Leslie Cane Articles

by: Leslie cane: Since I’ve begun writing about returning love to marriage, I often have wives who approach me and say they want to save their marriage, but their husbands have indicated that (or act as if) they no longer love or are in love with them. These wives don’t know how in the world they can save or improve their marriage when their husbands are no longer receptive. This article will discuss ways that you can coax your husband’s love back so that he’s a more willing partner than a reluctant roommate.

What “Falling Out Of Love” Really Means When You Are Married. (It’s A Mirror): You may not believe me when I say this (I didn’t when a therapist first told it to me), but I now know this to be true. When your husband acts like or indicates that he’s “fallen out of love” with you, what that usually really means is that he’s fallen out of love with the marriage, not the people in it (at this time, not forever). In essence, he’s lost the pleasurable feelings that your relationship and marriage used to elicit in him (as they relate to himself).

Note that I focused more on his feelings about himself than on his feelings about you.  The truth is, a man’s being “in love” has more to do with the feelings that the relationship brings about or contributes to his own self-esteem than it has to do with you. This may not make a lot of sense at first but bear with me, because understanding this puts you at a distinct advantage.

When a man is “in love,” he feels attractive, fully alive, intelligent, powerful, and competent. Who doesn’t want to feel this way for the long term?  It doesn’t matter how these feelings are lost. What matters is that when they are, men feel very let down and can sometimes fixate upon this until they feel abandoned and/or neglected. (No, this isn’t fair, but it’s how they feel.)

“Falling out of love,” then, is often an attempt by a husband to look elsewhere or be willing to move on to obtain these lost positive feelings somewhere else or on his own.

Please understand that usually external factors (or even other people) don’t make or force your husband to turn his attention elsewhere or fall out of love. Many women mistakenly assume that their husband is in love with someone else or that a crisis or stress took the husband away.

This is only part of the story. What really happened is that the mistress or other woman was able to bring out the lost positive feelings in the husband or the crisis or stress further effected his self-esteem so much that he’s trying to flee the situation. No, this isn’t fair, but again you can use this information to your advantage to make adjustments.

Adjusting The Circumstances To Get Your Husband’s Love Back: We’ve already established that your husband’s loss of positive feelings is one of the major contributing factors to his “checking out” of your marriage.  We have to get the original positive feelings back. But, don’t let this knowledge cause you to panic or act in a way that is unbecoming or only damages your marriage more. So many people fall into this trap and, in turn, act desperate.  This only pushes the husband further away.

Your job is really to reintroduce the two people who first fell in love in the first place. Here is where you have a distinct advantage. You probably know your husband better than anyone else in the world. You know what makes him tick and what it took to make him fall in love with you originally.

Be honest. When you first fell in love, you almost certainly presented the best version of yourself regularly. You lavished attention and praise upon him, listened intently as he talked, and put his well-being and happiness very high on your list of priorities. It’s highly likely that the amount of work you put into the relationship was reflected back in the strength and intensity of it.

More than anything, you need for your husband to have positive feelings when he thinks of or interacts with you. So, resist doing anything that would achieve the opposite. This sounds so simple, but so many people miss this. It’s so common. We all do it, but it can kill the intimacy in your marriage. Don’t berate, repeatedly question, nag your husband, or push his buttons. Don’t continue to do the things that push your husband away and don’t neglect or ignore those things you know would make him happy.

Re-introducing The Woman Your Husband Likely Still Loves Somewhere Deep Down: I am going to suggest that without being overly obvious, you present the best version of yourself (the one he first fell in love with). Remember you’re trying to return the positive feelings that you were initially able to elicit for your husband about himself. This doesn’t require you to again be twenty years old or to look like Paris Hilton. It only requires a wife who cares about her appearance and genuinely and deeply cares about her husband’s happiness.

This usually means a light, interested, and attentive woman with the open heart and easy laugh that first turned your husband’s head and put the gleam in his eye. You already know this woman. She’s you. And she’s the one who first won your husband’s heart.  Embrace her, because she’s the one who’s going to win it back.  You just need to find her and reintroduce her to yourself and then to your husband.

How do I know this? Because I lived it. I had to use this approach when I trying to get my husband to realize that he still loved me. I made a lot of mistakes, but eventually, I pulled it off. You can that story on my blog at isavedmymarriage.com

by: Leslie Cane: We live in a society where it is absolutely acceptable (and sometimes even encouraged) to get a divorce. Outside influences like our friends, lawyers, family members, and divorcing celebrities (who get more attention when they split up then when they marry) can all influence our opinions about ending our marriage.

The problem with this is that the only person who is going to be affected by your divorce is you, your spouse, and your children (if you have them.) The friends and the well-meaning folks who encouraged the divorce are likely not going to be standing with you when you pick up the pieces of your broken marriage.

Admittedly, there are some cases (mental and physical abuse) where divorce is a better option. But, in cases where couples have problems communicating, are fighting / misunderstanding one another regularly, or one partner has made a mistake that they are willing to rectify, then I believe, and it is my experience, that taking divorce off the table as an option can greatly help in saving the marriage.

Removing Divorce As A Threat Changes The Dynamics Of Working It Out: I’ve seen it happen so many times. One spouse mentions the words “divorce,” “splitting up,” or “taking a break,” and suddenly the rules of the game change dramatically. Instead of two people who are sincerely committed to the good of the marriage, what you get instead is usually tit for tat, where one partner does or says something hurtful and the other spouse retaliates with one better. In essence, the fighting spouses are trying to one-up each other. As you can imagine, this digs a deep, destructive hole that can be very hard to dig yourself out of.

Or, talks of divorce put one of the spouses in panic mode and this person acts in a desperate way that is not typical or him or her and says or does things that he or she regrets that unfortunately deteriorate the marriage even more.

Putting divorce on the table is akin to lighting a stick of dynamite. It’s not productive and can be potentially deadly to your marriage. It brings on negative emotions and actions that erode the marriage even more and it puts spouses on opposite sides. In short, it sets you up to fail.

Statistics Show That Couples Who Commit To Working It Out Can Be Happier Than Ever: A study which followed couples contemplating divorce indicated that, of those who stuck it out and committed to working on the marriage, over 80% claimed to be happy five years later. Unless these people are not telling the truth (which I highly doubt), it’s clear that, if a couple thinking about divorce can just stick it out, take the “d-word” off of the table, and then work out their problems, the odds are with you that better times are ahead.

I’ve found that once you communicate to one another that you won’t even consider divorce until all efforts are made to rescue your marriage, suddenly you’re both working toward the same goal. Once there is no longer an “out,” all of the static and excess “noise” is gone. Couples are then more likely to sit down to the drawing board and fix things. Once splitting up in not the primary choice, then there is only one to focus on: which is to get down to business and repair the relationship.

So, Once Divorce Is Off Of The Table, How Do You Solve The Marital Problems?: Once you both agreed to go with the “divorce is not an option” method of staying together, you’ll need to work out what was dividing you in the first place. However, in my experience, the way that most people try to do this is flawed.

Many people want to get in deep discussions about and rehash everything wrong in the marriage or every wrong that was ever committed in it. This can elicit very negative and painful feelings in an already volatile situation. While I agree that problems will need to be worked out so that they don’t return, I don’t believe that a couple on shaky ground should try this until positive feelings of affection and empathy have returned. If these feelings aren’t there, one or both partner’s hearts are just not going to be in it and there’s a chance that any commitments or changes are more just “giving in” and are not going to stick long term.

In my experience, it’s better to first focus on rediscovering the two people who first fell in love and trying to replicate the experiences that contributed to what you love (or loved) about your partner. Now, I know this may be awkward at first and I know that your circumstances today are different. You likely have a busy job or maybe kids and it’s harder to be that carefree, bubbly person that first captivated your spouse. However, even small efforts can make a great deal of difference.

Returning To Feelings Of Affection And Empathy Make The Process Much Easier: Do you remember your first fight before you were married? I’d be willing to bet, (if you can even remember it), the fight probably ended quickly without much fanfare. Why? Because people deeply in love don’t want to spend their time fighting. Instead, they’d move heaven and earth to make the one they love more than anything happy.

If you can return (even partially) to this place, saving your marriage will likely be quicker and easier. People who remember why they fell in love in the first place experience positive feelings, affection, and empathy. And, it’s very hard to unreceptive to or furious with someone with whom you’re experiencing positive feelings.

No matter how you’re feeling now, understand that research shows if you can hold off on the divorce, you can once again have a happy marriage in the future with a bit of hard work. Countless couples do. And, history is on your side. Your spouse has already fallen in love with you once. Now, you just need to achieve this again.

Unfortunately, I know this because I made many of the mistakes that I just cautioned against. You can read more about how I turned things around by changing strategies on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com

by: Leslie Cane: If you’ve found this article, I know that there is one person in your marriage who is at least willing to consider reconciling. This is good news because I am living proof that repairing a marriage only takes one person who wants to, at least initially. This article is based on my personal experience and the extensive research that I conducted when trying to change my husband’s mind about his demands for separation or eventual divorce. How quickly or well these methods work will depend upon the state of your marriage today and how well you’re able to implement what I’m going to suggest. I believe that these tactics can sometimes work even in the direst of circumstances.

Reconciling A Marriage By Not Focusing On What’s Wrong: Here’s where I think most couples get it wrong and why I think many attempts at reconciliation fail. When someone mentions getting a break, separation, divorce or splitting up, people panic and become highly emotional. This can lead to behavior that isn’t typical or you or your spouse – behavior that can further contribute to distance between you.

And, these feelings of panic create a huge sense of urgency. People become scared and assume that the longer they are fighting or split from their husbands or wives, the harder it will be to reconcile. In response, spouses often feel that they need to talk about, analyze, or dissect their relationship to get to the heart of what is wrong so that they can fix it. Even couples who go to marriage counselors end up doing this same thing – picking apart the relationship to focus on what’s wrong so that it can be “fixed.”

What You Should Focus On Instead: If you want to reconcile your marriage, I firmly believe that you should first focus on mending negative feelings and creating positive ones before you try to dissect and work through any problems.  I completely understand and agree that eventually, you will need to address and fix the problems that are causing talks of splitting up. You must do this so that the same problems don’t keep coming up. But, you can not fix anything, (completely and long term), when feelings of empathy and affection are less than they should be or just not there right now.

An Exercise To Get Your Started Down The Road To Reconciliation: If you can, I want you to think back for a second when your relationship was new and you were dating. Think about how much time and effort you both probably put into the relationship and how that made you feel. You probably felt attractive, intelligent, competent, and secure. These are very powerful feelings and most of us would do anything we could and would move heaven and earth to hang on to these feelings and whoever elicits them.

Now, try to think back to your first fight with your husband or wife. I’d be willing to bet that it ended quickly because people deeply in love don’t want to spend their time disagreeing or fighting. Instead, they gloss over issues or bumps in the road very quickly because they don’t want anything interfering with their strong, pleasurable feelings.

Then, ask yourself when was the last time you felt these types of positive feelings. It’s okay if it’s been a while or too long.  Finally, brainstorm simple, low-pressure ways that you can generate similar feelings.  Note, that we’re talking small scale here.  You can’t expect your spouse to feel inseparable with you like you did when you were madly in love. But, is there something you can do today to make him feel that he’s on your side or that you understand him?  These are tiny steps that you can take to restore that intimacy.

How To Get The Initial Feelings Back (And Why You Must): As I hope you can see, it’s vital that you return feelings of affection and empathy before you try to reconcile or work through your problems.  If you can do this, your husband or wife is going to be much more willing to work through your problems, commit to the marriage, and you’ll likely reconcile much faster with a lot less drama. Again, people deeply in love don’t want to spend their time fighting and they are much more willing to work with you on making things better. Once the positive feelings return, everything else falls into place and becomes so much easier.

So, how can you get it back? Actually, you can probably already know the answer to this. Why? Because you know your husband or wife intimately and you know the qualities and traits about you that they first fell in love with. If they absolutely loved your sense of humor, how often are they laughing now? How often do they see this side of you? If what really turned them on was your open and giving heart, are you showing it to them on a regular basis today?

Why Some People Get Hung Up Or Stuck. Don’t Let This Happen To You: I find that many people are receptive to these techniques until they really begin thinking about the person their spouse first fell in love with and they then get stuck. They usually say something like, “But I’m not a beautiful young woman anymore,” or “I have kids, a job, and a home to care for. I just don’t have time to play these games.” Another thing I hear a lot is, “But my husband/wife won’t even talk to me or take my calls. The marriage is just too far gone.”

No one can completely turn back the clock and I don’t expect you to. But, here’s a secret that I firmly believe to be true. Being “in love” has as much to do about how you make the other person feel about themselves as they feel about you. Yes, themselves. What your husband or wife really wants back is the feeling that they are attractive, lovable, and worth putting time and effort into.

Mistresses or “the other woman” are usually masters at this. They often aren’t even prettier or smarter than the wife, but they know how to make the husband feel that he is the king of the world.

If you can harness these feelings in your own marriage, I can almost guarantee your husband or wife would move heaven and earth or jump through a million hoops to reconcile. So, get moving. You are in a better position than you think. You already are the person who your spouse fell in love with.  You just need to become reacquainted with him or her.

How do I know this? Because I lived it. I had to use this approach when I trying to save my marriage (and was the only one who wanted to). I made a lot of mistakes, but eventually, I was able to change course and regain my husband’s interest. Gradually, I was able to reestablish intimacy and reconcile the marriage. You can read that story by clicking here or visiting on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com

By: Leslie Cane: This article is based upon my personal experience and research and will discuss methods you can use to hopefully change your spouse’s mind about seeking or going through with a divorce. It won’t discuss legal maneuvering or legal tactics because I believe if you are successful in using some of the prevention methods I will discuss, then you hopefully won’t need to worry about the eventual legalities. Instead, this article will tell you how to begin to restore the positive feelings and commitment necessary to save a marriage.

If you’re researching preventing a divorce, then it’s highly likely that either your marriage is in trouble or your spouse has asked for or indicated that a divorce is on the horizon. The good news is that your willingness to take action and research your next move is a very good sign. I am living proof that it’s entirely possible to rescue a marriage and prevent divorce when you’re the only one who wants to. I saved my own even though my husband was very sure he wanted to split up for good and wasn’t going to change his mind.

The Real Reason Many Spouses Seek Or Consider A Divorce: You may disagree with what I am about to write, but I’m going to write it anyway because I believe it to be true. People usually don’t want a divorce because of external reasons or stressors (like another person or infidelity, stress, money problems, or crisis events, etc.) All of these things are indeed symptoms or things that come out of the core cause of serious marital problems.

But, the real reason that people generally really want a divorce is that you and the marriage are no longer eliciting the positive feelings that your spouse had about themselves. Yes, you read that right. Often, the loss of feelings is not so much about how your spouse feels about you or the marriage. It’s really about them and how they feel about themselves. This is often mistaken for a “midlife crisis,” but if you need to put a label on it, it’s really an identity crisis.

When your husband or wife first fell in love with you, it’s likely that the positive feelings that you and the relationship elicited made your spouse feel attractive, lovable, powerful, competent, and intriguing. Who wouldn’t want to feel these things about themselves? This is very powerful. As long as the relationship keeps eliciting and bringing on these positive feelings, there is usually not a problem. But when these positive feelings start to diminish, so too does a person’s commitment to the relationship. What happens next is that they will then slow their reciprocation of the feelings and the actions that help strengthen the marriage. In a nutshell, they “check out” of your marriage, sometimes both physically and emotionally. After that, commitment and feelings of empathy start to give way. Once the commitment is gone, divorce is a very real possibility.

How Marriages Get Off Track. (The Path To Divorce): Think about when you were first dating your husband or wife. You likely lavished them with a lot of attention and affection. You listened attentively when they talked, cared deeply about their feelings and the outcome of their day, and would’ve moved heaven and earth to help them in any way you could to make their life better. They probably felt the same way and focused much of their attention and positive actions on you as well. The result was a very solid relationship that they valued so much, they married you. Think too, about how problems and issues were initially glossed over or not a big deal. Couples deeply in love want to and can quickly work through their problems because no one wants anything to interfere with the good stuff. But, what happens next (and what gets in the way) is so common that almost all marriages are guilty of it.

Eventually, we have to pay attention to our responsibilities like jobs, kids, running our households, and sometimes care for aging parents. We sometimes no longer have the time or energy to pour all of our attention into our spouse. There’s only so much of us to go around.

While I completely understand this, I also know that without a doubt it leaves your marriage vulnerable. What happens is over time your spouse begins to feel (often unconsciously) greatly disappointed, let down, and sometimes fears that you think he or she is not worthy of your time or attention. This, of course, contributes to the positive feelings your husband or wife had being replaced with negative ones. Over time, the spouse may start to equate these negatives feelings with his feelings (or indifference) about you and the marriage. Although this may manifest itself in infidelity, bitter arguments, and fighting, or “falling out of love,” the core reason is that the positive feelings about themselves (and therefore about you and the marriage) are gone and they can’t imagine or don’t know how to get them back.

How To Get The Positive Feelings (And Your Marriage) Back And Prevent A Divorce: The course of action you need to take to prevent the divorce will greatly depend upon the state and status of your marriage right now. If you’re already on the path toward divorce or your spouse has left, this process will probably take longer and require more baby steps – which thankfully, feed off of each other. Every tiny success will hopefully lead to another until you have your marriage back.

To truly prevent a divorce, you must get your spouse back on board and committed to the marriage. How do you do this? You bring back those positive feelings about themselves that we’ve talked about. Once the positive feelings about themselves have returned, so too, will the feelings they associate with you and the marriage.

Of course, you can’t be too obvious about this. If they see this as just a tactic to trick them into staying in the marriage, they may resist you even more or press for the divorce even harder. Take baby steps and focus only on creating positive feelings associated with you and the marriage and avoiding negative ones.

This means you need to resist doing anything that would elicit negative feelings in your spouse. So, don’t beg, debate, ask difficult questions, push their buttons, or try to communicate with them in a way that irritates them or makes them angry (at least until your relationship is back on solid ground).

Instead, your goal is to become lighthearted, fun, engaging, and to possess the qualities you know first hand your spouse values. Is this person starting to sound familiar? They should. They’re you. They’re the person your spouse first fell in love with. The person he or she would’ve moved heaven and earth for once upon a time. You need to find this person again because he or she can very well prevent divorce and save your marriage.

Once you’ve presented this person to your spouse and your spouse becomes receptive to you and the marriage, then you can eventually work on hashing out the issues that lead to talks of divorce. You shouldn’t do this though until you’re sure you’re back on track and have been for a while. If you try to work out the real problems too early, you could drive your spouse further away or elicit some of the negative feelings that you’re trying to avoid.

I had to use this approach when I trying to save my marriage (and was the only one who wanted to). I made a lot of mistakes and had a lot of mishaps along the way, but eventually, I was able to restore the positive feelings and prevent a divorce. You can read that story on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com/

by: Leslie Cane: The following tips may seem counterintuitive at times, but please bear with me. They are based on my personal experience and the endless research I conducted when I was trying to save my own marriage. Your success will depend on how well you play them and the state of your relationship today, but I believe that they can absolutely work. The worst-case scenario is that they’ll at least allow you to gain some ground in improving your situation, whether you’re currently contemplating divorce or your spouse has initiated a break or separation.

1. Do Not Panic Or Act Desperate. Be Patient Instead: When someone mentions the words “divorce, “split up,” “trial separation,” or “breaking up,” it’s completely natural to feel that you need to fix the situation immediately. Most people assume that the longer they are split up or having problems, the harder it will be to mend them, save the marriage, or get back together. This makes sense, but the problem is that this urgency can lead to feelings of desperation and/or panic that can cause you to act in a way that you’ll later regret or in a way that may push your spouse further away. Every time you have the impulse to act irrationally, or to repeatedly question, berate, debate with, or push your spouse’s buttons, take a deep breath and ask yourself if your actions are going to contribute to saving your marriage or will they further deteriorate it? Will your actions bring you closer to your spouse or further away? The answers to these questions should determine your next step.

2. Worry About Being Happy Rather Than About Being Right: It’s natural to get caught up in the “whys” rather than the “hows,” as in “how can we fix this?” People play the blame game and fixate on why their spouse is wrong and they are right. This is natural, but ask yourself would you rather be absolutely right but alone and divorced, or would you rather compromise on a wrong and be happily married with a spouse who adores you? Don’t hold onto bitterness and anger. At the end of the day, deep down, you probably feel this strong sense of right and wrong because you’re disappointed. Really, everyone just wants their spouse’s love and respect, but you often don’t get it by debating, arguing, or holding on oh so tightly to who is right and who is wrong.

Commit to putting tough issues about which you can’t agree aside long enough to reestablish affection, respect, and communication. Your spouse may or may not have committed negative acts or omissions against you and that’s disappointing and unfair. I’m not denying your right to feel let down, betrayed, or disappointed, but don’t let these emotions cripple your attempts to return the marriage to a place that will make you happy. You can’t have this if you’re constantly fixating on what went wrong rather than how you can both fix it.

3. Restore Feelings Of Affection And Empathy (By Finding Common Ground) Before You Attempt To Solve Difficult Problems: I believe that a couple can not solve their problems when one person has one foot out of the door or wants to end the marriage or get a divorce. Typically, there is one person who wants to save the marriage at all costs and one person who just isn’t sure, just isn’t happy, or just wants to end the marriage once and for all.

When you’re in this situation, no amount of begging, negotiating, convincing, or trips down memory lane are likely to change the divorcing spouse’s mind. If anything, these behaviors are going to bring out negative feelings that your husband or wife is going to want to flee and get away from. Eventually, they’re likely to think something like, “I’m right to be divorcing this person. I want out as soon as possible to stop all this drama.” What you want them thinking instead is: “I’m going to miss this fun, intriguing exciting person. Maybe I’m making a mistake.” How do you do this?

By trying your best to become the person they first fell in love with. I know that people change and jobs, kids, and obligations change the amount of time and energy we can devote to our relationships, but that’s no reason not to make the best of the situation you have. When you were first dating, you were likely fun, engaging, attentive and intriguing. You were also likely open-hearted, easy-going, and cared very much about your partner’s experience and happiness. You need to recreate this as best you can because people are willing to put in the time, commitment and effort into fixing something that gives them pleasure and makes them feel good about themselves. However, you can’t be overly obvious about this because if you are, your spouse will think you are game playing and not genuine. If this is the case, they may resist you or dig their heels in even more.

It’s also important to find something on which you can agree. You want to create a scenario that puts you and your spouse on the same side. Sometimes, all you can agree on is that the marriage has problems or hopefully needs to be saved. Sometimes, it means agreeing on a break. This may seem risky, but often it’s really not. A break will usually diffuse the tension and negative feelings, give your partner a chance to miss you and give yourself the chance to embark on working on what you can control ( yourself ) and becoming the person we’ve talked about, the one that your spouse first fell in love with.

It took me a long time to learn this. I made a lot of mistakes which drove my husband further away, but eventually, I was able to change course and regain my husband’s interest. Over time, (and after taking calculated baby steps), I was able to reestablish intimacy and save the marriage. You can read my story on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com/

by: Leslie Cane: If you’ve found this article, I have to assume that your husband has either told you he wants a divorce, you’ve been served papers indicating the same, or you’ve heard information or have gotten vibes that talk of divorce is on the horizon. This article will focus on how you can save the marriage when you are the only one who wants to.

The Reasons For The Divorce Are Important, But Not As Important As The Actions That Follow: Many times, when the words divorce, trial separation, or splitting up are mentioned, the wife who disagrees and doesn’t want this scenario panics and immediately starts bombarding her husband with questions designed to ask why or the cause of the divorce in a million different ways. You might figure if you can pinpoint the exact cause, you can address this issue in order to change your spouse’s mind.

Although you deserve answers and this inclination is completely understandable, know that your husband probably did not come to this decision lightly and has likely thought it over for quite some time. Therefore, you may not be able to change his mind quickly or with only a few arguments, and hounding him is only going to put his defenses up more and drive him further away.

Men sometimes don’t even know the exact reasons they want a divorce or, if they do, they may not be able to articulate this. They often give vague reasons like “I’m just not happy,” “I’ve fallen out of love, ” or “This is just what I want right now.”

What this often really means is that they no longer feel the intimacy they once did and have therefore fallen out of love with the relationship and how it makes them feel. When a man is happy in a relationship or “in love,” this makes him feel confident, attractive, intelligent, competent, and alive. When the circumstances in the relationship no longer make him feel this way, he’s often extremely let down, so much so that he may seek this feeling again elsewhere or want to move on so he can find it somewhere else.

So, while you should absolutely ask your husband why he wants this divorce (and listen closely to his answers while watching his body language and the cues he gives off), the answer isn’t likely to give you the magic bullet you need to save the marriage. Instead, you’ll likely save it with your calculated actions designed to return the positive feelings and love that drew your husband to you in the first place. It’s vitally important that you return to a place where you both feel affection toward each other. If you don’t, it’s virtuously impossible to really work through your problems.

Tactics To Replace Negative Feelings With Positive Ones: If your husband wants a divorce, then right now, he likely has more negative than positive feelings about you and the relationship. In order to save your marriage, your job is to slowly, (through baby steps and, over time), replace these relationship-killing negative feelings with positive ones. This will not happen overnight and you can’t be too obvious about this or tell him what you are doing. If he gets wind this is calculated or part of a plan, then obviously, he’s going to dig in his heels to block you. (Unfortunately, I learned this the hard way.)

Women have the inclination to want to fix things right away and this can lead to a feeling of desperation which can contribute to behavior and actions not typical of you which you may later regret. Work hard not to give in to these feelings. Remember that every time you interact with your husband, you need to appear contrary to the negative feelings he associates with you. This means presenting yourself as the vibrant, open-hearted, happy-go-lucky, interesting and intriguing person he first fell in love with. Yes, this might be hard when your heart is breaking. Yes, some people may say you are playing games. But, your ultimate goal is to make your husband think “I may have made a mistake. I want this fun, engaging person in my life and divorcing her will not achieve this goal.” He’s not going to do that if you’re nagging, questioning and communicating with him in a negative manner all of the time.

Tactics To Appear Attractive To Your Husband (More Mental Than Physical): When I say appearing attractive, I don’t necessarily mean in the physical sense. (However, I can’t stress enough that you should look your best when you encounter your husband). What I mean is that men want and value what they perceive as unique, rare, unattainable or worth waiting for. Never allow your wanting to save your marriage at all costs to give your power away. I understand you really want to stop all this divorce nonsense right now (because I’ve been in your shoes), but if your husband smells your desperation, believe it or not, he will actually find you more unattractive because of it. No, this isn’t fair, but it’s the way it is.

Knowing this then, your job is to appear, (every chance you get), as someone who’s sad about the divorce and wants to save the marriage, but who is making the best of the situation because they love and value themselves enough to do so. Get out, visit old friends, pursue what you once loved, and literally demonstrate to your husband that you’re an interesting, worthwhile, lovable person. If he sees that you love and respect yourself and you show him a glimpse of the woman he first fell in love with, I’d be willing to bet his attitude toward you is going to change dramatically.

Eventually, way down the road, if you’re going to save the marriage, you’re going to need to address the problems that allowed talks of divorce in the first place, but that’s for another time. Right now, your goal is to present to him the woman who elicits positive feelings in him and to show him that you love and respect her. I’d be willing to bet this will generate some interest and put you in a much better situation to save the marriage in the weeks to come.

But first things first. To begin, you need to unearth the exciting woman he wanted to commit to forever. You know this person intimately. She’s you. So, get moving. Control what you can right now (which is yourself and your own actions.) I know firsthand that doing so may be what turns this situation around.

How do I know this? Because I experienced it.  And I only came upon these tactics after making many mistakes that cost me dearly.  Thankfully, I was able to reestablish intimacy and avoid the divorce. You can read that story on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com

By: Leslie Cane: If you’ve found this article, I have to assume that you either suspect or think your husband is not in love with you, or he’s blatantly told you this, either during an argument, serious discussion, or mention of a cool-off period, separation, or divorce. I find that when people ask this question (or are researching the answer to it) they want to know two things: 1) “Is there a way I can make my husband fall back in love with me?”; and 2) “Can I salvage the relationship and save the marriage?” I’ll attempt to answer these questions in this article with the information I learned from my own experience and countless hours of research I put in when trying to save my own marriage.

Can You Trust Or Believe What Your Husband Is Telling You?: A lot of times wives wonder if this falling out of love business is legitimate because spouses can sometimes be bad at communicating the true cause of their frustrations and often, this sort of talk comes out of the blue without any warning. More, men can sometimes send out very conflicting signals and messages. They may tell you they don’t love you one second and hold/reassure you the next. Or, they may still expect you to be intimate with them. It’s normal to wonder if this is the behavior of someone not in love since it sure seems they love you by their actions.

But, I believe that if your husband mutters these words, you should take them to heart, even if you may know they aren’t true. He probably does still love you, as love isn’t an emotion that typically turns off and on, but something’s bothering him enough to make him utter these words. So while they may not technically be true, what we know for sure is that, at least for right now, he’s fallen out of love with the relationship.

Why Husbands Fall Out Of Love (With The Marriage, Even If They Still Love You): I honestly think that most times when a man tell you that he’s “fallen out of love with you,” what he means is that he’s no longer in love with the marriage or relationship. Specifically, he’s lost the feelings of happiness and intimacy that the relationship used to elicit in him. This is very good news because it means that the feelings he has for you are still buried somewhere and can resurface. If you remember nothing else from this article, please remember this. More often than not, a man loses feelings of love not because of how he feels about you, but because of how he feels about himself.

When he was “in love,” the feelings this elicited in him make him feel confident, attractive, intelligent, competent, and needed. When these feelings are lost, men feel very let down. They often hate this loss so much that they are sometimes willing to go elsewhere or move on to attempt to regain what they think is lost.

In instances of infidelity, affairs, or times of crises and stress, many people make the mistake of thinking that their husbands fell in love with another woman or that the stressful crises caused the problem. The truth is often that either the other woman simply was able to elicit or return the husband’s positive feelings about himself or the crisis negatively affected his self-esteem and he’s trying to flee or escape the situation. By wanting to leave or falling out of love, the spouse is attempting to regain the feelings elsewhere because he doesn’t know how or can’t imagine (right now) regaining them with you. (It’s your job to show him he can, but to make him think this was his own realization and his own idea.)

How To Use This Knowledge To Your Advantage: If you can see any similarities in this article with your situation, use this knowledge to your advantage. We know that your spouse’s feelings about your marriage/ relationship and his self-esteem have been negatively affected, so we need to listen to these messages and take action.

We need to recreate the scenarios that elicited positive feelings. Whether this means giving him more of your time, becoming the person he first fell in love with, or addressing an issue that is separating you, it’s important that you be proactive and not just hope everything works itself out.

Concentrating On Positive Feelings To Get Your Husband’s Love To Return: It’s very important to remember that the actions you take and the behaviors you display need to elicit positive feelings. More than anything else, you want your husband to have positive feelings when he thinks of or interacts with you. So, don’t participate in any behaviors that would have the opposite effect. It’s natural to want answers and to want a quick immediate fix, but don’t allow this to make you desperate and act in a way you may later regret. This includes repeatedly questioning, texting, calling, arguing with, berating, or acting in such a way that’s going to deteriorate the relationship any further.

Instead, you want to recreate the alluring, happy go lucky, intelligent, openhearted, engaging, and attentive person that he first fell in love with. This is vitally important, but you can’t be obvious about this because if your husband gets wind that this faked, planned, or not genuine, he’s going to resist you even more.

I completely understand how you feel right now because my husband came home one day out of the blue and told me point blank he was no longer in love with me. I tried every desperate trick in the book to bring him back. I made many mistakes and set my relationship back many times before I finally realized I had to change directions. You can read that story of how I was eventually able to save my marriage (when I was the only one who wanted to) by visiting my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com/

by: Leslie Cane: If you’re reading this article, chances are you’ve just been through a breakup or separation of some kind and you want to repair the relationship or get back together. Perhaps your ex just wants a break, cooling-off period, separation, or he or she is not receptive to you at all. Whatever the situation, some universal tips can help (under the right conditions) bring love back. Keep in mind how well these work will largely depend on how well you play them and the state of your relationship at the time they’re played. I learned these tactics because, after a horrible period of trial and error and many mistakes that put my reconciliation with my husband back several steps, I finally stopped the things I was doing, changed course, and was able to save my marriage. I believe the tips listed below can work in many situations, but use your own judgment in your situation.

As Hard As It Is, Don’t Let Your Desperation / Panic Show: It’s completely and totally natural to be heartbroken, frustrated, and desolate after a breakup, separation, or divorce. It’s just common sense to want to fix the situation immediately. We all figure the longer we’re broken up, the harder it will be to get back together. So, we go on a campaign to make our ex pay attention to us. We text. We leave messages. We show up at his or her work or school. We give them puppy dog eyes and completely desperate stances. This is understandable, but do you know what this does? It only makes us more undesirable to them. In his or her mind, our ex is thinking “Man, this person is unstable. As hard a decision as it may have been, I made the right call.” And once they decide this, they go out of their way to avoid us even more. Obviously, you can’t let them think they made the right call and you don’t want them to put up or wall or constantly avoid you. You want them to doubt their decision instead. How do you make them do that and be receptive to you instead?

Take Care Of Yourself And Return To Who You Were When They Fell In Love With You In The First Place: Again, it’s completely natural to want to brood in your bunny slippers and a torn, ratty robe, but you can not do this. (All right, maybe for a few days but then you have to get moving.) Instead, you actually should get out and do and enjoy those things you’ve been putting off. You should reconnect with the friends you’ve missed, pull out the hobbies you used to love and invest in yourself. Why? Because the person your ex first fell in love with was very likely exciting, happy go lucky, alluring, and intriguing. What happened to him or her? Life. And this is not your fault. Time goes by and you have to pay attention to your job, your responsibilities, and your obligations. But, now that you might be single, you’ve likely inherited a whole lot more time. So, become that fun, carefree person your ex fell in love with. Embrace life. Jump into those things you’ve wanted to do but have been putting off. Love yourself as much as you love your ex. If you don’t or can’t, you have work you should do before you attempt to reconcile.

Once You’ve Returned to Your Best Self, Run Into Your Ex: Now, the above phase may last for a while. That’s completely ok, even preferable sometimes. Want to know why? Because your ex is likely going to wonder what you’ve been up to, why you aren’t contacting them, why you changed course, and what has changed. The silence just might be deafening. They may initiate contact with you, but if they don’t, it’s up to you to bump into them or slyly arrange a meeting where you don’t in any way let on that it’s anything more than tying up loose ends or a quick face to face for a necessary transaction. At this point in the game, you want them to want to see more of you, not the other way around. You want them intrigued and interested, but finding that they no longer have total and complete access.

When Is It Too Late To Reconcile/ Fall Back In Love?: Actually, I don’t believe it’s ever too late (unless someone was abusive in the past). I’ve had people say to me, “But Leslie, my ex says he/she hates me,” or “He/she won’t even talk to me, and/or is dating someone else.” This is ok. First off, if your ex says they hate you or is so furious with you they won’t even talk to you, why do you think they have such strong emotions? If they didn’t care, they would be completely indifferent to you. You would not affect them one way or another. So, if they’re acting negatively toward you, I believe that’s more positive than if they were completely neutral. If they didn’t care, this wouldn’t upset and frustrate them.

If they are dating someone else, that can be ok too. People rarely marry or settle down with their “rebound person.” Many times, the rebound man or woman actually shows the ex what they miss in you. Keep doing what you’re doing and the tide may eventually turn.

In the end, the best way to make someone fall back in love with you is to control what you have direct access to – yourself. You can’t necessarily control the circumstances, but you can control your own actions and the situations in which you find yourself. If you do these things correctly, you greatly increase your chances of making your ex feel the same love he or she once felt.

I realize that some may think this is game playing. Perhaps it is, but unfortunately, when emotions are high in these situations, it’s sometimes necessary. In my opinion, if both parties are good people, the intentions are good, and love prevails in the end, it’s worth it.

I used all of these tactics to get my husband back (although some were dumb luck.) I didn’t do this to fool him or hurt our relationship. I did it because I love him and wanted our relationship back. Eventually, these things worked and of course, now he’s glad I stuck it out. You can read my story of how I used these methods to stop the divorce (when I was the only one who wanted to), by clicking here or visiting http://isavedmymarriage.com

The wife could not resist her urge to dig deeper. She responded by asking him what in the world he meant by this. He snapped back with “don’t pretend that you don’t notice how awful things are between us. There is nothing here anymore.” Speaking through her shock, the wife asked: “What, you’re saying you don’t love me anymore?” To which the husband responded with “I can’t honestly say that I do.”

Well, needless to say, the wife was both stunned and devastated. She could not deny that things had not been all that great between them, but never in her wildest dreams had she imagined that he no longer loved her. Sure, he annoyed her sometimes and there were days when she wasn’t sure why they were still hanging on, but she knew deep down that the answer was simply that she loved him and this trumped all else.

Now, with his assertion that he no longer loved her, she didn’t know where to turn or what to do. Her first inclination was to ask him for more specifics. She wanted to know exactly when he stopped loving her and why. She wanted to know if there was anything that she could do about this or if she could change it.

Of course, the husband was very resistant to all of these questions. The more she pushed, the more annoyed and distant he became. He didn’t know the answers, he told her. All her knew was that things were very bad between them and he didn’t look at her and see the same person anymore. The wife was at a loss. She wanted to know what she could do to fix or improve this situation or if she should just accept it as a lost cause. She was pretty clear on the fact that she did not want to give up. She had invested too much and she cared too deeply to walk away. I will tell you what I shared with her in the following article.

When Your Husband Says He Doesn’t Love You, This Doesn’t Always Mean That It’s True, But It Does Mean That You Should Pay Attention And Take Action: In truth, it’s entirely possible that the husband was just reacting to his frustration with the situation. And, while it could be true that he no longer loved how the marriage or his life made him feel, it didn’t necessarily mean that he didn’t love his wife. It most probably meant that he was (at least temporarily) not feeling loving, intimate, and empathetic feelings for her.

And, despite the wife’s pain and frustration, I felt strongly that she was much better off addressing the lack of intimacy and empathy, than the specifics of what he was saying. She was not sure about this at first but eventually, she had to admit that every time she asked her husband things like “do you still feel like you don’t love me?;” or “we had a good together, so does this mean that you’re feeling differently?” she almost never got the response that she was hoping for. Instead, her husband was a bit resentful of being constantly questioned.

He seemed to want to try to change their attitudes and to improve the situation to see what happened, while the wife was constantly needing and wanting reassurance and to define the situation. I completely understand this. It’s very scary and painful not to know what the future holds and to be afraid that you are just wasting your time or delaying what is going to be true pain and disappointment.

But, what you have to keep reminding yourself is that all you control is how you act, respond, and project. So, if you can place a positive spin on these things on a daily basis then, at the end of the day, no matter how it turns out, you will know that you put yourself in the best position to get the most positive outcome. You will know that you acted in a way that you can proud of and that you did absolutely all you could.

Ways That You Can Try To Returning The Loving Feelings: Everyone intuitively knows that their positive actions can potentially help the situation. But, most people want to know how they can make their husbands love them again. Well, it’s unrealistic to think that you can “make” a grown man do anything that he does not want to do. But, you do already know what elicits loving feelings in him. You know how you treated him before and the things you did when you were dating. You know what the atmosphere was like when you were first together and / or most happy.

And although things in your lives have likely changed quite dramatically, nothing at all says that you can’t draw on those same things and situations that bound you together in the beginning. Sometimes, it really helps to look at your lives then and at your lives now to see where the biggest differences lie to then determine how you can change this. People will often tell me things like “well, obviously, we have more responsibilities and stress now and it’s unrealistic to think that we can just turn back the clock and be happy go lucky like we were.”

Maybe. But, you can incorporate more fun, attention, and bonding into every day. In reality, married couples can serve as each other’s support and comfort in these times of higher stress. That’s one of the beautiful things about being married. Rather than turning against each other, you can stand together and this mechanism can actually strengthen you if you harness it to work for you rather than against you. So while you can’t turn back the clock, you can use what you know about your husband and your relationship to improve what is your reality today.

My husband told me that he didn’t love me several times before he eventually left for a separation.  I suspect he wanted a divorce.  Thank goodness I didn’t let that stop me. I kept right on working on the marriage (by myself, since he wasn’t interested at first.) Eventually, (though commitment and lots of effort), I was able to not only save the marriage but make it stronger. So, it was very much worth the effort. You can read that story of how I saved my marriage on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com