My Husband Is Leaving Me. Why Don’t I Care?
By: Leslie Cane: Early in your marriage, you often believe that this relationship is the most important thing in your life. You safeguard it like the jewel that it is. As time goes by, though, sometimes we begin to take our marriage for granted or it can begin to suffer. Over time, there may be talk of a separation or of one spouse moving out. Initially, we may not panic about this, especially when the talk amounts to nothing.
And a long amount of time may go by where nothing really changes. The marriage is still struggling and yet both spouses stay put – until one day one of the spouses announces that he is leaving. And the other spouse may not have the reaction that she expected. In fact, she may not feel anything at all. She might explain: “for the last year and a half, my marriage has been somewhat awful. I believe that my husband has been having a midlife crisis. Nothing I do is enough anymore. He believes that being married limits him in some way. For a while, he just complained about this while blowing a lot of hot air, but did nothing. So we continued to fight and generally be unhappy. Then last night, he announced, with great dramatic flair, that he was leaving me. He said that he had found an apartment and that he couldn’t take it anymore. Well, maybe I can’t take it anymore either because much to my surprise, I do not even feel that upset about it and I really do not understand why. I almost feel like I don’t care, but that can’t be right. I know that I still love my husband. I know that, ideally, I would like for it to work out. But I don’t even know where to start. Things have been bad for so long that I don’t know that there is any hope. Why are my feelings so shut down like this? I used to think that if my husband ever pursued a separation or divorce, I would be so terribly upset. But I don’t appear to be. Why?”
Well, there are a couple of possibilities. First, sometimes, it is hard to believe that this is actually happening. You’ve stayed with the status quo for so long that you may be taking a sort of “I’ll believe it when I see it” stance, which would certainly be understandable. This sort of reality can be very hard to wrap your brain around, until it actually happens.
Another possibility is that, like many people, you suspect that a break will be a relief. When things deteriorate so much that there is really nothing but tension and fighting, then taking a break can definitely feel like a release of breath. You may just want a pause in all of the drama.
Finally, the reality of it may not have hit you yet. This is a big change and adjustment and, speaking from experience, you can’t really anticipate how it is going to feel until it actually happens.
I definitely learned that your feelings and perceptions change with the process. One day, you may actually prefer being separated and think that you’ve actually improved your situation and the next day you might find that you miss your husband desperately and don’t want to be separated for even one more day.
Both perspectives are completely normal. It is expected to have emotions that swing wildly. I would doubt that you would go through the entire process not caring at all. But you won’t know that until you take things one day at a time.
Since he hasn’t moved out quite yet, it’s very hard to predict how you are actually going to feel once he does. But since he is still present, you may want to take advantage of that proximity in order to iron out some things. I think that it can be vital to agree about how often (and by what means) you will communicate and see one another. Of course, this needs to be a flexible agreement as issues come up. But the reason that I suggest this is because it’s very common for couples to sort of drift during the separation. And before you know it, you realize that you haven’t spoken to your spouse in a couple of weeks. And then one of both of your start to suspect that perhaps your spouse likes the single life or is seeing someone else.
It’s better to avoid these misunderstandings. The more you can agree on now, the better. What you are feeling is perfectly normal and it doesn’t necessarily need to mean that you’re headed toward divorce or are no longer invested in your marriage. It may just mean that you need a break or don’t yet believe that this is happening. From my own experience, your feelings may well change once he actually moves out or once you’ve been on your own for a little while.
Once the reality hit me that my husband was actually gone, I found that I cared very much. In fact, I could think about very little else and I ended up making a pest of myself. This made things much worse, so sometimes a little distance can be helpful. It’s just important that you not become so distant that you never communicate. I had a very big challenge getting my husband back once he left, but I was eventually successful. You can read more on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com
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