My Husband Is Now Telling Me That Our Marriage Was A Mistake. What Should I Do?
By: Leslie Cane: I sometimes hear from wives who are dealing with a new devastating reality. They are reeling because their husband has told him that their marriage was a mistake from the start. So, they are left sitting in stunned silence and unsure where this leaves them, or their marriage.
I heard from a wife who said: “my husband and I have been having problems for months. We fight constantly and they are not fair or pretty fights. It always boils down the same few things – our different upbringings and our different outlooks. He’s a risk taker and I am not. I am conservative and he is not. The other day, when were in the middle of a fight, my husband blurted out that our marriage was a mistake from the start and that we should just walk out on that same mistake and go on with our lives. I won’t argue with the fact that we are two different people who often clash, but I have never viewed our marriage as a mistake nor would I ever do so. This hurts me more than I can say and I don’t know where we go from here. So far, he hasn’t mentioned a divorce or a separation. We are just sort of ignoring one another. But I can’t imagine continuing on with a marriage that my own husband views as a mistake.”
My heart went out to this wife. It is very hard to hear that the man who love and are committed to thinks that your marriage has been a mistake. But it is very important to keep this in perspective. Often, people say things in the heat of the moment that they don’t truly mean. In the following article, I will try to offer some perspective and I’ll offer some insights on what you might consider doing next.
Remaining Calm And Then Responding When He’s Claiming Your Marriage Was A Mistake: As I’ve alluded to, often these words are only said out of frustration or are only meant to hurt you and get a reaction out of you. As painful as this is, you have to look at it with the understanding that these words may not even be true. And you really do have to look beyond this when you want to save your marriage. So a suggested response might be something like: “it hurts me to hear you say this. I know that we’re struggling right now and we’ve had trouble merging our differences. But, despite this, I have never seen our marriage as a mistake. What would be a mistake is for us to continue on in the way that we are. It’s not healthy for us to fight like this all of the time and to say such hurtful things to one another. I’d really like to change things so that our marriage will be happy again so that neither of us sees our marriage as a mistake. I’m willing to do whatever is necessary to make this happen. Are you?”
Understand that your husband may not have an immediate answer. Whatever you can do to remain calm and to diffuse this situation will help. Don’t play into his hand or engage with him when you are both angry and hurt. Staying calm and letting him know that you definitely don’t think your marriage is a mistake will hopefully keep this situation from deteriorating.
Using This As The Gentle Nudge You Need To Change Your Marriage: As painful as this is, some good can come out of it. If at least one of you can remain focused and use this to move forward and to change your marriage, then the pain that you are feeling right now will be worth it. And know that there are plenty of marriages that survive and thrive even when both people have very different beliefs and outlooks. Sometimes, these differences even enhance the relationship rather than hurt it. The real key is learning how to work around these differences and allow them to bring you closer rather than to drag you apart.
Plenty of couples have learned new, healthier ways to interact and navigate their differences. It’s very possible to turn your marriage around if you truly want to. It really is up to you to be the one to break the cycle that you find yourself on right now. Often, couples fall into very destructive ways of handling their differences and they often don’t realize this until one or both of them begin to act out in negative ways or begin to make very negative remarks, which is what you are seeing now. So make sure that you pay attention and that you aren’t just hurt but unchanged. You can use this as the little nudge you need to finally be the one to initiate change. I won’t tell you that this will be completely easy, but I will tell you that it’s my opinion that it’s better than continuing to fight and to distance yourself from the one that you love.
Before my husband and I really committed to our marriage, we often said nasty things like this to one another. We had fallen into awful habits and things got so bad that we eventually separated. Our marriage needed a complete overhaul in order to save it. If it helps, you can read about our recovery process on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com
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