to go.  It just makes things worse.  He pulls away even more, potentially becomes angry or frustrated, and vows to avoid you altogether.  You become desperate and begin to do more and more outlandish things to get his attention and you feel pretty badly about the whole thing.  Despair can set in.  It’s not a great combination for either of you.

Why Pausing Can Have Unexpected Consequences: Conversely, the other option (backing away, even ever so slightly) can feel as if you are giving up or are just leaving things to chance.  I resisted this strategy for a very long time.  In fact, I only used it because I had no cards left to play when I was desperately trying to get my husband’s attention.  I basically threw up my hands and decided to regroup.  And then something unexpected happened.  My husband was curious about my silence.  His curiosity turned to concern.  And he reached out to me.  This played out a couple of times until he was regularly initiating contact.  When I saw how well this worked, I continued.  I’m stubborn, but not stupid.  I was going to do whatever worked to make him interested again.  (And it was pretty clear that he was very uninterested when I was demanding he pay attention to me.)  But when I let him initiate the interest, then he was suddenly much more interested.

I want to be honest here. This can be hard to pull off.  Every instinct you have may be saying to call him, to get his attention, to make him stop ignoring you.  But when you get these urges, make yourself stop.  Ask yourself what you really want in the end.  You likely want your marriage and your husband. And the way to get those things is not to keep doing what hasn’t worked.  It’s to see if something new might be more effective.   I fully understand that it’s frustrating and painful to feel ignored.  You want to make it stop.  But sometimes the most effective way to make it stop isn’t the strategy that you would think.  Sometimes, it is the quiet, unassuming strategy that works the best and gets you what you want.  You can read more about how I used this strategy on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com

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