Leslie Cane Articles

By: Leslie Cane: I sometimes hear from wives who are in the middle of a marital separation who are absolutely panicked. Sometimes, their husband has cut off most or all contact or he just isn’t acting very receptive to his wife or to the marriage. And it is at this time that you can feel very much alone. And you can begin to worry that the marriage that is so important to you is now a lost cause.

I heard from a wife who said: “my husband left me three months ago. He thinks that I cheated on him, but I didn’t. I have repeatedly tried to reach out to him with proof that I didn’t cheat. I won’t say that our marriage was perfect before this one incident. But it is this one incident that inspired him to actually leave when he was only thinking about it before. Since my husband left, he hasn’t called, come by, or reached out to me in any way. He is staying with his mother and when I call her, she won’t let me talk to him. She says that he has nothing to say to me. I have sent letters telling him that I didn’t cheat. Still, I get no response. I keep texting and he doesn’t respond. One of my friends says that it is obvious that there is no hope for my marriage. She says that it would be healthier for all involved if I would just give up. She is probably right, but I guess I need to hear my husband say this before I give up. But since he won’t give me any access to him, then how is this supposed to happen? Is there any hope for my marriage?”

I think that there is always hope. I would never tell someone to give up hope on what should be the most important relationship of their life. With that said, there are times when no one can deny that things don’t look very promising. But that doesn’t mean that it is impossible for you to things to turn around. Sometimes, you have more control over this than you might think. I will discuss this more below.

Your Level Of Hope Is Really A Choice: It always bothers me when friends tell you that there’s no hope or that you should give up hope. Who are they to say this? It is not their marriage in question. It is yours. And the only one who can decide if it time to give up hope is you. And frankly, this is often not a logical decision. Often, your head is showing you facts that might indicate that things are not going your way when your heart just doesn’t care.

This was the case with me. My husband had long left and although he was being cordial to me, he wasn’t giving me any encouragement that things would get better. And there was a time when I got so discouraged that I gave up actively trying to get him back. Ironically, that’s actually when things improved.

But, in the back of my mind, I always had a little hope. Because I’d known people who had separated and even divorced who had gotten back together eventually. And I knew that if I had patience, my husband’s love for me may matter more than the problems we were trying to overcome. Sure, my circumstances might have eventually showed me that I was wrong about this. But I don’t see any harm in maintaining hope. You’re not hurting anyone by doing so.

Setting It Up So That Your Hope Isn’t Necessarily In Vain: Of course, it’s great to maintain your hope, but it’s even better to see your hopes realized. And in order to do that, you’ll often need to set it up so that the circumstances shift to your favor. I didn’t personally know the couple involved in this scenario. But it appeared that two issues were the most persuasive. First, the husband believed that the wife had cheated but he was avoiding her so much that she couldn’t straighten this out. I would suggest writing a letter so that you don’t have to worry about being interrupted and then hand delivering it right to him if possible and then giving a brief statement asking him to please read the letter and call you after he does. After that, I would suggest backing off and giving him a little time to calm down.

The second issue was that the husband appeared to be trying to set firm boundaries while the wife was trying to push her way into getting answers about how her husband was feeling and what his intentions were. And the more she felt ignored, the more she felt the need to push even harder. And while this was totally understandable and is very common, what she needed to understand is that it wasn’t really working that well for her. It seemed to only be making things worse.

In my own situation, it actually was a good idea to stop pushing so hard and to back off. Once I did this, my husband eventually began to wonder why he wasn’t hearing from me all of a sudden. Eventually, he was the one reaching out to me, which put me in a much better position and was the beginning of us being able to work things out.

But to answer the question posed, I can’t tell you specifically what’s going to happen with your marriage, but I can tell you that you have control as to whether you give up hope or not. No one can take hope away from you unless you decide that it is time to give it away. And if you have reason to believe that it’s not yet time to do so, you have every right to hold onto it.

I’m glad I didn’t give up hope.  I fully realize that my marriage could have gone the other way and my hope would’ve been in vain.  But, at that time, my hope was all I had left and I wasn’t willing to just release my grip.  If it helps, you can read the whole story on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com

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