Leslie Cane Articles

By: Leslie Cane: I sometimes hear from wives who feel a little hopeless because their husband doesn’t seem to have an immediate incentive for wanting to come home to save their marriage. Often, he has another relationship which he could either pick up or pursue if the marriage doesn’t work out. So while the wife is very motivated to do whatever is necessary to save the marriage, she often worries that her husband doesn’t feel the same way.

I heard from a wife who said: “my husband left me about seven months ago. We have small children. He didn’t give me any reason for his leaving. I coped as best as I could but eventually I asked around and found out that he was living with another woman. He was shocked to learn that I found out about her. But once I confronted him, he agreed to go to counseling. We have had a few sessions and at first he seemed very upbeat and he said that it seemed to be helping and that there seemed to be hope that we could get out of the rut that our marriage was in. However, at the last session, the counselor outlined all of the work that would be necessary to save our marriage. This seemed to turn my husband off. It’s been a couple of weeks and I think that he’s seeing the other woman again. It seems like he now realizes that saving our marriage is going to be work.  So he’s decided that it’s easier to just go back to her and carry on as he was. This is very hard for me. I was doing OK coping before until he gave me hope after that first counseling session. How am I supposed to deal with the fact that he doesn’t have an incentive to work with me on our marriage? When the going gets tough, he’s just going to go back to the other woman.”

This is a difficult situation. Because here was a woman who still loved her husband and who was still very invested in her marriage, partly because she still loved him and partly because she had small children to consider. So while she was clear on the fact that the marriage was still very important to her, she had her doubts that he felt the same way. The good news was that she had already been successful in getting him to go counseling. I felt that this was a distinct advantage on which she could build. I’ll talk about this more below.

Why I Think That Continuing On With The Counseling Is A Good Idea: The wife in this situation wasn’t sure if she should continue counseling. Since the husband was potentially still carrying on with the other woman, she just didn’t see the point. I would argue that there were still children involved who needed their parents to interact in a positive way during a very difficult time. A counselor can definitely help to facilitate this.

And while both had their doubts about saving the marriage, just working on interacting in a positive way for the sake of your kids will often end up improving your marriage because it will still uncover some issues that you can fix. And when you are successful in doing that, you will often find that your relationship begins to improve outside of the counselor’s office and outside of your role as parents.

And frankly, as things improve, the confusing and on again off again relationship with the other woman might just start to lose it’s appeal. This leads me to my next point.

He Needs To Understand That He Can’t Have A Romantic Relationship With Two People At The Same Time: It’s normal to want to make concessions when you fear that you are losing your marriage and that your children might be losing their full time relationship with their father. But as tempting as it might be to try to win him over while he’s still with her, this is a strategy in which there is often no winner. Allowing yourself to participate in a love triangle is almost condoning his behavior.

So, the decision is yours, but my suggestion would be to make it clear that although you are working hard to maintain and improve your relationship because of your children, you aren’t going so far as trying to resurrect or participate in your marriage until he can make a decision about the other woman and commit to being faithful to you. This really isn’t too much to ask. And it is going to be extremely difficult to save your marriage while someone else is present anyway.

So in my opinion, the best compromise in this situation is to continue on with the counseling in the hopes that it helps these two both as a family as a couple, but stopping just sort of making a commitment to reconcile until he lets the other woman go for good.

There was a time when I felt that my husband had no interest whatsoever in saving my marriage.  It seemed that I was the only one who even cared.  But eventually, I came up with a strategy that allowed me to chisel away at his resistance while bringing him closer rather than pushing him away.  If it helps, you can read more on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com

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