Leslie Cane Articles

By: Leslie Cane: It’s not unusual for me to hear from wives who are separating but who still want to save their marriage.  Much of the time, they don’t understand how this is going to be possible when their husband doesn’t feel the same way that they do.

I heard from a wife who said: “my husband and I have only been separated for ten days.  I don’t hold out a lot of hope for our marriage.  And the reason for that is that when my husband initially asked me for a separation, I asked him how were we going to save our marriage when we were separated from one another.  His reply to me was that he wasn’t really interested in saving our marriage.  I so badly wanted to ask him why didn’t he just divorce me if he felt that way, but I was afraid of his response.  The truth is that I do still want to be married.  I do still love him.  I am still interested in saving our marriage but I guess that I am the only one.  Is there any chance of saving your marriage when you’re separated and your husband just isn’t interested in working with you?”

I will admit that most people would answer no to this question.  But, I am not one of those people.  I was in this same situation.  I desperately wanted to save my marriage, but my husband had truly checked out and he insisted that we separate.  This only made me more clingy.  And the more I tried to get his attention, the less he wanted to deal with me and the less he wanted to save our marriage.  Friends and family gently tried to tell me that perhaps I should think about letting go.  Admittedly, things seemed very bleak. My husband wasn’t reaching out to me and when I reached out to him, he would often reject me.  And yet, even when things got that dire, we are still together today.  How did I go from that horrible place to the secure and much better place that I am now? I’ll tell you below.

You Don’t Always Need Complete Cooperation To Save Your Marriage:  When people think of saving their marriage while they are separated, most of them will assume that you need to have two willing parties who are going to counseling or who are least working very aggressively to sort through their problems.  This isn’t always the case.

Yes, that scenario does tend to make a good outcome easier to come by. But there are less conventional ways to go about it.  And sometimes, you have to accept these strategies when your husband isn’t on board. I strongly believe that you can very gradually save your marriage even if the only one who realizes that you are attempting that is yourself.

Yes, you might have to move at a snail’s pace.  And yes, you may have to accept those small victories that seem insignificant at first.  But it can be done, although it often requires patience.

At First, Settle For Just Subtle Improvements:  As best as you can, try to take the emotion out of this situation and think about it rationally.  Since your husband is claiming that he’s not interested in saving your marriage, any campaign that you stage in order to do just that is going to be met with resistance.  If you tell him that every interaction with you is meant to save your marriage, then he might start to avoid you or he may be distant.

So instead of being so obvious and ambitious about it, you may have to lower the bar a little.  You may have to take all of the “save the marriage” talk off of the table and just make it clear that you want to be able to improve your interactions with your husband simply because the relationship is important to you, no matter what happens in the future.

It helps to stress that you don’t know what the future brings and that, for now, all you want to do is to be able to get along with him and maybe share a laugh or two or ease the tension.  After all, it’s a safe bet that neither of you are happy with the way that things are going or are thriving with all of the tension between you.

Many husbands will be more receptive to this low stress strategy because you are not really asking anything of him.  There is really no reason for him to not want to cooperate with such a simple request.

One Small Step At A Time Can Equal A Giant Leap Eventually: So how do you go from just improving your interactions to saving your marriage?  You do it very gradually.  You build on each meeting and you just try to laugh and have fun so that each time, you both look forward to meeting again.  As you find that you are relating to one another more easily, you are strengthening your bond.  And once this happens, saving your marriage becomes a much easier task because your husband may just realize that you still have an awful lot in common and you can still connect quite well.  But in order for him to make that jump, you have to take the first step and begin to rebuild the rapport between you.

You don’t need to tell him that you are trying to save your marriage.  In fact, sometimes it’s better that you keep this to yourself until he gives you an indication that he has become interested again.  I certainly kept this to myself during my own separation.  In fact, I didn’t admit to any strategy until after we reconciled.  If it helps, you can read the whole story on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com

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