Leslie Cane Articles

By: Leslie Cane: Many women are faced with the reality that they are participating in a divorce that they don’t want. Usually, things had deteriorated dramatically with their marriage. Eventually, the husband filed for divorce out of anger. The wife can feel as if she has no choice but to go along with it, unless she wants to be the only one who still appears to care. Sometimes though, once the reality of the situation sets in and the emotions calm down, you can realize that you are in the process of divorcing someone who you still love.

A wife might say: “my husband and I had been separated for five months when he filed for divorce. He was well aware that I thought we were making progress and that I wanted to keep trying to work on our marriage. To this day, I still don’t know what possessed him to file. But after I was served those papers, I was furious. I called him and asked him what in the world he was doing. The conversation did not go well. Eventually, my anger drove me to get my own attorney. So now, four weeks later, here I am in the midst of a divorce. Lately, I have come to the conclusion that I do not want this divorce because I still love my husband. But things between us have deteriorated so horribly that I feel like it’s too late to back out. And I’m scared to tell my husband how I feel because I suspect that I will be rejected. What should I do?”

Below are some insights and suggestions to think about.

Know That Dramatic Revelations Come With Risk. But Divorce Is Dramatic Also: I realize that the idea of trying to stop something that has already started can make you feel very vulnerable and afraid. And, there is some risk here. But, getting divorced is the biggest risk of all and it already appears that you might be headed that way. I believe that there’s a way that you can try to improve your relationship without taking on so much risk. I will discuss that now.

Don’t Try To Change Too Much Too Soon. Just Try To Improve Your Immediate Interactions With Your Husband: Let’s break this down to very basic levels. You don’t know what the future is going to hold. You can’t be sure about the reality of a divorce, but you have to concede that the circumstances are heading that way. And if things continue on in this way, your most basic relationship with your husband could continue to deteriorate as well. So rather than allow that to happen, you can often begin by trying to preserve a cordial relationship.

And most husbands will be open to this since no one wants a nasty divorce if they can help it. So you might approach him with something like: “I feel as if this whole divorce thing is getting out of hand. I’m not trying to deny reality. But at the rate things are going, we’re no longer going to be speaking at the end of this and that makes me very sad. My relationship with you has been so important to me for so long, I don’t want to let it deteriorate down to nothing. Can we just make an effort to get along with one another? I don’t want to lose the friendship that we have. I don’t want for this process to make us hate one another. I’m committed to changing the way that I interact with you. I hope that this will improve things between us because you are too important to me to continue on as we are.”

Some men will have some suspicions about your motivations, but hopefully, once he sees that you are sincere and not trying to trick him, then hopefully he will come around. Know that this is a gradual process. This isn’t going to change your situation overnight. And if you think that your husband is having second thoughts about the divorce and if you feel confident that you wouldn’t be rejected, then you may feel comfortable moving more quickly than this.

But, that was not the case here. By all appearances, the husband was comfortable with the divorce. So the wife was going to have to make gradual improvements and see how he reacted while she continued on with the appropriate pace.  This is a process where you have to move forward as you are able to because you have to evaluate his reactions to see what is working and what is not.

And while you don’t have complete control over what tomorrow brings, if you still love this man, then it makes sense to try to improve your relationship and see what happens from there.

Many couples (myself included) are able to rescue their marriage from the brink of divorce. Some even remarry after a divorce. So the idea that your relationship is over just because someone has filed doesn’t always turn out to be true. And, at the very least, you will know that you did what you could and you will have made the effort to maintain a relationship that is very important to you. If you want to be read about how I used this strategy myself, you can visit my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com

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