Leslie Cane Articles

By: Leslie Cane: Many people are truly confused as to why their spouse suddenly wants or has filed for a divorce. And often, when they confront their spouse or ask for reasons behind this turn of events, they will either get vague answers or their spouse will refuse to give a decent response at all.

Someone might say: “I was totally blindsided when a process server came to my work and served me with divorce papers. I rushed home from work because my husband works from home. Well, as soon as I got there, I found a locked door. My husband clearly knew that I was getting served at work and he took that opportunity to leave and move out so that he wouldn’t have to face me. So, I began calling him. For a while, he wouldn’t pick up. But I caught him off guard I guess because when he picked up his phone, I could tell that he was expecting someone else. I immediately asked him what was going on. He answered that it should be obvious. I told him that I understood he wanted a divorce but I didn’t understand why. I mean, our marriage isn’t perfect by any means. But I had no idea there was this large of a problem. He said he wasn’t going to say why because there wasn’t any specific thing. What in the world is this supposed to mean? Why would you throw your marriage away without any reason at all? Why won’t he tell me why he is doing this?”

There are many reasons that you will get very vague answers from a husband or even no answer at all. I will go over some of these reasons, as well as offer suggestions on how to handle this, in the following article.

He May Not Be Able To Put His Finger On A Reason That Is Going To Satisfy You, So He’d Rather Not Even Try:

Your husband is probably fully aware that you deserve a very specific and meaningful explanation. But sometimes, he just doesn’t have an answer that he knows is going to be good enough. Sometimes, all he knows is that he has become unhappy and he doesn’t know how to fix things. So he believes that the most fair thing to do is to move on without leading you on or taking you on a journey that may not resolve things.

Many men know that the second they try to explain just a general sense of unhappiness, you are going to try to poke holes in their reasoning. They can often imagine you saying things like “so, you’re leaving me because of some fleeting sense of unhappiness that probably has nothing to do with our marriage? How selfish can you be? I’m not always happy either but I’m not going to throw our marriage away.”

Your husband probably knows that there isn’t any decent answer for this argument, so he would rather not have the conversation at all.  And so he says nothing.

He Knows That You Are Going To Try To Use Any Reasoning That He Gives You To Either Change His Mind Or To Make Him Look Like The Bad Guy:

Many men are quite aware that their reasons for wanting a divorce are selfish or not adequate. Many don’t like the responsibility of being married. Or they believe that their lives will be better, or more carefree, without a wife. But, they know that as soon as they tell you this, you will point out what type of immature behavior they are displaying.

Others just don’t believe that the marriage can be adequately changed.  They may well still love their wives, but they don’t see any way to restore the marriage.  And, they know that you aren’t likely to accept this or that you may strongly disagree. They know that if they put up an argument that you think that you can successfully debate, then you won’t hesitate to do just that. But sometimes they just aren’t ready to have that conversation so they chose to keep their thought process to themselves.

How To Handle This Situation:

I find that often the more you push him for an explanation for his filing for the divorce, the more likely he is to keep it to himself. You really don’t want to get in a situation where you’re throwing every possible scenario at him and asking him to confirm or deny it. This is likely to frustrate him even more so that he eventually denies access to himself. This is the last thing that you want. Because if you have any chance of saving your marriage, you will need to at least be able to talk with him eventually. So don’t do or say anything that is going to jeopardize this.

The first suggestion that I would give is not to panic. I know that this is a tall order. But the more that you ramp up the drama, the less your husband is going to want to interact with you. So it’s to your benefit to remain calm. When you find him resisting your questions, back off and know that the reasons probably will become clear soon enough.

I know that it is hard to accept, but your real goal right now should be to maintain some sort of relationship with your husband. You want frequent access to him and you don’t want to do anything that might jeopardize your ability to be in contact so that you might eventually improve things between you.

So to answer the question posed, there are many reasons that he may not be outlining the reasoning behind him wanting a divorce. Often, you can’t force him to give you an answer that he may not have or doesn’t want to give. Your best bet is to back off, try to improve things between you, and know that the answer will come in time. In the meantime, you have bigger things to worry about, like maintaining a cordial relationship so that eventually, you can begin to rebuild your relationship so that ultimately, the divorce won’t actually happen.

My husband was very vague on why he wanted to separate.  I fixated on getting him to tell me for far too long and this nearly cost me my marriage.  It wasn’t until I figured out that his reasoning was less important than fixing the problem that things began to improve.  Once I changed my focus, I was able to save my marriage.  You can read the whole story on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com

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