Leslie Cane Articles

By: Leslie Cane:  See if this scenario elicits any sense of recognition for you. Perhaps you and your husband are separated.  Perhaps this all came about because your husband felt the need for “space” or “time.”  Understandably, you may have had some difficulty adjusting to this.  One second your husband is there.  And the next second he is not.

And you can’t just walk into another room when you want to talk or interact with him.  No, since he no longer lives with you, you have to pick up the phone or get in your car to make the interaction happen.  This is painful and inconvenient.  And it’s even worse when it is clear that he is not all that happy about seeing you or hearing from you.

You might hear this type of description: “my husband now lives an hour away from me because he was not sure about our marriage anymore.  I am so lonely because of this separation.  I feel like part of me has been ripped away.  It is a struggle every single day.  It is so hard for me not to see or talk to my husband all of the time.  And of course I want to pick up the phone and talk to him.  Of course I want to get in my car and head over to his place.  But every time I do these things, he makes it very clear that he doesn’t really want to see me.  Last night, I went over to his place and he could not get rid of me fast enough.  When I got home, I noticed that he sent me a text that indicated that he is asking me for more privacy.  He said that one reason he wanted to separate in the first place was to be on his own.  He says that I am not respecting his need for privacy.  What does this mean, exactly?  Does this mean that he never wants to see me?  Does this mean that I’m to just keep to myself and stew in my own loneliness?  Because he can give me this line about his privacy all he wants. But I am starting to believe that this privacy talk just means that he’s decided that he doesn’t want me anymore. And by demanding that I stay away, he ensures that he just doesn’t have to deal with me anymore.  Is this true?”

This Situation Is Not Uncommon During Separations: I can tell you my opinion.  But that is all it can be, as I don’t know you or your husband.  However, I pretty much dealt with the same situation.  And I find that, early on in a martial separation, many husbands act in this same way.  They have been yearning for that space and they truly want to get it.  If they perceive that anything is going to get in the way of this, they become frustrated and they can sometimes lash out. So they sort of push back and demand the privacy that they believe that they are entitled to.

The good news is that this often does not last forever.  Often, if you back away a little bit and allow them to have that space, they will be eventually be satisfied and find out that it is not all it’s cracked up to be.  At that point, many will begin to reach out or to want to see their wives again.

Understand Your Options: Of course, I can’t guarantee that he will automatically reach out.  But as I came to see in my own case, there isn’t an unlimited amount of options here.  One choice is to keep pushing and to keep trying to call or come by.  The risk with this is that he will only become more and more angry and will eventually not receive you at all or begin avoiding you and refusing to take your calls.

The other option, backing off, can feel risky too.  You can worry that without your constantly bringing yourself back to his attention, he may forget all about you.  Frankly, I worried about this too, but I find that it isn’t very likely. He’s married to you and you have likely been in his life for years.  It’s impossible to forget that.

You may also worry that he will grow to like his freedom.  This is understandable.  But I think that this one is a more reasonable risk than pushing yourself on him and knowing it will only make him more frustrated.  By giving him the chance to miss you and doing what he has asked, you are increasing the chances that he will look at you favorably and come back to the table with a different and more willing attitude once he gets his space and sees that it does not magically fix things, (as many husbands eventually come to see.)

The point I’m trying to make is that this “privacy plea” (as I call it) is not all that rare.  Many wives worry it means that the husband wants someone else or is trying to get rid of her.  But this is not always the case. Often, he is just wanting the space that spurred him to pursue the separation in the first place.  Many husbands do not rest until they get this.  But once they do, many see that it isn’t the answer that they thought it would be and then they become more receptive to their wives.

I know firsthand how hard it is to back away.  I struggled so much with this.  But once I educated myself, raised my courage, and did it in a sort of calculated way, everything changed for the better.   There’s rest of the story is on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com

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