Leslie Cane Articles

By: Leslie Cane: I sometimes hear from wives who have become so fed up with their husband and with their marriage that they have finally had to make the reluctant choice to seek or file for a divorce. Often, this is a decision that they do not take lightly. They often see the divorce as the last resort after years of asking their husband to change or to work with them to improve things. When these pleas fall upon deaf ears, then the wife can feel as if she has no real choice in ending the marriage.

But this whole thing can begin to unravel when the husband places a last ditch plea and asks her to reconsider with promises of real change. The wife often has her doubts because this is what she has been asking for all along.

I might hear a comment like: “for the past two years, I have begged my husband to work on our marriage and to make some changes to himself. He is not the most motivated person and in some ways, I feel as if I have outgrown him. My career is very important to me. I am attending college at night to get an advanced degree. My husband has the same job that he had in college which was only supposed to be temporary. Improving our economic status has never really been important to him. I have told him it is important to me to feel secure financially and that I wanted for him to finish his degree and get a better job. I told him that I want both of us to value education as we both agreed to do when we were dating. But my husband has become very lazy and complacent. He is happy to eat pizza and watch TV once he puts in a minimum shift. I want to advance in my career and in my life. My husband and I separated because of this and I had hoped that this would get his attention. But it didn’t. I finally very reluctantly filed for a divorce. Frankly, I still love him in a way. He is a good man. And he has been my best friend for years. But it is hard to respect him and look up to him when he has a menial job and no goals. So I filing for divorce was a last resort. He hasn’t really said anything for a long time. But he just left my apartment and he begged me to reconsider. He said he is now in a manager training program because he realizes that I am right. Part of me wants to call off the divorce. But another part of me fears that as soon as he’s secure that I’ll still around, he will go back to his old ways and it will be even more painful and hard when I have to file for divorce all over again. How do I know if I can trust in this change that he is promising?”

I’m not sure that there is anyway to trust in it one hundred percent. There typically comes a point where you just have to make a decision to hope for the best and to wait and see. This wife was right when she said that her husband might resort back to his old ways once the threat of the divorce was over. Some people do this. And others do not. I have to say that in my own marriage, I was the spouse who was promising to make some changes and my husband was the spouse who doubted that I would actually do it. I am proud to say that I have kept my promises and that our marriage is very strong today because of this.

The Things That Are Needed In Order For Him To Follow Through: So what made me keep my promises and how can this advice help you? Well, I believe there were a couple of reasons. The first was that I came to believe that my husband was right. Initially during our separation, I believed that my husband was asking for too much or being too critical. But once I got quiet, journaled, and spent a lot of time working on and examining myself, I was able to be honest and I saw that much of my husband’s criticisms were absolutely true. Once I realized this, then I knew that I was going to put everything that I had into making the existing changes.

Second, I came to believe that my husband’s threats were real. There was no doubt in my mind that he would divorce me if he didn’t believe that I was sincere. That was enough motivation for me to get really serious about real changes.

In this situation, it seemed pretty clear that the husband believed the wife was serious about a divorce. Actually filing for one is about as serious as you can get. However, what wasn’t clear was whether the husband believed that some of the wife’s criticisms were valid. The change would have a much better chance of lasting if the husband was able to take a long, hard look at his place in life and realize that he too wanted to achieve a little more. Only the wife would be able to evaluate if this had happened. But if she needed more information about this, nothing says she couldn’t have a conversation with her husband about this and ask for more information.  She might ask him what lead him to reevaluate his decisions and what his goals are now. And then she could see if his responses rang true.

I have to admit that I’m a bit biased about this. Because I believe that real change is possible and I believe that a marriage on the brink of divorce can be made whole again. I also believe that if you have invested this much time and effort into your spouse and your marriage, then it only makes sense to try to see this through one more time so that you won’t always wonder what might have been.

With that said, you don’t want to be taken advantage of, so you can always agree to reconsider with conditions. You might tell your spouse that in one month’s time you want to see another benchmark and that in six months time you would like to see another. That way, you know that there are concrete goals that will have to be realized and your husband will be very clear on what is expected moving forward.

As you probably can tell, I do believe that true change is possible.  My husband and I reconciled and my changes are still in place.  If it helps, you can read more on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com

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