Leslie Cane Articles

By: Leslie Cane: Many wives are incredibly frustrated because their husband seems to be blaming her for all of his personal problems and his unhappiness. Often, the wife does not agree with his assessment. In fact, many wives truly believe that their presence actually makes their husband’s life better and they very much resent their husband’s mistaken belief that getting a divorce will solve all of his problems.

One of these wives might explain: “my husband’s life has gone downhill in the last couple of years. He lost his job. His ex-wife took him back to court to get more child support. His mother died and he is fighting with his siblings over the estate. With all of these very stressful things happening, our marriage has been negatively affected. He’s moody and downright nasty sometimes. He is not easy to live with. I try to be patient with him. I listen to his problems as long as he wants to talk. But I can feel him slipping away from me more every day. Lately, he’s started saying that he’s not happy and he feels like he wants to make some major changes in his life. He hints that this might include divorcing me. This hurts me and I know that he’s making a huge mistake. Divorcing me is not going to solve any of his problems. In fact, I think it’s going to make his problems worse because he will no longer have me as his sounding board and biggest supporter. Still, he’s all but saying that he wants a fresh start by getting a divorce and he thinks that this is going to make his life better. What can I do about this? I don’t want a divorce and I still think our marriage is salvageable. How can I make him see that divorcing me isn’t going to make his life magically better?”

I can really empathize because in my own situation, my husband sort of went through the same process. As his life became more complicated (mostly because of his own actions) he started to think of me as the source of his problems and he began to reject me and our marriage. Eventually, he was able to see how wrong he really was, but when we lived apart and almost divorced, it was quite hard to keep the faith. This article is based on some things that helped my own situation. I hope that something here helps you.

Although It May Be Tempting To Repeatedly Tell Your Husband That He Is Wrong, It’s Unlikely You Will Be Able To Talk Sense Into Him When He’s Already In A Dark Place: I know that it may be tempting to repeatedly lay out your arguments and hope that you can talk some sense into him. You feel like if you can just explain where and why he is wrong, he might just come around and embrace you and your marriage again. I have to tell you that in my own experience, this is quite unlikely. Often your husband is caught up in a cycle of a certain type of thinking. This type of thinking doesn’t encourage him to listen to reason, even if those reasons are valid.

That doesn’t mean that he won’t eventually come to see the truth. But often when this happens, it is because he is ready to accept the truth and he has come to his own decision based on his own introspection or events that have happened within his own life. Sometimes, the best that you can do in this situation is to continue to support him but to also focus on your own self-care because you are going through a very difficult time also.

Approach Him In The Spirit Of Helping Him Rather Than Changing His Mind. And Offer Him A Compromise: It’s important to understand that when you approach your husband with the sole purpose of changing his mind (and he is typically well aware that this is what you are doing) he will often be that much more determined not to change his mind. So, while you might be under the impression that you are helping yourself, you actually might be making your situation worse. It’s my experience and opinion that you will often be more likely to get what you want if you make him think that your goal is to help and support him rather than to change his mind. So instead of telling him that he is dead wrong in his assumption that divorcing you is going to fix all of his problems, you might instead tell him that it’s clear he’s still struggling and you want to help him find whatever it is that is going to give him some relief. To that end, you could suggest your leaving the house for a short period of time to give him a taste of living without you. This way, he can see that being apart from you isn’t going to solve his problems and you’ve made it look like you are helping or cooperating rather than arguing with him or trying to keep him from getting or doing what he wants.

Encourage Him To Lighten His Load In Other Ways: The wife in this scenario suspected that her husband was depressed and it sounded as if she may well have been right about this. Sometimes, finding other outlets that help your husband with his problems means that is no longer projecting his problems onto you. If you can get him some relief – whether that is counseling or just finding an outlet for his frustrations, you will likely find that he realizes all on his own that you are not the problem. And when he does, you might find that this divorce business is no longer an issue.

As I alluded to, there was a time when my own husband thought that divorcing me would solve all his problems. He even moved out for a while. I tried to make him see that he was wrong, but this only pushed him further away. Finally, I realized I was going about it all wrong and I changed course and saved my marriage. You’re welcome to read that very personal story on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com

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