Leslie Cane Articles

One day, he would decide that he was going to work with her to save the marriage, but then the next day he would completely change his stance and tell her that he felt they should just go ahead and divorce. Sometimes, this change of heart would come after a fight, but sometimes, it would come seemingly out of the blue. The wife was having a hard time responding and formulating a plan because every day was different. She had no idea which husband she was going to be dealing with on any particular day.

She was looking for the best way to approach her husband’s swinging moods. Despite her frustration, she loved him very much and did not want a divorce. 

A Husband’s Changing His Mind About The Divorce Sometimes Shows That He’s Uncertain And This Provides An Opportunity: Here’s an observation that the wife was missing. As frustrating as it was that her husband was changing his mind all of the time, at least he wasn’t dead set on a divorce. The fact that he was being so “wishy-washy” as she called it, meant that he wasn’t sure that he really wanted a divorce.

I sometimes speak with women who have already been served divorce papers or who have husbands who won’t even consider saving the marriage. So, as frustrating as this situation was, it was potentially workable.

The husband’s changing his mind might have been just his reaction to the inner turmoil that he was experiencing. Because neither of them had a plan as to how to change the negative cycle that they had gotten into, and he did not know how to go about making a positive change. When he felt this deeply, he was sometimes tempted to just throw in the towel because he did not believe that anything was ever going to change.

Their negative experiences of late had convinced him that all he could expect was more of the same and the only way to really stop this once and for all was to just end it. It was important that the wife understand this because the way to get him to quit flip-flopping about the divorce was to show him that things could steadily change for the better.

Changing The Negative Cycle With No End In Sight: The wife understood that she had to change this cycle, but she had no idea where to begin. They had become stuck in a rut and she said that, depending on the mood of her husband, she could almost anticipate what was going to happen before he even opened his mouth. He pushed, she pulled. He came forward, and she retreated. And sometimes, they would change roles just to give themselves some variety.

This was going to have to change. Because as soon as the same behavior started, so too did the same results. In order to get more desirable results, they were going to have to learn more desirable behaviors. But, the wife had her doubts that these things were going to “stick.” She felt strongly that her husband was going to resist anything that she put into place. I told her that the way that she presented this to him was going to be important.

Sometimes, it’s unnecessary to spell out what you are doing. If you feel strongly that you’re going to meet with resistance, then you can begin by controlling what you can – which is yourself and your actions. You can refuse to get pulled into the same old routines and you can go into this with a positive attitude. You can remember the things and the feelings that gave you good results in the past and draw on those things.

A Different Way Of Looking At It: Sometimes, when we get into very negative ways of behaving, we forget that the two of us used to laugh, play, and interact without cringing. If you can look back objectively, you can often pinpoint the places, circumstances, and people who used to bring about the bond that looked so differently than it does today. Although you certainly can’t turn back time, you can bring back some of these positive influences in your life by changing your attitude, your circumstances, and your reactions.

I told the wife that when her husband began to engage, she might respond with something like “You know, I’ve been thinking and I’ve decided that these negative habits that we’ve fallen into only make us unhappy. We both deserve to be happy so I’m not going to participate in these behaviors anymore. We can certainly talk about it though, when we are both more calm.” At first, of course, the husband might make a combative comment in return. But, when he did, she was to remove herself from the situation and tell him that they could revisit it when they were both calm.

She was then to focus on the positive. She was to be the affectionate, happy, light-hearted person that she knew she could be. Not only would this disarm him, but eventually, it would contribute to him seeing that things could change. And, as a result of that, the old habits would be broken down. So that eventually, the talks of divorce could stop as there would be no reason for them anymore.

by: Leslie Cane: I’ve dialogued with many people who are in no way ready to throw the towel on their marriage. But, they are often the only one in the marriage who feels this way. Typically, one person wants a divorce, while the other does not. 

The person who wants to stay married mostly knows that they have a lot of work to do, but they aren’t sure where to start. They know that they will either need to delay or stop the proceedings or change their spouses’ minds. I’ll discuss the latter in the following article.

Why I Feel That Trying To Change Your Spouse’s Mind About The Divorce Is The Best Strategy To Take When You Don’t Want To Split Up: I am sometimes asked questions about legal strategies. I am never able to answer these questions because I’m not an attorney, but also because I don’t feel that this is a very successful tactic. 

I don’t see stall tactics or playing “hardball” working very often. Usually, this only angers and annoys the spouse who wants the divorce. When you are opposing them in this way, it usually only makes them want the divorce more – and it also typically makes them want it to be over with more quickly.

Also, even if you are successful in using these oppositional tactics, you will likely always wonder if your spouse is really totally on board. You might get them to “give in,” but you’ll always wonder if you really have them with their whole hearts. 

I often have people tell me that they try to show their spouse how much money they are going to lose in the divorce. The goal is to show the spouse that it’s just going to be too expensive to buy their freedom. Honestly, though, do you really want your spouse to stay married to you only to save money?

Of course not. You want them to remain married to you because they love you and they want to be with you for life. This is often not accomplished by fighting with them or being on opposite sides of them. You will likely have much more cooperation and success if you can find something to agree upon and convince them that you really are on your side.

Sometimes, you simply have to start by agreeing that you will make this process as bearable as possible because you want to remain close and you don’t want to hurt one another. Sometimes, you will have to tell your spouse that you intend to work with them to maintain the history and feelings between you, even if your relationship is evolving into something else. 

By doing this, you have become an ally rather than an enemy, and you’ve hopefully gained yourself some access to your spouse because they won’t fear having to deal with you (like they would if you were arguing with them or all the time or constantly telling them why they were wrong.)

I understand that this might seem like a difficult and risky strategy, but it is, without a doubt, the one that I see having the greatest amount of success and it’s the only way to know that allows you to maintain your integrity. 

You’ve also set it up so that your spouse can come back to you in an honest and lasting way that is free from conflict and compromise that their heart was just not behind.

Setting It Up So That The Loving Feelings Return So That Your Spouse Calls Off The Divorce And Wants To Stay Married: This is usually something that has to happen gradually so that it is lasting and genuine. Your spouse likely wants a divorce because there is something in the relationship that has been lost or is no longer working. They likely perceive that they would be better off alone. These are the perceptions that must be addressed or changed.

Without knowing your situation, I can tell you that most marital issues stem from shifting intimacy and lessening closeness. Somewhere along the line, your partner stopped thinking as part of a couple and started thinking as an individual. 

This usually happens as the bond begins to weaken. Returning this bond is usually a process rather than an overnight event. You will generally need to build on a series of successes until you can bring about a dramatic change in perceptions.

You really need to elicit feelings that make him (or her) remember things when they were good. Make sure he sees the qualities that made him love you in the first place. (If he loves your sense of humor, make sure he sees it.) Over time, he will begin to question his perception that the marriage is dead and that you are two different people. He needs to see that the two of you can interact in the same positive way that used to make you both happy.

To do this, you will sometimes have to settle for small victories. The meeting over coffee that ended in laughter might give way to something more. The key is to not push too hard, to appear that you are coping with integrity and are considering his best interests and wishes and that you are the same, upbeat person who is very capable of bringing about loving feelings in him.

By: Leslie Cane: I sometimes speak with spouses outlining a marriage that they define as “troubled.” They want some ideas or tips on how to heal the marriage and bring it back from a place of neglect and apathy to a place of love, appreciation, and affection. Sometimes, only one spouse has this wish, while the other spouse is ready to walk out or has really given up. 

Still, typically the spouse who wants to heal the marriage can separate things as they are now from things as they used to be. They truly believe that if they are able to say or do the right things, little by little, they can begin to bring the marriage back from the dead. I believe this too. I’ve seen so many marriages that were only bitter shells of themselves reborn through a little effort and through sheer determination. Often, it takes more than a desire and well wishes to make this happen. You also need a plan that is actually going to work. So, in the following article, I’ll offer tips and advice on healing your troubled marriage.

Why I Really Hate The Phrase “Troubled Marriage” (Hint: It’s A Sabotaging, Self-Fulfilling Prophecy:) To be honest, I cringe when someone repeatedly chooses the word troubled to describe their marriage. This word choice really implies that the marriage is like an old, rabid dog that either must be rehabilitated through some miracle or put out of its misery. This does not make the whole thing seem exciting or desirable. In essence, your word choice can’t help but influence your feelings about this entire situation before you’ve even begun to carry out the plan that I’m about to give you.

So, stop dwelling on the negative and describing or thinking about your marriage in the state that it is now. Instead, think of it in the terms that you want it to be in the future. You don’t want to approach your spouse from a place of beaten resignation. You want to approach them from a place of being excited about the future. This is a huge difference between the two and this will often greatly affect your outcome.

Act “As If” And Know That You Don’t Need To Give Them A Play By Play Of What You’re Doing: OK, let’s think about this for a second. Right now, your goal, very simply, is to get from point A to point B. Point A is where you are right now in your marriage and point B is your goal and what you’re shooting for. Theoretically, you need your spouse’s cooperation and enthusiasm to get where you want to go. But, I often tell people to realize that you likely aren’t going to get this cooperation until much later. And, you really don’t need it in the very beginning. There is quite a lot that you can do on your own.  

Many people make the mistake of sitting their spouse down and asking for their help in “working on” their marriage. Again, I cringe at this terminology. When most adults hear the phrase “working on,” all this sounds like to them is, well, work. And, we are so time-strapped and stressed today that many of us are not going to get overly excited when we’re told that we’re being given yet another task to put on the daily plate of life. 

Again, the use of words affects how your spouse is going to look at what you’re asking them to do. And frankly, if your marriage has already reached this point, they’ve probably stopped listening to your promises and solutions. They’ve heard this before and they know it doesn’t work. So enough with all the words. You’re going to have to start focusing on action. And, you want to package it in a way so that you can both get behind it. 

So, you want to tell them (very briefly) that you’re saddened by the state of your marriage and that you’d just like to simply focus on having more fun together. You are tired of living in drudgery and you think that both of you deserve better. Tell him (or her) that you’re tired of walking on eggshells and always analyzing and trying to fix everything. That process is tiresome and you want to abandon it for light-hearted action. This does a couple of things. It lightens the tension which quite frankly is probably draining your marriage. It takes a lot of the pressure away and it postpones the difficult conversations that they were probably dreading (and vowing to ignore) anyway.

Putting Off The Hard Stuff Until You’re Strongly Bonded Again: Some readers tell me that the plan makes sense, but still, they just can’t understand how they’re actually going to heal this marriage when I’m telling them to delay the work part. Well, I don’t mean that you have to put it off indefinitely. However, the first step toward healing is changing your attitude. Both you and your spouse must change your perception of your marriage away from something that is struggling or just barely hanging on. This is done through a series of positive, shared experiences. 

You want to move toward a place where both you and your spouse are having fun together and are again experiencing affection, anticipation, and appreciation. Because once you are here, you’ll have a much better chance of having both of you equally on board and then committed to doing “the work” necessary to get things back on track.

By: Leslie Cane: Over the weekend, I spoke to a friend of a friend – a wife who was at the end of her rope. She told me that she and her husband were only interacting these days by fighting. She said that she honestly felt like she was living in a “war zone.” She worried about the effect of this fighting on her kids. She did not want to continue to live this way.

Still, she had to admit that she still loved her husband, and she felt pretty strongly that he still loved her. They were sometimes affectionate with each other when they “made up” after their fights. But, there was no doubt that there was way too much tension in the air. The wife wanted to know if I thought she should divorce her husband to put a stop to all of the fighting and tension. I’ll share my thoughts in the following article.

Getting A Divorce Versus Fighting All The Time: To start the discussion off, I asked the wife very directly if she wanted a divorce. She did not even have to think about it. She gave me a very definitive “no,” but then quickly prefaced it with “But I don’t want to continue to live with all of this fighting either.”

There’s no denying that constant fighting is a very detrimental environment in which to raise a family. This sort of pressure cooker environment is not conducive to anyone’s mental health. Plus, the children are growing up witnessing a relationship in which arguing, belittling, and raising voices is the way that folks work out their problems. 

This was certainly not the example that the wife wanted to set. She wanted to show her children a positive way to get their points across and to negotiate their wants and needs. And, she was very upset to see her children exhibiting aggressive and angry behavior.

So, it’s pretty clear that constant fighting is detrimental to everyone in the house. No one can deny this. But, having divorced parents is not always a great alternative either. The wife’s parents were divorced, and she still felt the void and the sadness that followed her parents’ divorce, even as a grown woman. She told me that seeing her father’s truck drive away from her family home is probably the most persuasive memory that she has from her childhood, and it saddened her to think that she might be headed to a similar place with her own children. But, she could not see a way out of either problem.

Stopping The Cycle Of Fighting To Prevent The Impending Divorce: I asked her whether she had ever focused on trying to improve the fighting or the combative way that the two of them interacted. She told me that she had and that sometimes things got briefly better, but they almost always reverted back to their old ways eventually.

After discussing this for a little while, it became pretty clear that the two of them were mostly fighting over the same few topics over and over again. And, because nothing ever got solved for good, both parties were becoming increasingly frustrated and hopeless. So the fights escalated and took on a more negative tone over time.

Another factor in this cycle of behavior was that the fights were becoming very commonplace in their home. This had become the normal way that they interacted and expressed their feelings. Eventually, they both almost begin to feed off of this. It became part of their routine that one person would push, and then the other would push back, and so on over and over again.

Obviously, the first step toward breaking this cycle was to change the way that the wife responded to the husband’s little barbs and pushes. See, I’ve learned from my own experience that the wife had to accept that she could not control her husband’s behavior. She could not really shame, force, or guilt him into changing. This decision had to come solely from him. This decision was much more likely to come if the environment began to become more supportive and less combative.

The wife felt very strongly that if the two of them could solve the issues that were coming up over and over again, then the fighting would become less common. This was certainly possible, but here are some flaws with that thinking. 

First, they had tried to work through these issues for years, so what was going to be so different this time? Second, even if they did “solve” these hot-button issues, other stressors would always come up. This is just real life. So, they likely needed to learn new ways to negotiate and compromise to ensure long-term success – and the wife could begin this process by focusing on herself.

There were many considerations to this, but it helps to break it into smaller chunks. First, it helps to break up the cycle that the fighting would typically take. When you feel the urge to lash out, instead take out a pad of paper and write down the issue in one sentence. 

The tendency of many couples is to “pile on” the complaints when they become angry at each other so that one issue would give rise to several issues.

Give yourself at least an hour from when you write down the issue to when you bring it up. This would give things time to calm down and it forces you to focus on the most important issue.

Next, you can change the way you set up when you’re going to talk about. The next time your husband wants to start the same old fight, calmly and directly say that this topic often got them into trouble and started a cycle of fighting. Try to delay it. Ask if you can discuss it when the kids are in bed. This allows things to be more calm due to the delay. 

When it’s time to discuss it, lay your cards on the table and remember that one sentence. There is nothing wrong with telling him that you are troubled by the fighting and want to stop this. You are not denying the problems, but trying to break the destructive cycle so that the issue becomes much more manageable as you eventually no longer have two angry and resistant people who were unable to compromise.

Focus on what you wrote and the card and only that. That way, you are able to really and truly tackle one problem at a time and will no longer have the same old fight that never gets solved.

If you solve the issues you fight over methodically, then there is no need to get a divorce because you won’t be expressing your continuous frustration in the form of fights.

by: Leslie Cane: I recently spoke with a wife who was blindsided by her husband coming home from work, sitting her down, and telling her (very matter-of-factly) that the marriage was no longer working for him and he “wanted out.” 

The wife was so stunned that she didn’t respond. She had no idea what to do, how to react, or how to feel. She felt as if the rug had been pulled out from under her because this apparently came without warning. She eventually excused herself and left for a while. 

She wanted to know how to approach this situation and how to respond. Although this situation is a difficult one, I do believe that some responses are better than others. I will discuss this more in the following article.

Deal With What You Do Know, Rather Than What You Don’t Know: Admittedly, I did not know this woman or her husband well. But, I’ve dealth with the spouse who “wants out.” The biggest mistake that I see people in this situation make is that they will often immediately deal with the questions of why rather than the questions of how. 

What I mean by this is that they want immediate answers. To them, this situation came right out of thin air, so they think that there must be some logical reason for this. 

Therefore, they think that if they can just hound their husband until he provides a glimpse into his exact mindset and reasoning, they can therefore begin to work on changing his mind and showing him that he’s wrong.

Also, some wives will immediately suspect that there’s something sinister that the husband is not admitting to. They begin to hound him about whether he’s having an affair or hanging out with friends who are putting ridiculous ideas into his head.

Unfortunately, most of the time, all these strategies do is make your husband defensive and cause him to see you in an even more unfavorable light. So, what’s happening is that now both people are frustrated and are seeing the other person as the cause of many of the problems. This really does very little to help the situation. (And, if you are calm, in control, and patient, the truth will eventually come out anyway.)

While it’s absolutely understandable that you want answers, I have to tell you that sometimes, he’s not equipped to give them, at least to your satisfaction. He often knows that this is not working for him, but sometimes, even he is not sure why. 

Or, if he is, he can not articulate what it would take for you to change this for him. See, so often we women are looking for him to give us a road map. What we really want to hear is for him to say something like “Here are the exact reasons that I’m unhappy. If you can change these things by (fill in the blank, depending on your situation) then I would change my mind.”

This is not likely to happen. What you’ll often get instead is him being resistant to offer you specific information other than vague phrases like: “I just think it’s time to separate;” or “I’m just not happy;” or “I just don’t think the marriage is healthy anymore.” I

t can be very hard to address these things because they are based on his perception which, from the way you see it, is absolutely wrong. Plus, you don’t have control over another person’s thoughts.)

But telling him that he’s wrong is not going to help your cause. No, your best bet is to deal with exactly what he’s telling you and to go from there. 

You can’t read his mind and it can be difficult to deal with perceptions that only he is responsible for. So, what you want to do is to deal with what you can. 

You can address what he’s said as though it is a valid reality. And what you know for sure is that at least at this moment in time, he’s not happy and doesn’t think that marriage is going to change enough to make it worth his while to stay. 

This is the perception that you should work on changing because this is what is lying right in front of you.

Saving Your Marriage, Even When His Wanting To End It Came Without Any Warning: Another thing that people tend to dwell on is the fact that there was no real warning. Yes, this was unfair. But, you can’t change that. 

As I said, you can only deal with what is happening right now. So, move past the warning issue and focus on what you can do right now. And, what you can do is work on those perceptions that are causing him to want to walk away. He thinks that the marriage is not worth saving and that it can not change.

The easiest and most logical place to start is to address his belief that nothing is going to change. He’s likely expecting you to react in the ways that I have discussed – to demand answers, to nag, to guilt, to reel. You’re better off not doing that. It’s better to calmly tell him that you’re so very sorry to hear that, but that you made a vow to hang in there through good times and bad. 

So, in the spirit of that, you’re willing to work with him to make things better, no matter what “better” ends up meaning in this particular case.

Show him the empathetic, understanding, calm, and in-control woman that he is likely not expecting. 

Remember the road map that I said that most of us want? Well, you likely have it, although you probably do not realize it. You often do not need for him to lay out for you what makes him content and fulfilled. 

This man once, and probably still does, love you. But the circumstances have changed. If you try, you can usually determine when and how this happened. And, you can remember when things were very different and that (and how) you made each other happy. You know what you did, how you interacted, and how you paid attention.

At the end of the day, we all have the same needs. We want to feel heard. We want to know that we are understood and desired and that we are receiving what we give and deserve. And we know that these things make us feel good and make us want to continue. 

When you are forming your responses and strategies, always keep this in mind. Because you’re much better off focusing on this rather than how this is both unfair and unexpected.

By: Leslie Cane: I recently heard from a wife who was devastated because her husband had just consulted a divorce attorney and was obviously considering a divorce. When she tried to talk to her husband about the way that she felt and the fact that she desperately wanted to save her marriage, the husband just responded with curt, one-word answers. At one point after the wife had been harping on the subject for quite some time, the husband exclaimed: “I just need some space and some time apart to think, OK? I can’t even hear myself think when you keep asking me all of these questions.”

Of course, one of the last things that the wife wanted to do was to leave the home (or allow her husband to do so.) She worried that if she loosened her grip even a little, he might slip away and never come back. Still, she knew that she could not continue on in the way that she had. Her husband was avoiding her and wouldn’t listen to her at this point anyway. She said, in part: “It’s starting to look like I have no choice in giving him some time apart. But, if I do this, is there any chance that this will mean he’ll call off the divorce?”

There is always a chance of anything happening. I’ve seen this strategy save marriages if it’s done correctly. In fact, I did a bit of a hybrid strategy, which worked. I’ll discuss how to handle the “time away” correctly in the following article.

Giving Your Husband Space Without A Workable Plan To Change His Perceptions Isn’t Always Enough To Get Him To Call Off The Divorce: Sometimes, I have people tell me that they gave their spouse the requested time apart and they don’t understand why things didn’t get better or why nothing happened. They will often say something like: “I knew that my choices were to give him his space or that he was going to take it by divorcing me. So, the time apart was really my only alternative, although I hated the mere thought of it. Still, I complied even though it was very hard for me. But, it didn’t help. He still wants the divorce.”

Often, when I ask the person what she did during the break to improve the situation, she’ll say something like “Well not a lot. He asked for some time away so I gave it to him. What more was there to do?”

Although I feel that giving the space is the right call, there’s plenty that you can do while it’s happening. And by saying this, I don’t mean that what you should do is call, text, or show up constantly. That’s not the best idea, either. But, what you can do is make each short encounter or conversation count to strengthen and improve his impression of you so that he comes to miss you while he is gone.

But, if all you do is sit by idly, hoping that he will come to his senses while you take no action to ensure you this, you’re leaving an awful lot to chance.

What It’s Going To Take For Him To Call Off The Divorce?: Let’s think about what things you need to overcome in order for him to want to call off the divorce. Right now, it’s his perception that your marriage is at the point where the two of you aren’t connecting in a positive way and do not have the ability or skills to change things significantly enough to make the marriage worth saving.

He may well be sad about this and wish that things were different. But, for whatever reason, at least at this time, he believes that it’s in his best interest to explore time (and perhaps life) without you rather than to dig in his heels and fight for the marriage with you.

Only you know why he feels this way. But, I can tell you that most men who comment to me tell me that they just no longer see or feel the connection. They sometimes tell me the happy, funny, light-hearted, and upbeat wife who used to understand them and make them feel so positively just isn’t there anymore and has been replaced with someone who is distracted, negative, and nagging a bit too much.

Show Him Exactly What He’s Looking For: Understand that you don’t want to focus on the negative by reaching out too much if he is reluctant or continuing to press him on what is the matter with him or why he’s made this choice. Instead, you want to show him the lightbeat, good-hearted, exciting woman that he thought was gone is still present. You want to show this person to him every time you interact with him (and it’s best to keep this interaction purposely short so that he’s intrigued and wants more.)

And, if you don’t have access to him, you’ll sometimes have to be creative or settle for small victories. You likely have mutual friends who can help you to plant some seeds. The whole idea is for him to get the impression that you are working with him rather than against him. And that, although you most certainly don’t want a divorce you understand that the marriage is not not the one that you want either. Despite this though, you’re focusing on the positive, remaining busy, and continuing to have confidence that you belong with your husband and he will ultimately do the right thing and understand this.

I know that focusing on the positive and remaining as upbeat as possible might seem to be an impossibly tall order. But, it’s very often your best bet. Because your most important goal right now is to change his perceptions in a natural, genuine way that doesn’t feel fake or forced. Your husband should come to see these things on his own. This way, when he decides to call off the divorce, both of you will be sure that this was a genuine decision that he made on his own.

By: Leslie Cane: Many wives want to know when it’s too late to get their husbands back. Some tell me that, in their minds, it is too late because their husband has seemed to “move on.” I often hear comments like “We’ve been separated for six months. I think my husband has started seeing someone else. I’m starting to think that this is the end and that it’s too late for us. If someone has moved on, does that mean the end of the marriage?”

Another example is something like: “My husband keeps telling me that we’re over and that it’s too late to do anything to save this marriage. Yesterday, he told me that he was moving on and that I should do the same thing. But I’m not sure how I can do this when it’s never going to be over for me. What can I do?”

The common denominator in all of these questions and comments is that what the person asking really wants to know is when is it too late to save your marriage. Do you reach that “too late” point when your spouse tells you they have moved on? Do you have to take their word for it?

Of course, I can’t definitively answer these questions for anyone because the answer depends on the specific people involved and the situation that they are in. But, I can offer you a perspective from my experiences and observations, which I’ll do in the following article.

Sometimes, Couples Do Reconcile After One Of Them Has “Moved On”: If there’s anything that I know for sure in this situation, it’s that it is possible for things to change. Feelings change. Perceptions change. Situations change also. Just because someone is proclaiming or insisting on something today, this doesn’t mean that they can’t do a complete about-face tomorrow.

I have seen divorced couples reconcile. I’ve seen couples who have been remarried to other people (sometimes for decent periods of time) decide to get back together. This doesn’t happen in every case, of course. But it most certainly can happen. Sometimes, there’s a change in circumstances that brings about a change of feelings. Other times, it happens spontaneously. But, much of the time, it’s part of a master plan meant to bring about small, gradual, and yet dramatic changes.

Why Hanging On Too Tightly Can Sometimes Backfire: Wives in this situation often tell me that they just can not accept that it’s over or that he has moved on. I do understand this as I was in these shoes and I know how frustrating and painful this whole process can be. However, I can also tell you that I hear from husbands in this situation too and it’s my experience and opinion that clinging too tightly or “refusing” to accept what he’s telling you will often make him feel less loving or receptive toward you rather than more so.

I know that it can be difficult to take a step back or to pause when you’re so afraid that the second you do, he really will be gone. But sometimes, you just have to ask yourself if clinging so tightly has been working for you. Take a long look to see if your previous methods have really gained you anything.

Sometimes, if you are honest and can maintain a little distance, you can see that actually, you’ve only been making things worse. It’s really important to ask yourself if the attempts you’ve been making have been bringing him closer to you or improving things or if they’ve been pushing him further away and deteriorating things. If this is the case, sometimes, you come to realize that trying something new isn’t as risky as it may have first appeared.

Backing Off Or Taking Pause Is Not The Same As Your Moving On: I sometimes have wives tell me things like: “Maybe he’s moved on, but I will never be able to. I just can’t give up on our marriage or let go no matter what he says.” Another example is: “his moving on doesn’t mean that I have to.”

All of these points are valid, but nothing says that you have to broadcast this to him. Because, when you’re asserting that you are absolutely not going to move on, then sometimes he will come to oppose you even more and think that he needs to ratchet up his efforts to change your mind. This, of course, makes him move further away from you.

So, there are times when you are better off just telling yourself that, although you know full well how you feel, you’re no longer going to keep repeating this to him when he already knows it anyway. There’s nothing wrong with appearing to back off when you know all along that your plan is to gain some ground. And, sometimes you need a pause to gain some perspective and calm.

Taking time for yourself and taking a break from all of the drama can sometimes actually improve the situation. And sometimes, when you are suddenly silent or absent, your husband suddenly becomes interested again. This is what happened in my case, although it wasn’t by design.

No matter which way you choose to go, it’s my experience that you are almost always better off if you can maintain your respect and dignity. You want to portray yourself in the strongest way possible and this often requires you to act “as if” when you just aren’t feeling it or aren’t all that confident. Sometimes, it helps to remember the person your husband loved once upon a time and to show him that person when the opportunity genuinely presents itself.