Leslie Cane Articles

By: Leslie Cane: It’s an awful feeling when your husband walks out. Especially if you might be still invested in saving your marriage. It can feel like one step closer to a divorce, except when you have a husband who insists that he doesn’t want one.  

This dynamic can also feel like a weird push and pull. On the one hand, he apparently doesn’t want to live with you right now. But on the other, he is saying that he’s not going to pursue a divorce. A wife can wonder if these two opposite things can actually authentically exist at the same time.

The wife might say, “My husband had been talking about taking time for himself and living alone for several months. Because he took no action initially, I’d been hoping that he wouldn’t actually go through with it. He’s very frugal, and I had my doubts that he was actually going to spring for an entirely new household for himself. He is an only child, and his parents are deceased. So he doesn’t have anyone he can stay with in the short term. If he doesn’t want to live with me, he’ll need to pay for a separate place. Apparently, he is so miserable here, he’d rather pay to live somewhere else. He swears that he is going month to month and that he didn’t sign a lease, but I honestly don’t know how likely that is.”

“I have been very honest about how upset all of this makes me. And he has told me that as of right now, he has no plans to file for divorce. (Although he concedes that this could change if we are unable to make any progress.) So I suppose that should make me feel a little better, but I don’t know that it does. There’s always the chance of divorce for people who are separated. And that is what we are. Sure, we haven’t exactly said those words, but when your spouse wants to move out and away from you, then you are separated – whether you like it or not. I just don’t know what to do with all of this conflicting information. I can’t stop thinking about divorce – as if he never even took it off the table – or as if I can’t trust what he said.”

The Fear Mindset Doesn’t Serve Anyone: I understand where you are coming from. I was in a similar situation as to what you are going through, and I, too, was unable to stop myself from fixating on divorce initially. But, I have to tell you, that mindset did not serve me at all from a mental health standpoint. Nor did it help in my marriage or separation. All it did was cause me to panic, which made my behavior worse than it otherwise would have been. In time, I learned to separate the two things – separation and divorce – and as such, I didn’t divorce. Here is the mindset that helped me make this shift

Take it One Day at a Time:  Although it can feel as if a divorce is around the corner, you’ve not been served with divorce papers. And as far as you know, your husband hasn’t hired an attorney. Divorces aren’t instantaneous. They take time. That means you’re not going to wake up divorced tomorrow. You have some time. You don’t need to panic. Instead, you can come up with a proactive strategy to turn things around and make the gradual progress that may change your husband’s mind. Don’t try to tackle every problem at one time. Instead, try to have one positive interaction each time you speak, try to improve yourself a little at a time, and try to gain gradual insights that might help you implement the changes that will save your marriage.

Focus on the Problems that Will Help You Gain a Sense of Cooperation and Intimacy: People often ask me which problems to tackle first. You want to tackle problems that you can actually solve or can at least make some progress. If you try to attack something so big that you’ll fail, then you’ll likely get discouraged. You want to build up to the biggest problems.

It is always a good idea to tackle the problems that make way for more intimacy and ease between you. Any negativity you can remove so that you can feel comfortable reaching out to and communicating with your husband is absolutely worth doing.

It is so important that you are regularly and positively communicating. Doing so gives you something that you can build upon and creates momentum.

Don’t Keep Bringing Up Divorce: When I was at the height of my anxiety, I kept bringing up the possibility of divorce. Or I would ask my husband if he had changed his mind. This only frustrated both of us. And at times, he very plainly told me he didn’t want to hear about this anymore. When I crossed that line, I had to work hard to bring back a decent rapport between us. I would have been better off continuing to create an ease and letting the momentum propel me forward. 

I should have just settled in and understood that I was in the middle of a marathon and not a sprint. In truth, most of our marriages didn’t get this way overnight, so we aren’t going to save them overnight. Most of us have to work patiently and methodically to try to soothe what is broken, to try to right what is wrong, and to be content with a pace that may seem slower and not as aggressive as we may want. 

However, if all you do is concentrate on the possibility of divorce, you may keep yourself from taking the necessary steps to attempt to make this better. The good news is that if you can keep a lid on your anxiety, sometimes a little distance can actually work for you. Sometimes, you both miss each other more than you anticipated, and you’re both a little more willing to openly communicate without anger and resentment. 

That ultimately happened in my case after I stopped making so many preventable mistakes that almost cost me my marriage.  You can read the whole story at https://isavedmymarriage.com

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