Leslie Cane Articles

By: Leslie Cane: When you are first separated and your husband isn’t all that open to spending time with you, there are certain thoughts that cross your mind. One is almost always that if you ever find yourself in a situation where your husband is receptive to you and wants to spend time with you, then you are going to pounce on that opportunity.

But when that time comes, you can start to wonder if being so available makes sense from a strategic standpoint. Many wives can’t help but notice that their separated husband seems to have the best of both worlds – he gets his freedom and he gets to act as if he’s single – and then when he feels like being a family man, well he gets that too because he has a wife who is willing to accommodate him the second he feels receptive again. Additionally, the wife often worries that if she is too accommodating, he may take her for granted or not have the time to miss her.

She may describe it this way: “when my husband and I first separated, I admit that I was desperate. I kept bugging him to see the kids and me more, and he kept distancing himself. A very good friend gently told me that I needed to back off and take some time for myself so that is what I did. I’m happy to say that my husband responded to this. He’s started regularly wanting to spend time with the kids and me on the weekends. And for the most part, this is fun, and we enjoy it. But I can not help but notice that my husband seems to have gotten very comfortable with this arrangement. He seems perfectly happy having little responsibility during the week and then playing father and husband on the weekends. He never makes any comments about coming home or stepping up the frequency of the visits. This makes me think that, if I don’t do something and soon, he’s going to be perfectly happy continuing to be the weekend dad and husband so that we will remain separated for goodness knows how long. This really is not acceptable to me. I want to move things along. So I am considering starting to turn him down for the weekend visits and just letting him spend time with the kids. That way, he might see what he is missing. My friends tell me that this is risky, but I feel like if I don’t make a change, we are just going to keep on with the weekend meetings and nothing will change.”

Putting Things In Perspective: I can completely see why you are getting impatient. I know exactly how this feels. But I want to put a few things in perspective for you. I honestly can not stress enough that a good portion of the correspondence that I get comes from wives whose husbands see them very little, at least in the beginning. They may communicate by phone or text sporadically, but as far as face-to-face visits, they aren’t getting many. So it’s important to realize that your situation truly is an advantage that many do not have.

That said, you are right to be concerned that you will just get stuck in a pattern that doesn’t end. But, sometimes, although your husband may be secretly thinking about reconciliation and wanting to come home, he hasn’t yet shared this with you because he just wants to test the waters for a little bit longer to make sure that everything continues to go well. When so much is riding on a reconciliation, people are often reluctant to rush.

Finding A Balance That Allows You To Test: I agree with your friends that there might be a little risk in bowing out as far as the weekends go. But I think that if you are careful and you just use it as a bit of a test, it might give you a little more information. You could try it for one weekend to see what type of reaction you get and then go from there. (And obviously, you know your husband better than myself or your friends so you would be the best one to predict how he might react.)

You might try telling him that you have plans during the next scheduled weekend just to see how he reacts. Try to keep it light. You don’t need to explain that this is part of any strategy or test. Just lightly say that for this upcoming weekend, you have plans but that you know that the kids are looking forward to this one-on-one time with their dad. He may press you and ask you what you are doing, and then it will be up to you to decide what to tell him. I find that it’s usually a bad idea to try to make him jealous because this brings about negative emotions and you don’t want negative emotions associated with you during a separation.

Watch very closely as to how he reacts both before the weekend and after it is over. You may find that he reaches out even more because this made him realize the void that your absence has caused.

Of course, the risk is that he will be perfectly fine with it being just him and the kids, but you won’t know unless you test. You also have to consider that he does have the entire week to miss you before the weekend arrives so you never want to take any strategy too far. I don’t think it hurts to test, but I think that when you do test, you want to watch very closely and reevaluate when something doesn’t go as you planned.

Prioritizing Your Own Self Respect: If you feel the weekend arrangement is not working for you, then you have every right to experiment and see if something else might work better.  And it shows a great deal of self-respect to step back in the hopes that he will show you that same respect.

I did this from time to time during my reconciliation with good results.  But I was always very deliberate with it.  I would pull back and then be open to spending a lot of time together afterward to balance it out.  I watched my husband very closely to see how he reacted each time.  Most of the time, my pulling back had him bringing me closer.  But not always.  You can read more on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com

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