My Husband Says He Can No Longer See A Future With Me. What Can I Do?
By: Leslie Cane: Many wives are seriously worried about the future of their marriages, especially since their husband has told them that he has a hard time picturing any future at all with them.
A wife might say: “my husband and I have had a rough year. He was laid off from his job and this hurt his self-esteem horribly. In turn, it really stressed my marriage. I really want to downsize where we live because it may take him a long time to find another job. I would rather willingly find a smaller home now than to be foreclosed on later. I will admit that I tend to be a worrier and I don’t like taking risks. My husband is angry that I want to downsize because he says that this just proves that I don’t have faith in him and in his abilities. Frankly, it doesn’t appear to me that he’s pursuing another job as aggressively as he should. I try to keep quiet about this because he’s so sensitive. The other day, my husband told me that he was looking for another place to live. He said that he can no longer see a future with me because we just have different personalities and ways of looking at life. He says being around me makes him feel drained. I tried to tell him that I will back off of the house thing if he would stay. I told him that I would no longer pressure him. But none of this seems to matter. He just said we have different ways of thinking and that we aren’t compatible. What can I do now? I don’t want to lose my husband. I agree that we are different, but don’t opposites attract?”
Opposites do attract and opposites can remain very happily married, but it can take work to ensure that this happens. My husband and I are polar opposites and we have had our struggles – so much so that we separated for a while. But, I finally got serious about dealing with them and decided that I wasn’t going to let that conflict destroy our marriage. Below, I’ll outline some suggestions about how to best deal with this.
If He Can’t See A Future With You, Then The Best Bet Is To Focus On The Here And Now: I know how badly it hurts to hear your husband say that the future is uncertain. But, if you think about it, no one has any guarantees about their future or about their marriage. We all live with a degree of uncertainty every day. And frankly, you can influence the outcome of the future depending on how you conduct yourself in the present.
It’s important to not become so distracted with fear about tomorrow that you do not deal with the realities of today. So I would suggest that the wife take things day by day without panicking about next week. The first course of action is to deal with the immediate future. I couldn’t tell how serious the husband was about moving out. He could have intended to pack his bags that night, or he might have been merely trying to get a reaction out of the wife in the hopes that she backed off on the stress level so that he didn’t feel so pressured.
A suggested script would be something like: “it hurts me to hear you say this, but I agree that our marriage is under a lot of pressure right now and this is no one’s fault. We’re living under very difficult circumstances. But I think that if we work together, we can make the best of them. And yes, we have different personalities. But at the beginning of our marriage and before these difficulties surfaced, our differences enhanced our marriage. I believe that this can happen again if we can manage the stress. Can you work with me to make that happen? I am committed to adjusting my attitude so that you’re not feeling so pressured. But I need for you to make me feel heard. Can we agree to this?”
Improving Your Present So That He Can Begin To See His Future With You Again: I had no way to predict how the husband would proceed in the coming days. But no matter which course of action he took, the wife should focus on trying to drastically tone down the stress level. The whole idea is to back off and to lighten up so that you can begin to have fun together again. I know that this can be a challenge when money is tight and tensions are high. But a walk in the park costs nothing. A board game with laughter and kidding around is absolutely free.
You want to show your husband that you can coexist quite happily and playfully even with your differences. And the idea is that you eventually it’s clear that your spouse is your rock who always has your back rather than yet another cause of stress. Frankly, in hard times, your spouse should be your biggest ally. This wasn’t the case in this marriage right now. But if the wife played her cards right, it could become this way eventually. And once the husband began to see some drastic improvement, he would likely begin to envision a promising future once again.
As I alluded to, I didn’t pay attention to the issues in my own marriage until things were so bad that we almost divorced. I had to work very hard to gain some ground and to save my marriage. If it helps, you can read that story on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com
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