Leslie Cane Articles

By: Leslie Cane: Having your husband tell you that he wants a divorce is one of the worst feelings that I can possibly describe. You can feel that everything that you valued or worked for is now at risk. You feel afraid. You feel rejected. You feel alone.

So when your husband shows any sign of changing his mind or, even better, asks you to stay, you want to believe that he is sincere. You want to believe that this was just a weird time in your marriage that is now going to pass. You want to believe that you will simply move on and never have to worry about the “d” word again.

Still, this isn’t as easy as it sounds. You worry that if you just come back home, or forget the whole thing, the whole divorce issue is going to crop up eventually. Or you worry about his motivations for calling the whole thing off.

A wife might say: “last weekend, my husband and I got in an a pretty heated argument. He told me that he wanted a divorce and he wanted me to move out by Friday. He already had our home when we first started dating. So technically this is his house and not mine. I was devastated. We have been having problems for a while. It is not as if I thought we had the perfect marriage. But I did think that we would work out our issues. I was so disappointed that he was not giving me the chance. I spent a couple of days finding a place to live. Then Thursday, I started packing. Thursday night, my husband came in and told me that he had changed his mind. He said that because of the heated fight, he had overreacted. Honestly, I would love to stay and forget this whole thing. But something is nagging at me. Obviously, he was bothered enough to ask me for a divorce. And now I’m supposed to believe that he’s happy with our marriage? I am worried that if we just forget the whole thing, we will end up divorced eventually. I want to trust that it is all going to be OK. But I am having trouble doing that.”

I understand your concern. And I think that it is valid. There were cracks in my own marriage, but I told myself that I was just making problems for myself. Instead of facing our issues head on, I tried to have a good attitude and hope for the best. But this did eventually come back to haunt me, as the issues came back with a vengeance and we eventually separated. So you are absolutely right to be concerned.

Know The Challenges Of Saving Your Marriage While Living Under Separate Roofs:  Saving your marriage while you are living apart can be scary and difficult. You have to work extra hard because you don’t always have access to your spouse. Granted, there are times when the distance can work for you because you miss one another. But it is a real risk. Because when you move out, there is always the risk that you will have a very hard time moving back in.

I am certainly no expert and I’d highly recommend that you speak with one, but I think that it wouldn’t hurt to remain in your home and place your focus on improving your marriage so that you will have the confidence that a divorce is not on the horizon.

Sure, if you stay there and just never think about your problems and don’t make any changes, then there would probably be a high risk that the same issues are going to keep coming up and seriously put your marriage at risk.  But you certainly have a choice about that.

Know That You Can Stay Put And Make Changes:  Nothing says that you can’t stay put and then work very hard to strengthen your marriage. You can lay the foundation for that with a conversation like this: “you know that I would love nothing more than to stay here and continue to be married. I adore you and our marriage is so important to me. But I’m afraid. I know that we have some real issues here. And I’m worried that if we do nothing, we will end up right back where we are today. I think that it’s important that we work really hard to fix the issues in our marriage. Because I don’t want to end up back here again. I want to have a very strong marriage so that divorce is most definitely off the table. Are you willing to do that with me?”

I think that at this point, your position will be pretty strong. If he feels so strongly that he is motivated to ask you to stay, then I’d suspect that he will also agree to work on your marriage.

I know first hand that because of fear, it can be easy to brush things under the rug and to just go on, hoping that you can put this behind you. But ignoring the obvious is, in my experience, the worst thing that you can do.

Problems have a way of coming up again and again until they are dealt with. And when it comes to your marriage, reoccurring problems that keep cropping up are something you can’t afford. Especially if your husband has already mentioned a divorce.

It’s very easy to panic.  But it really doesn’t help anything.  What does help is really and truly addressing the core issues.  You can read more about how I FINALLY managed to do this on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com

Filed under: Uncategorized by admin